Experimenting with vintage pens
I appreciate the aesthetics of vintage fountain pens — and the artistry of truly outstanding old-school nib work.
And I dig a pen that wears its history on itself. Scratches, dings and stains all drive home that the pen in hand may be older than I am, or than my parents are. I have a Parker Vacumatic that’s older than my grandparents.
However, my tastes lean towards modern pens. Wider sections and mid-sized pens fit best in my hand, especially during longer writing sessions. Many vintage pens are well-made thin writers.
Vintage pens seem to have noticeably smaller sections
Three weeks ago, my new pen friend, Pier, suggested that he would send me a small sample of vintage fountain pens to experiment with. A tidy cardboard box arrived at my door a few days later.
Pier mailed a handful of pens: two Shaeffers, an Eversharp, a Waterman, and an Eberhard Faber.
Pens rocking their histories on Pier’s livestream
Experimenting is a large part of what makes living in analog rewarding. Sometimes, novelty alone is enough to get me started writing again. Other times, the hunt for a perfect pen, ink, and paper combination gets me going. Still other times, the joy of customizing how I write notes or a paper empowers me – especially when the task is upsetting, like meeting with an upset parent who is lashing out in frustration.
Thank you, Pier, for giving me some very new writing experiences to experiment with.
Fun is a-coming
This week’s Inked Tines update includes my most recent currently inked writing tools.
Toolset
Pens. The standout combo this week is the Diplomat Aero inked with Kyo’s Higashiyama Moonlight. Love the Higashiyama ink. Shading is addictive, even in an EF nib. Reached for the pair often for reading notes, lesson plan notes, and for manuscript comments. Also my go-to for poor paper given the combo of dry Kyo ink and EF nib size. This ink has made my to-buy list for after the sample vial is empty. Feed only.
Franklin-Christoph 45 (B SIG) — Empty. Fun and well-behaved. Dried quickly given the heavy sheen. Broad lines worked best as a journaling pairing. Journaling, reading notes (accent).
Platinum 3776 Nice Pur (F) — Empty. Smooth, narrow lines that dried quickly. Excellent for task management. Round F nib managed fast-writing while reading and during meetings like a champ. Daily driver.
Conklin Mark Twain (M SIG) — Empty. Surprised by how much I liked the pen. Ink muddied to a mid-toned grey due to dried blue ink left in the sac. With excellent shading. Thanks, dad! Lesson plans, meeting notes, journaling.
TWSBI 580 AL (M Predator) — 2/5 (from a 1/2 fill). The EF side of this nib’s predator grind is just lovely. Vaikhari can be a handful, and the feed ensured it wrote reliably on both the EF and M sides. M side for journaling and meetings. EF side for marking tasks on post-it note paper.
Montblanc 146 (EF) — 1/2. A curious combination. Aonibi starts light and dry when I start writing. Grows darker and more behaved after a few lines. Shifted from jottings in reading notes to longer writing like journaling.
Sailor Pro Gear (Z Architect) — 4/5. A pairing born of socializing last weekend. The Architect side of the nib lays down wet lines that pool and sit up on top of Tomoe River and CAL papers. Then dries quickly enough. Journaling only.
Notebooks. Work bujo. Hobonichi Plain A5 Notebook. Ten new pages brings the work bullet journal to page 140. Two weekly pages, two pages of lesson plans, three more of meeting notes, and two more spent drafting my end-of-year letter to my students.
A two-page weekly spread is almost always large enough to accommodate what I’d like to accomplish during a work week. My spread allows for 11 tasks each weekday.
Another 11 are set aside under a “Later” column for jobs that come up but either don’t need immediate attention or can’t be done yet. More than enough space for a typical week.
This week, end-of-the-school-year programming is messier than usual. I have two post-it notes stuck to my weekly, each full of additional jobs that needed to be addressed.
In a year of hybrid teaching, quick conversations with students take three and sometimes four discrete steps. The post-its are working like trackers for where each conversation stands with my remote students.
Journal. Unbranded A5 Cosmo Air Light Notebook. 12 new pages across three entries. Eight of my nine inked pens joined in. The broader nibs from my Franklin-Christoph, Sailor, Conklin, and the M side of the TWSBI’s predator grind did most of the writing.
Looking back, I only now realize that the two poems I transcribed at the end of two of the entries are both authored by Marisa B Crane. “There is a Canyon” was one of the first poems I encountered from Crane — years ago. Funny how some poems stick with you.
Written dry. Three pens ran dry this week: the Platinum 3776 Nice Pur, Franklin-Christoph 45, and Conklin Mark Twain. This trio is unsurprising. The F-C and Conklin have broad nibs and so lay down a lot of ink while writing.
The Conklin dried out while drafting a gift inscription for one of my students. Each year, I gift a book to one of my research students. This year, I’m gifting a copy of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish to a student who studied the obstacles to medical treatment for incarcerated women of color who are pregnant.
The Franklin-Christoph ran dry while journaling on Friday. I’m surprised by how much I enjoyed writing with Diamine Skull & Roses. Indigo inks don’t often resonate with me. S&R’s excellent performance and shading drew me back, over and again. Yep: shading in a sheen monster.
Sheen on, you skull and roses
The Platinum was my go-to daily driver. It ran empty mid-day Wednesday. I turned to another, a new, Platinum 3776 for the remainder of the week’s task management.
And the Force was strong. More details below.
Newly inked. The week began with seven pens inked. I was happy with the flexibility that two multitasker nibs, three round “EF,” and two italic nibs offered.
I’m staring at nine pens in my six pen penvelope as of Saturday morning. My two new pens, of course, cried out to be inked.
The collection
Incoming / new orders. Whoo boy. This week was active. Two new pens rolled into the collection, in addition to Pier’s sample pack of five vintage pens.
The first to arrive was a KACO Edge. I inked the Edge with a longstanding favorite: Diamine Earl Grey. A well-known ink gives me a clear benchmark to judge the new pen’s nib against. What a great way to end a Monday.
The makrolon body reminds me of the Lamy 2000. A 2000 with a makrolon section. And a screw-in nib unit. And a converter. And a $10 price point after the 50% Amazon discount code I stumbled onto last weekend. Whoo boy, indeed.
I enjoy grippy acrylic and plastic sections on my pens. Metal sections lead me to rotate a pen in my hand, like one does with a wood pencil. Rotating metal sections is a subconscious annoyance. It is a tendency that lands differently depending on the width and shape of the section. The 2000’s section is one of those shapes. To be fair, this is a pet peeve of mine that is not a critique of metal sections themselves, or the Lamy 2000. Find your joy.
Going the full makrolon
Two days later, one of Platinum’s latest Star Wars special issues was delivered — from Japonica in Motion, an eBay shop that ships out of Osaka. The Kylo Ren 3776 Century is blacked out sporting black rhodium trim, minimalist banding from Ren’s helmet, and the Order’s sigaldry on the F nib. Wowza.
It’s rare that I don’t need to tune a nib out of the box. This Platinum F wrote perfectly, no tuning needed. The lure of the Dark Side.
Star Wars was my first fantasy universe. It was the first “world” where I knew characters’ names and backstories and cultures. I have a soft spot for Star Wars. And for simple aesthetics. Best of both universes.
“I will finish what you started.”
I inked ol’ Kylo Ren with Sailor Chushu. Dark grey with hints of dusty, lighter purple. Seemed fitting for the pen’s theme. And worked well as my second daily driver for the week.
Outgoing / trades or sales. I haven’t moved any pens or inks this week. The Parker continues to sit.
Currently reading and listening
Fiction. My focus remained on academic texts this week. I did read another chapter of Rhythm of War. I appreciate how well-rounded Syl has become as a character. Not all authors treat their side characters as three-dimensional. Sanderson certainly does.
Nonfiction. More peer-reviewed critical legal theory this week. 187 pages more, to be exact. I’m reading more for how authors in my field think about laws and lawmakers than for their papers’ conclusions.
Theory-focused reading generates a lot of annotations and reading notes. I lean heavily on my iPad and Bamboo stylus for the annotations themselves. PDF Reader is the go-to iPadOS app for reading and marking papers.
Reading notes mix a grey ink for summarizing and a colored ink for reflecting and making connections to the paper I’m writing. Mixing colors makes my notes searchable. I’m very close to having an outline strong enough that I can start drafting my own paper.
Music. Sigur Rós’ Valtari is well worth a listen. They’re full of heart, without jarring edges. Their guitarist, Birgisson, is known for playing his guitar with a cello bow. I find them calming when reading upsetting legal histories.
