The Conklin Nozac pen I ordered from Swisher Pens came in today with a bottle of Noodler's Waterproof Black ink. It writes very comfortably when I don't put the lid back on the other end, but with the lid it's more top-heavy than I'm used to a pen being. I decided to try the ink in the Hero 329, despite warnings it might not work well[0]. So far, it seems to be working without any problems; perhaps this batch of ink is different. Being left-handed, I do have to be careful not to run my hand through the wet ink while writing, but it dries quickly enough not to cause trouble 90% of the time.
Had I known sooner that using pens to write doesn't have to be such a pain, I might not have used pencil so much, and my notebooks wouldn't slowly be fading away now.
[0] At the worst I would have had to go out and get some Mont Blanc in one of those nifty bottles to refill it.
Comments (4)
Happy to be wrong.
Could just be that the Parker 51 I've had some trouble with has a gunked-up feed. It's probably time to give it a good soaking.
Posted by Pederson | October 14, 2005 12:30 PM
Posted on October 14, 2005 12:30
In your defence, it does take longer to start writing after it's been sitting around for a while, but that's about it.
Posted by charles | October 16, 2005 12:58 AM
Posted on October 16, 2005 00:58
Obvious solution re: weight/balance of pen w/ cap posted:
Don't post the cap. :)
I've spent much too much time lurking in a fountain pen forum. Not everybody posts the cap. Some are worried about the wear that posting puts on the barrel of the pen, some about the weight or balance of the pen, some just don't like the way it looks. Among those who don't post, some hold the cap in their writing hand, some in their off-hand, some set it aside somewhere it won't roll away or get lost.
I say, whatever works. It varies some from pen to pen and even from day to day. I've got a couple that are almost too short to use without posting, and one (the Namiki Bamboo) so large and heavy that the posted cap can sometimes make it unwieldy.
Mont Blanc adds some detergents to their ink, which (I'm guessing, but it seems reasonable) also makes their ink more free-flowing than, say, Parker's Quink or Noodler's. Quink probably contains some detergents, but I don't think Noodler's contains any. The waterproof stuff, anyway. Correspondingly, the two bottles of Mont Blanc ink I've got are thinner than the two bottles of Quink, which are by far thinner than any of the bottles of Noodler's. And the Noodler's are all opaque, where the MB and Quink are (excepting the black) transparent to some degree.
I have a Parker 61, which is an interesting pen because it has a capillary filler. The barrel unscrews, and you stick the pen into the ink bottle, nib up, and the filler just wicks ink right up into the pen. Unfortunately, it's ... picky about inks--and a major pain to clean. The MB ink is about the only thing I'll use in it, right now. It flows well and I'm hoping it will loosen up some of the accumulated crud in the filler and feed of the pen.
Posted by Pederson | October 19, 2005 9:08 AM
Posted on October 19, 2005 09:08
Well, my 51 Vac gets along fine with the Noodler's Legal Lapis (if anything, it writes wet) and the 51 Aero didn't fare very well in the MB green. Looks like the Aero has a cracked hood, which might explain the problems I'd been having with ink flow. The crack could be allowing the ink to dry up in the section, between the top of the nib and the inside of the hood. (When working, the hood of the 51 traps ink at the nib, keeping a lot of liquid ink on tap for writing.) So, I guess I'll have to send it off for repair. May see about getting the nib replaced with something more interesting while I'm at it.
Posted by Pederson | October 31, 2005 1:21 PM
Posted on October 31, 2005 13:21