Pen Freaks, Check in

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I have been obsessed with pens for a year or two now. This kind of coincided with my fascination with the language on lower levels than before, such as the letter. Typefaces and all that. Moving on from the bics and such, I use the freer-flowing pens that feel smooth. The perfect pen can be almost orgasmic. I have tried many, many pens, and the problem with the many perfect pens I’ve tried is that they run out so quickly. This is very off-pissing.

Fellow pen fetishists, tell me what your current tool is, which pen is your favorite, and a good, smooth pen that doesn’t run out on the third day. i hate pencils.

2

Only a year or two? :smiley:

I’ve been obsessed with pens, writing, and drawing for as long as I can remember. Personally, I’m a fountain pen guy. I’ve got a Lamy, Mont Blanc, Rotring, and Parker. My fave is the Rotring. It’s got a metal body, making it nice and heavy. The cap clicks on with a solid-sounding snap. It takes either a refillable cartridge or the Rotring Art Pen disposables. Talk about smooth-writing. The Parker pens offer great bang-for-the-buck, coming in at under $10 each, IIRC. The Lamy was free from a supplier I work with; the Mont Blanc was a college graduation gift; and the Rotring was purely a lust purchase … I HAD to have it!

3

I’m a pen freak, but I don’t really write that much. It started because I would chew on the ends of those cheap, soft plastic Bic pens and the like, so I would have to get a more expensive one that really didn’t allow that. I started my pen craze with those Pilot Vision pens, I think they were. The had an inkwell in them, and a really small, fine tip, and the pens bleed like crazy on the paper if you didn’t write dast enough. I graduated from those to the Uniball Vision pens in 1996, freshman year of High School. I loved all the color choices (there was black, dark blue, red, pink, maroon, purple, light blue, green…maybe others.) I stayed with tose for two years, until I found the pen of my dreams. It’s not super-fancy, but it writes sooooo smooth, no scratching here, my friend. The pen in question? None other than the Pilot G-2 gell ink ballpoint pen. Soooo nice, and replaceable ink cartidge (of course, I lose them long before they run our of ink.)

I also really like the Pilot razor point pen, it’s like a combo of a felt tip and those old Pilot Vision pens.

4

On second thought, maybe this would be more appropriate for IMHO.

Bouv, I’m not sure I’ve tried the others, but you’re right about the Pilot G-2. Heaven.

Fountain pens intrigue me, peritrochoid, but I’ve never known where to start. What stores sell them? What is it that makes you prefer them? What’s the cost? How do they compare to ball-points? They’re not scratchy, are they?

5

Check.

6

My favorite? Zebra F-402.
I miss working in a pharmacy,the vendors would give you all sorts of cool pens(including the Viagra pen with the white plastic ink cartridge).

7

Surprisingly, I found the Rotring at a local Office Depot/Office Max (I always get them confused). Ordinarily you have to order that particular one online or through catalogs (at least here in my town). It was rather pricey … around $70 I think. Rotring also has a plastic Art Pen that you can find with either calligraphy nibs or with writing/sketch nibs for around $15 at most art supply stores. They are also very nice, but not terribly practical to carry. Parker and Schaeffer (and other manufacturers I’m sure) make inexpensive ones, but for the most part, the more you invest, the more robust the pen … the Parkers I have are plastic bodies, prone to breakage, where the Rotring is machined from metal (aluminum?) and will damn near last a lifetime. Interestingly, even the Mont Blanc is plastic-bodied. I like the uniqueness of using a fountain pen. They may be scratchy at first use, but will become much smoother. They just glide across the paper effortlessly. With time the nib will even wear to your natural writing patterns and style, making the pen uniquely yours. For this reason, it is always advised that you NEVER let anyone else use your fountain pen for any length of time.

I still use a ball point or a roller ball type pen for anything that requires excessive pressure (like NCR forms and such). You’d take a chance of damaging the nib on a fountain pen.

8

I should point out that scratchiness depends a great deal on the paper you write on. Notebook paper, printer/copier paper, and the like have posed no problems for me. The Rotrings (no, I am not a Rotring salesman) write well on even some of the textured papers and art papers. YMMV.

9

I am obessessed with good pens. Gelly Rolls are my brand of choice. The problem with them is if you don’t use them for a while you have to heat up the tips to get them to write well again. Also, uni-ball’s GELLYZ Quicksilver pens are so fun. You can watch them change from the color to silver. One more favourite: Pilot’s Varsity pens are great, for a cheap fountain thrill, but they run out of ink rather quickly and are no refillable, i think.

10

I have been stuck on these Sanford Uni-Gel pens for the past few years. They are not to expensive but they do use ink faster than a ball point. You can get refills but they are almost as expensive as the whole pen. I like the medium size and they have a rubber grip. The only thing I don’t like about it that it will smear sometimes and the ink doesn’t stick to shiny surfaces.

11

Oh, I HATE shitty pens! The ones that leak all over the place and have big fat tips.

I am very picky about my pens. I much prefer fine tips-they just seem to write nicer. I am lucky in some ways because my dad, who is a funeral director, manages to score free samples of fifty dollar pens from work. So I snitch them from his dresser. HA!

I love gel rollers, too-I have these ones that are dark blue with silver sparkles. And of course, my metallic and milky pens. Ever seen milky pens? They ROCK!

12

Just got back from the store. I got Avery eGels at $3.56. 0.7mm. Retractable. (ahh–such a choice! Get a capped pen and lose the cap, get retractable and annoy others with clicking.) They are beautifully smooth, though not the best I’ve used.

Dogbutler, I love those Viagra pens. Also pens where ladies’ clothes fall off.

Peritrochoid, can you tell me exactly what is the difference in writing feel with fountain pens? And would you recommend Parker/Schaeffer for a beginner? (Schaeffer and Rotring both sound German, and I’ve heard talk of fountain pens in German class. Can you get that substance that erases fountain pen ink in America?)

13

I use an antique fountain pen (gold-nibbed, ‘bladder’ ink reservoir, definitely not plastic body) at home for a fair amount of writing. I can confirm the smoothness and moulding to personal style, but sadly also the need for frequent refilling, which involves the big ink bottle and a cloth - and often inkstained fingers. :frowning:

It’s nice and heavy and sits in my hand very comfortably. I’d never bring it to work because of the refilling isues and the possibility that I might leave it in someone else’s office, like I do with a fair amount of the cheap Bic® pens that I keep in my desk drawer.

14

None of those fancy-schmancy Monte Blanc’s for me. I am what I fondly refer to as a “pen recycler”. I steal pens from one location and lose them at another on a regular basis. Since I don’t want to have to keep track of them, I use regular old ball points when I’m out.

At home, however, I have a stash of my favorites. I also have the Pilot G2 as well as several types of gel pens in all different colors.

I also have a collection of markers that I love. Zig writers and brush tips are my favorite.

15

I use a Parker fountain pen, found at any local Wal Mart for under $15. My handwriting is generally pretty crappy, but I find that with a fountain pen, it’s at least consistent and legible. An added bonus is that very few people borrow it, since they’ve never used one before, and are intimidated by it.

16

It’s difficult to describe the difference precisely. In terms of feel, fountain pens are probably close to a high-quality roller ball. Some stores have sample pens you can try out to compare.

I would recommend Parker over Schaeffer. But that’s entirely personal opinion … mostly because I’ve just had great luck with Parker pens of all varieties. Schaeffers just feel “cheap”, even though they might be excellent pens. I’m not sure about Schaeffer, but I know Rotring is certainly German. www.rotring.de. Incidentally, Rotring=Red ring. It’s obvious when you see the pen.

I have no idea about erasing the ink. Never tried it. A lot of the inks are water soluble, so I imagine it’s possible, but messy.

17

I love my pens. I love mechanical pencils, too.

I had a matching Waterman pen/pencil set but I lost the pencil :frowning: They were a gift from a boss. It’s about 10 years old.

I have a lovely Cross brushed steel pen that I bought to match the mechanical pencil my friend got me.

My most expensive is probably my very nice black, heavy Waterman that was a photography sample.

Couple years ago, I bought someone a brushed gold-colored Waterman. This cap has a VERY nice snap to it.

Finally, on the cheap side, I love the Papermate PhD mechanical pencils!!! Nice, big barrel, plenty of eraser.

18

Anyone else know about the fountain-pen ink erasing stuff in America?

19

I usually have a fountain pen, but I don’t like the way most fountain pens have a fairly large diameter.

For a while Parker had a slim fountain pen. The body was plastic and would eventually crack where the pen screwed together. It wasn’t too often, so I’d just buy another one when it was too broken. For a long time they only came in black plastic, but they started offering them in opaque blue and red. They changed the plastic shortly thereafter and introduced some transparent varieties, but the new plastic broke much too easily. They’ve stopped selling them, AFAIK.

I bought a similar looking Parker that was a bit nicer, but it was of the chubby pen family, and just didn’t feel right… it took weird refills and eventually I couldn’t find ink for it easily.

The next pen I bought based mainly on the type of refills it took, and partly on look/style. It had a diameter even larger than the Parker it was replacing, and felt so awkward that I eventually began to grow attached to certain brands of rollerball (Pilot EasyTouch, Another one that just a plain black capped pen, very fine point but it writes extremely easily and smoothly… very black ink. I have one right now, but I usually remove the cap clip, which is where the brand is I think it’s a Uniball)

Anyway, my fountain pen jag was restarted when a friend brought a LAMY Safari Al-Star back from Germany for me. Safari’s are huge pens anyway, and the Al-Star has an aluminum skin that makes them the fattest of the series. It made me want a fountain pen, but so symbolized everything I hate about most fountain pens. I began a quest for a nice skinny fountain pen.

I ended up with a LAMY Logo. It’s machined stainless steel with brass inserts for some of the internal wearing surfaces. It’s very nice and, best of all, about the same size as other writing instruments.

That said, I still use the no name disposable black pens I mentioned above for most things, because the paper used at work tends to make writing with the fountain pen look furry as the ink spreads along the paper’s fibers. :dubious:

20

I like pens, not to the point that I would be considered a “pen freak” but I like them. I hate writing in pencil unless I have to. Blue is preferable to black.

The worst thing, is cheap, no name, black pens, followed by cheap, no name, blue pens.