archaic transcription tools

[frannyglass]

post pens notebooks paper of any variety (but ideally cute)

[frannyglass]

just got this in the mail i'm in love (love)

[jrisk]

caran d'ache 849 with the standard refill. got a bunch of refills to try but I didn't like any of them as much as the default goliath refill.

use it mostly when writing in my Hobonichi

[rubymtn]

I used to have a fancier setup but I try to keep it very simple. You'll never convince me that Field Notes are trite or twee—they're great.

[p3rn]

I have this fountain pen. it's a kaweco sport. does the job perfectly well and I desire no more fountain pens. it makes note-taking more enjoyable.

[frannyglass]

ngl u guys are missing out if you don’t have the little pocket clip

[frannyglass]

you should write an info post about the fountain pens so we can get roped into your hobby

i'm still very much a casual in the world of fountain pens, but i'll do my best.

i bought a lamy safari a few years back just to try one, and i liked it well enough but more recently i started using cute pens and notebooks as a way to bribe myself into more actively writing and journaling (semi successful so far.)

i think some selling points for fountain pens could be stuff like a smoother writing experience, maybe using less disposable things if you go through a lot of cheap pens? for some people it could help improve your handwriting probably

for myself it's mostly just feeding object and design love, i love having nice looking things to hold and fiddle around with, and it's a hobby with a pretty wide range of directions you can get into while being pretty affordable (or pretty crazy expensive if u want it to be!). its also pretty cool just how many different colors of ink there are out there, especially once you move from cartridges to bottles.

here's a few pens i think are cute or fun or interesting:

Spoiler:

pilot vanishing point: a fountain pen, but it clicks !!


parker 51: it's old !! looks cool !!


pilot kakuno modded into an eye dropper (you fill the whole body with ink as opposed to a cartridge or converter): looks cool!


kaweco sport in brass: for the patinaheads!! (there's a number of metal kaweco sport models, none of which i've handled, but i imagine are a bit of a step up from the classic, the only flaw of which in my mind is that it's a bit lightweight)


ohto horizon needle point: not a fountain pen at all !! my friend swears these are the best ballpoint pens out there and that they are very fun to click

[titkitten]

do most of these just consist of a metal nib that you dip into a separate inkpot or do they ink themselves (is that what eyedropper means)

i am mostly concerned by ink drying and smudging!! pls advise

[frannyglass]

all of these are self inking! i assume there's some market out there for dip pens, but i don't really know much about them.

most modern fountain pens take cartridges like these (either proprietary or universal), not super different from a ballpoint or somethin

Spoiler:

or can be used with a converter/refillable cartridge filled from an ink bottle

Spoiler:

"eyedropper" refers to pens that either don't take cartridges at all, or have been modified not to, and instead the entire body is filled up with ink using an eyedropper or syringe (this is apparently what all fountain pens were back in the day.) this can be useful for increasing ink capacity in a small pen like a kaweco, or if you just want to use inks outside of the official cartridges (the body is too small to fit any type of universal cartridge, and the official converters are generally agreed to be bad/too small for practical use)

ink drying and smudging depends on a lot of stuff—some inks are wetter than others and have a longer dry time, but the size of the nib affects it too (how much ink goes on the page at once), and so does paper (i don't know too much about this, but i guess it's related to absorbency? i don't have much of an issue with smudging with my leuchtturm notebooks, but my moleskine planner has smoother pages that don't play as nice with fountain pens)

i think generally for fountain pen ink 10 seconds is about the fastest dry time you see.

if you look up specific inks you'll often find people on reddit or other forums or blogs posting pretty extensive test sheets with them, usually involving smudge tests at various intervals of time

Spoiler:

all that said, i personally have not had much more issue with smudging from fountain pens than ballpoint or gel pens, but part of that may come just from going out of my way to be careful with them.

[Julio]

i like fountain pens, but considering how much jostling and moving around and commuting i used to do i stopped using them once i had to deal with the occasional leak. might get back into them at some point.
right now i have two zebra pens, both ball points

the usual F-701 (the all-steel one? was a gift from my brother)


and then i also have the fun SL-F1/expandz in grey (unsure if there's a difference between the two aside from name, but looks to be the same pen)

quite like this one, collapses very nicely and the pull is satisfying.

i want a lamy pico, though

Spoiler:

i love the way it expands when you click it

might be next pen i'll be purchasing if i can find this blue one locally

used to quite like the muji hex oils and they were all i used, but i heard they were discontinued? unsure if true. still have a few kicking around the house somewhere. also the ink itself was just okay, but as far as workhorse pens go i like them

[Trench Witch]

Who makes a nice mechanical pencil

[rubymtn]

Who makes a nice mechanical pencil

rOtring 600 and 800 are my favorite mechanical pencils of all time. The Uni Kuru Toga has a spinning mechanism that's supposed to keep the lead consistent, but in my experience with both the rOtring and the Uni I prefer the former.

[soj]

Been around the mechanical pencil block a bit myself (as all good engineering students). I tend to write very (see: very) small so 0.3mm is my preference. I used a 0.5mm for a long time and felt okay but I really hit my stride with the 0.3. These are my favorites these days:



GraphGear joint is pretty heavy so I don't use it often but I like the beefiness sometimes. Good for tossing around. I only use the Orenz 0.2 when I'm drawing diagrams or something that requires real fine details, which to be frank isn't all that often. The Orenz 0.3 is my day-to-day, really enjoy using it. Looks slick, looks good, feels good, good stuff.

[Julio]

this nemesis prime pen by sentinel is probably the most novel pen i own:

Spoiler:

here's the original optimus prime color:

i was wanting the ultra magnus one but it was the most expensive, twice the price of the others if i recall correctly

surprisingly usable in pen mode. a touch bulky but decently weighted and the shaping means it works out alright. really strange.
the ink has probably dried by now