If you are ever in Carmel, stop at Bittner’s. A true fountain pen shop. A comprehensive online source of both info and merchandise is Goulet Pens. I just bought some Crown Mill stationery and Tomoe River paper there this week. For notepads I use Rhodia – it has a super smooth texture that never snags, and makes for fast writing.
I used to use several fountain pens for music copying in the Hollywood professional world years ago. I think the main model was an Esterbrook with a 2320 italic nib. We had to hold it oddly, parallel to the line of music, so that vertical lines would be thin (note stems) and horizontal ones, thick (beams). Eighth note flags would have an artistic, variable thickness.
Much music was written on tracing vellum, also called onionskin, a translucent sheet that allowed music reproduction by shining a light through the paper (pre-Xerox days). Therefore, we could print the staff lines on the back side of the paper and write on the front. If we erased notes on the front, the lines wouldn’t be altered.
Ink had to be sufficiently light-blocking for the reproduction process, called diazo (similar to blueprints, with an ammonia developer). Ordinary fountain pen ink was not opaque enough, and India ink didn’t flow well in the pens, so we often mixed our own formula. At the time there was an ink, called technical drafting ink, sold in art stores, that was pretty good, and the music copying stores sold their secret formula mixture.
We also had to reshape the pen nibs to allow use with straightedges. Our tools for this were razor blades and Exacto knives.
Musicat, that is fascinating and eye-opening. Thank you.
Ulfreida, I just learned about Bittner’s today by searching for pen stores online. It’s a bit too far away for a day trip, and it’s really the wrong season for much of a visit, but I may have a chance to go there in April.
I also found out the SF Pen show happens in August (actually in Redwood City). I’m sure I will be going to that.
eta: tomorrow I am going downtown to check out the Lamy store on Market St. I expect the prices will be full retail, but I’m hoping to see a couple of models there that I am very interested in, and that are inexpensive enough that I won’t mind buying one at full rate, if I like it.
Using a dip pen is an acquired skill. You eventually learn when your pen needs refilling, depending on the nib used, the lettering style (in calligraphic terms, “alphabet” or “hand”), the size of the letters, and so on. Having learned such, you will always have an even ink flow, and consistently solid letters. It does take a while to learn though.
Swapping nibs on a dip pen is very simple: take the old nib out of the penholder and put in a new one. If it takes longer than five seconds, you’re doing it wrong. Penholders and nibs are sold seperately; I’ve got maybe three penholders, but a couple of dozen nibs. In other words, swapping nibs on a dip pen is no trouble at all.
Reported.
Thanks. After I wrote that, I remembered some experiences with calligraphy in high school (a very long time ago now) that confirm most of this (the rest I don’t remember).
On another note, I did check out the Lamy store, and am very happy I did. It’s location is easy to get at on public transportation, being downtown at 645 Market Street, in the building of the Palace Hotel (on the street, not inside). As you would expect it’s a small store, all that’s needed to display and sell their various lines of pens, including other pens besides fountain pens. I was able to try out various pens, and bought one. I will say that the nibs, on the demonstration pens at least, were all dreams to write with.
I also bought a bottle of ink, and found out that their ink bottles have a built-in roll of pen-wiping paper in the bottom, which is amazingly handy.
Yes, e.g. the Lamy Safari is the type of inexpensive pen kids used to buy for school (back where/when they were required to write assignments in ink, anyway. Isn’t that still required? I mean, sometimes exams are supposed to be completed without access to reference books or Internet.). The use of ink cartridges filled with erasable ink was popular, the kind you could make disappear with a special felt-tip marker in order to correct mistakes. (At least some exam papers were supposed to be written in permanent ink, though- I wonder if anyone ever bothered to check!)
Not so handy after all. It pulls out but there is no sharp edge on which to tear it, you have to cut it off. With scissors. Be sure to put the top on the bottle first (voice of experience).
This is called blotting paper. I don’t even know where to get “real” blotting paper, but filter paper swiped from the lab works quite well, or you can just use a piece of paper towel or newspaper or something. I never saw any given away with a bottle of ink, but that shows what I know.
The converter came with the pen. I do like it a lot.
I love the look of the Platinum, the way it feels in my hand, and the smooth, smooth nib. Writing just flows out of it.
A friend just gave me a Lamy Safari. Though I’m pleased with the nib, I don’t like the triangular grip. My fingers are stubby, and the grip is a little too small for me. A friend of mine with much thinner fingers loves her Lamy, however.
In paper, no bleeding or feathering, of course. I like the way the Rhodia paper feels under my hand…my hand moves smoothly over it. I prefer either entirely blank or dot grid, and don’t use lined papers. I’ve even used sketchbooks, too. If the paper isn’t too rough, it works, just not as well.
Goulet’s sells blotting paper in A-5 sized sheets. It is made in France I believe. I use one between the leaves of my journal. You can no longer get blotting paper in the desk-sized sheets of yore but heavy absorbent art papers work well.
I’ve had a few cartridge pens over the years and I regret having lost them all. The first was a Cross Classic that came with a mechanical pencil, then a Waterman Preface I scored at Liquidation World for $10 (that one I really miss), and recently a Kaweco Classic Sport that I have to say I am less enamoured with. I am going to buy a Lamy Safari but the colour I want is sold out.
I’ve dabbled in cheap fountain pens over the years. I currently have a Pilot Metropolitan Retro Pop (the green one here – not the teal one).
My efforts have been plagued by my inability to get the ink to flow consistently – so many times I make a stroke and nothing comes out and I have to repeat the stroke – and a Charlie-Brown-like clumsiness in filling the pens using a squeezable bladder.
I have recently learned about the converter cartridges and am ordering a Con-50 to see if that helps me be less Charlie Brownlike.
But I don’t know what to do about the ink flow issue. Is that something I learn to mitigate by holding the pen (or making my stroke) more consistently? I admit to giving up eventually when the writing becomes a struggle. Or would a more expensive model work significantly better in this regard?
Yes, it is super annoying when that happens! Who wants to use a pen that dries out and skips?
It could be a poorly adjusted nib, a nib that is worn out or damaged, a dirty nib, a clogged or greasy (or brand new) feed or converter, poor nib-feed alignment, inadequate “priming” when filling, the wrong type of ink, stuff like that. But I don’t think it could be because you are holding the pen wrong, unless you are doing something egregious.
Do you have the same exact problem with a bunch of different pens, or just a couple of individual ones?
I don’t think an expensive model will necessarily be better than a cheap school model in this regard.
My daughter has been enjoying writing w/ a fountain pen for the past year or so, and journals on nice paper. I know ZERO about such things. I actually asked her before x-mas if there was anything she would like as a gift (after wasting time in an airport’s Mont Blanc shop) but she said choices of pens and paper were pretty personal, such that she’d prefer to pick anything out herself. She is our eldest, and learned penmanship in a school district that taught it - so she has beautiful handwriting. We moved into a district that taught neither writing nor keyboarding! So our 2 youngest chickenscratch.
She and her family are on a pretty tight budget, so I’d like to be able to treat her to something she might not be able to justify spending on - but I sure don’t want to spend money on something she doesn’t use.
What questions ought I ask to try to figure out any possible gifts? Her preferred choice of paper? Brand of ink/pen? Style of nib?
I thought I might get her some nice note cards - in case she wanted to send thank you or condolence notes… Any inexpensive pens that ought to fill out a novice’s collection?
Just texted her - she uses the Pilot Metropolitan line, which she describes as cheap but decent enough quality.
Bumping this to post link to a fun, informative article from the New York Times (last month).
**Let the Fountain Pens Flow! **
To quote Liz Lemon, “I want to go to that place…”
So I got my Lamy Limited Edition All-Black Safari. I really like the way it feels in my hand and the ink that came with it is quite nice. I have a bunch of Thank-Yous that I have to send so I think I’ll get a chance to give it a good work out. It feels much more expensive than it is. FWIW, I also ordered some Caran d’Ache Chromatics in Cossmic Black but I think they might have frozen in the mail or they went in messy as there was ink all inside the little box they came in. I wiped them off and they don’t appear to be leaking any more so I may try them yet. I’m debating using a convertor as I’ve always used carts for writing and bottle strictly for calligraphy.
[tangent]Very cool.
I only recently started transcribing music by hand–my wife has been doing so for 40 years, but as a relative noob I have always used Finale.
I find it very soothing to write out the clef, time signature, key signature, and the other notation by hand, and I have a personal goal of filling a thick blank music book (the Real Book folks have a blank Real Book) with transcribed bass music over the next year. There are so many nuances that we take for granted in written music, such as “hm… should I use a dotted note here or a tied note? should that accidental be a D# or Eb?”
…I can’t imagine how tedious it must have been to do this every single day for a living though.
It reminds me of the tedium endured by me doing lettering as a draftsman in an earlier life, getting criticized for my crappy lettering by my teachers, and then later on by my boss.[/tangent]
There is going to be a huge difference in tedium between painstakingly engraving music for reproduction, and handwriting your own music, just like the difference between scribbling in a notebook (with a fountain pen 
) and setting type using a composing stick (or copying a manuscript by hand, using a quill and iron-gall ink, in earlier times).
