Fountain Pens

Hi all,

I use pens for drawing.

I'm looking to get an ultra flex nib from this company:

https://www.kiwipens.com/collections/all/6

I have a jinhao x750 that I'm using as a test pen.

Will these nibs fit it?

Thank you.

Dear Lemmy fountain pen community,

I'm well over 50 and I started using a fountain pen in school, when I was still a little kid learning to write. That was back in the 70s. All those years, I've always been using a fountain pen of some sort for most of the stuff I write, and sketch.

I was wondering how many of us were still using a fountain pen to write long-form content? I mean, are you using one to write letters, keep a journal, or for any other form of content?

Even though I don't have a nice handwriting, I know quite a few people who like receiving my handwritten letters more than a neatly typed letter, and so do I. It kinda feels more personal and unique.

Beside the now too rare handwritten letter, sketching and keeping a journal another thing I like doing when I work on a long text is to draft it using a pen. Only once I'm done with that draft I will switch to the computer for the final typed version. It sure is much slower to write longhand which is exactly what I'm looking for: less speed, aka more time to (try to) think. And less distractions too ;)

I’ve a Travelers Notebook cover in A5, possibly of unofficial Chinese origin but quite fit for purpose.

It does quite well at carrying a Cousin, a similar notebook, and a wallet insert, along with a solid handful of pens, and my keys on a strap run through the pen loop.

The one thing I’ve had trouble making part of my system - right or wrong - is a method of carrying a handful of cigarettes and a lighter.

Right now that task falls to a flip top cigarette case that I replace ~annually due to wear, with a pouch for the zippo as well as one for an emergency disposable lighter.

This being a creative community by nature, thought I’d look for ideas or products fitting the bill that have worked for others.

If a product exists akin to the wallet insert, even if I had to load smokes one-deep as with metal cases, that might suffice. Haven’t seen anything that “just straps on”.

Bonus points if said wallet style insert includes someplace suitable to cram a handful of spare pills for when I’m out longer than expected, etc.

As of now, I’ve nearly managed to fit my whole life in there. Carried a backpack for years, mostly to handle the small ephemera, but I’ve recently had my shoulder worked on so that’s a bit of a challenge.

Mostly, a bottle of tylenol and the like, along with smoker’s paraphernalia, are what end up in there along with the notebook. Seems a bit of a waste if the lot could all fit together.

I finally got around to picking up a Majohn A2, and it has been a phenomenal writing experience! For an extra fine nib, it is wet and smooth, just the slightest bit of feedback from the paper. While the action of the push button has a noticeable hitch in it, it is still a very satisfying frob to play with. The size is perfect for the weight, and the clip doesn't get in the way of the way that I hold it. The only thing that sucks about it is that now I want one in black that I can fill with Platinum Carbon Black and a dark blue one to fill with Diamine Midnight. Many thanks to @dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world for the review that sparked my desire!

I have a great pen from lamy that I used for a could have years and really enjoyed. I found it a delight to write with and found it more consistent than ball point pens. Then I ran out of the prefilled ink cartridges it came with. I grabbed a refillable cartridge and some waterman ink and it has been downhill from there. I have two pens, not sure what the other one is, but neither seem to be able to write at all with the refills. They leak more often, constantly seem to dry out, and I have ended up going back to sharpie sgels because I need my pens to write when I need to write.

What am I doing wrong? Do I need better refill cartridges and if so can you recommend one, or are the cartridges really so much better? Or is there maintenance I am supposed to preform on the nib that I have neglected that could be causing my issues? Thanks for any advice, I would love to get back to using these pens.

Hey everyone,

Sorry for the typical "requirements" post, but I’ve been searching for a fountain pen and still can’t find the right one. I’m hoping to get some recommendations!

I’m looking for a pen similar to my Parker Urban—perhaps a step up in quality. Here’s what I love about the Urban: the metal body feels great in hand, and the design is sleek yet understated. It’s been a reliable companion for over five years now, and I managed to snag it for just $5 or $10 during a clearance sale. Despite its quirks, it's stuck with me while others have come and gone.

Now, this might sound like an ad, but it's not! My relationship with this pen is a bit of a love-hate situation. It was plagued by ink skips and hard starts for years until I learned some nib-tuning techniques and sanded down the nib. Now, it writes beautifully, but it's set a high bar that other pens haven’t met. I’ve given away several pens to friends and family because they just didn’t click with me (pun intended).

One major sticking point for me is the cap mechanism. Most pens I’ve tried have screw-on caps, which makes jotting down quick notes a bit of a hassle. What I’m really after is a pen with a click-on, snap-on, or bump-sealed cap—something with a satisfying seal that provides feedback when closed. Here’s a rundown of what I’ve tried so far:

• Majohn M800 Acrylic with Bock Nib: It should have been the holy grail in my budget, given the glowing reviews, and it does write well. But it lacks a certain something I can’t quite put my finger on. Also, it has a screw-on cap.
• Asvine V126: The screw-on cap was a drawback, and the vacuum filling mechanism kept breaking.
• Various Chinese Pens (Hongdian, etc.): These are well-regarded by the community, but they just didn’t feel right for me. Jinhao 82: The build quality was a bit too low for my taste.
• Jinhao X159: A great writer, but the screw-on cap meant I didn’t use it as much as I’d like.
• Jinhao Slip-On Cap Model: The slip-on cap was a plus, but I really want a cap that has a click, snap, or at least a bit of tactile feedback when it seals.

I’m willing to splurge up to $100 if it means getting a solid pen that fits my needs. But if there’s a well-built Chinese option for less, I’d be happy to snag it too.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated! Thanks for your help!

Hello. I am considering getting either a Sailor Professional Gear Slim Fountain Pen Iris Nebula Special Edition or one of the new Diplomat Vipers in Blue. Has anyone had experience with Sailor and Diplomat pens? The Sailor has a 14kt gold nib and the Diplomat has a steel nib. I haven't had any experience writing with a gold nib and have only been using steel nibs. This will be my first "Luxury" buy after having used Lamy Safaris and TWSBI Diamond Minis exclusively. Any feedback/comments is appreciated.

Thank you.

Here's a short one today, regarding a pen I have not picked up in a very long time. I assure you this pen is not from a problematic origin, and in light of recent discussions I've queried it quite thoroughly for its political leanings and thus far received absolutely no response. I'm starting to form the conclusion that this may be, in fact, because it can't talk. I'm not entirely sure.

This is the Ohto F-Lapa, which comes in -- or came in -- a variety of interesting finishes. Burgundy, brown, blue, that sort of thing. Those colorways are for people who didn't make the proactive decision to obtain a goddamn disco-ball mirror polished pen that'd present the maximum amount of difficulty in taking detailed photos of it while yammering about it on the internet, a decade after they bought it.

Not that I'd know, or anything.

This silver variant of the F-Lapa might just be the shiniest pen in the universe. Its body is actually quite striking in person. If I had to guess, I'd it's probably chrome plated. Handle it under bright lights at your own peril.

Despite this, the F-Lapa is and always was a budget pen, but it's one of the few I can think of off the top of my head that isn't made out of plastic and is also refreshingly slim. The widest part of its grip section, which is slightly tapered, is only 9.09mm in diameter. That makes it slimmer than most of its peers I can name off the top of my head. I don't know, really only the Pilot Cavalier leaps to mind as comparable, but even that's triple the cost.

I'm pretty sure the F-Lapa's body is aluminum. It's really light. Only 14.6 grams -- just a hair over half an ounce -- and that's fully filled with a typical International Short ink cartridge installed. Thus it's perfect for the use case I had for it at the time, which was to serve as a cheap daily carry replacement for my aging and continually appreciating in value Sheaffer Targa, while contriving not to look cheap and being compact, light, and easy to carry without making my shirt sag. It also has a clutch fit cap that just pulls off, and isn't a damn screw-on. These are all plusses in my book for practical daily use. (This was obviously before I developed my current fascination with retractable fountain pens.) But if that's what you want, too, the F-Lapa has you covered right down to the ground.

If what you want is a flexy, expressive, valuable, or glassy smooth nib, though, this isn't it. The F-Lapa has a pretty typical steel nib that, frilly decorative scrollwork on it aside, provides completely ordinary performance. It comes with an apparently monomolecular gold coating which on my example wore away pretty quickly with cleaning and so forth, although this didn't impact the performance any. So even if it's ugly, it works. This is a "fine" point which runs maybe a touch wider than a typical Asian "fine" pen. I have not been able to verify if this was ever available in any other nib width, but I suspect it was not. It has no flex whatsoever but writes predictably with no trouble. It's not exceptionally smooth, which I guess is what folks these days call "high feedback" in the same way that back in the 80's cheap cameras were marketed as "focus free." I find it nicely controllable and basically zero pressure is required on it to write, which combined with the light weight makes it pleasantly non-fatiguing to use.

Before writing this I hadn't touched this pen for years and even so, I just jammed a random cartridge in it of unknown brand or origin and it picked right back up writing again as if I'd never put it down. So that's pretty cool.

The nib purports to have an iridium tip, and is also marked "Germany," and I can neither confirm nor deny the veracity of either claim. That's kind of weird for a Japanese pen, but maybe it's true and that's why it writes broader than you'd think. I couldn't tell you.

There are no surprises inside, but that said I've always been amused by the ridiculously fine pitch of the threads on its section. It's the little things in life.

By the way, this is one of those pens where you can carry a spare cartridge behind the one you've got installed, tail-to-tail, although only if having it rattle around inside won't annoy you.

The only other point of note I have about the F-Lapa is that when Ohto refers to it by it's full title, they consistently call it an "Auto Fountain Pen." Well, I for one can't for the life of me figure out what's supposed to be automatic about it.

Short version: Drew, their employee with the most public facing role and known to be a chill guy and left-leaning, left the company with some celebration but zero explanation. This got folks looking, and they saw that the Goulets are heavily involved with planting (think "franchising" or may more accurately "metastasizing") a new church that was growing out from a larger one that has all the usual disgusting anti-LGBT+ rhetoric, and the new church has a mission statement that includes bible literalism and explicitly places men above women in home life and church roles. Also, Reddit being Reddit, the mods handled it all very clumsily and in a way that makes it look they've traded their integrity for a couple of pens.