New Fountain pen INKS|| Pilot & HERBIN

[@sjoukjevandenberg7227]

Your making me feel like I need a fountain pen. Hahaha. Lol

[@joseeshelf]

Im telling you its fun m when you journal, or plan, or just like to draw ! i love it :D

[@Vermiliontea]

If you need a pen in your life, then you need a fountain pen. When you understand it, and the different inks available, it's a more than 100 times better writing tool than anything else. Just beware you don't fall down in the rabbit hole and end up owning 200 +$500 pens and hundreds of colorful but fugitive or gunky inks . That's entirely unnecessary. Recommended cheap, but great, fountain pens, are: Faber Castell 'Grip' (my no. 1 recommendation! ), Lamy 'Safari' (my no. 2 recommendation) , Wing Sung '699 vac' (a bit technically complicated to operate, needs to be understood), Jinhao '100' (as shown by Josee), Jinhao '159' (thick, heavy pen) (don't confuse 159 with X159, they are two different pens), and TWSBI 'Eco'. Drawback with the Jinhaos is that they typically need a slight nib tuning - see my above post -, but are sometimes fine out of the box. All these pens come in Western/Chinese 'EF', 'F', or 'M' widths. The 'Grip', 'Eco' and 'Safari' also comes in 'B', 'Eco' and 'Safari' even in stub. This refers to the point of course. Japanese system widths are approximately one step smaller. So Japanese 'M' corresponds to Western/Chinese 'F', etc. Cheap Chinese and Japanese pens typically only comes in widths finer than Western/Chinese 'M'. Pilot Metropolitan, or MR, is a very popular cheap, well made Japanese pen. I don't like it and it only comes in fine widths, but it is very popular and well regarded, so I should mention it. Inks is unfortunately an entire jungle. And you don't really find much understanding about them on KZbin or with online reviewers. They mostly only consider the "color" and other trivial, superficial traits like "shading" and "sheen". First of all, there are about 8 (eight) different types of fountain pen inks. And that affects their set of properties and handling. Also note that all "inks" are not fountain pen inks. You cannot use 'Indian ink' or 'Sumi' (Chinese/Japanese traditional ink) for example. Without writing a long technical article, I don't really know what to say? My no 1. recommendation for a safe, durable, benign ink, would be Rohrer & Klingner standard ink, black or a blue, though their entire range is good. They may not be easy to get hold of though. So maybe start with some no-nonsense, workhorse, typical office ink for *_modern pens_* , Montblanc, Quink, 4001, Skrip. Dark blue, black or blue-black. (Some of those inks are not safe for all pens or older pens). (All of my technical testing is not completed yet, for the entire range, but my impressions so far of Pilot's Iroshizuku range of inks, which Josee shows three of, are *_very_* positive. They are expensive but so far seems excellent enough to warrant the price. They are mildly alkaline, so a slight heads up for pens with suspicious parts, like bladders, aluminum, brass, celluloid, wood and rubber. Stick with stainless steel, gold and plastic.) I will not withhold what I consider the two best inks in the world (color, etc, not considered at all, only behavior in pen and writing and permanence): Noodler's Black and 54'th Massachusetts. There is a third that seem as good, though my lightfastness test is not complete yet, 'Baltimore Canyon Blue'. Also by Noodler. This is not a general Noodler recommendation. Many of Noodler's inks are awful disasters. There is no consistency in the range. Don't expect them to share properties across the brand. Noodler experiment with everything. And, regarding your clothes, furniture, floors, pets and small children, these three inks are *not* "safe"! Handle them cleanly and carefully. These are cellulose-reactive inks. If you get them on wood, linen, cotton (or paper) they will not go away. Ever! By any means! They will, however, wash off from your hands and plastics, and out of your pen, much easier than most inks. You must also always turn or shake these ink bottles before filling the pen (not normally needed with most inks). There are no solids in the ink, but they are two-component inks, and they separate somewhat with time in a still bottle. Another warning regarding Noodler: Their bottles are completely full. All the way to the brim! You must hold down the bottle on a still, firm surface and carefully remove the cap, the first time you open a new bottle. Otherwise you'll have ink all over the place and yourself.