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My, how the ballpoints are bad. 🙂

But they're rather sensitive to shock. Drop your pen on the floor, and that refill will never work the same again.

I found that the Uniball disposable is that way. On close examination I found that the ball was gone from the tip. I always imagined the ball shooting out of the tip. If I dropped one, I would give it a try and was always prepared to bin it.
 
I rarely use my ballpoints anymore, those I have all seem to have become old and ink a few characters, then run dry. It's common to grab one watch it fail and do the same with two or three others - all then flying into the trash can.

My fountain pen is the favored tool for logs and notes. I have Fisher space pens and Zebra bodies with space pen refill for carrying pens when I'm out and about.
 
That is the problem with my Parker ball point pens, I always have to keep a rough paper aside when using it.
It's the pens with metal refill that mostly skip writing before getting a constant flow.

The cheaper ball pen like Flair, Cello and other brands actually perform better.
I'm not sure when the wide metal Parker refills with rotating feed mechanism came out (late 60s, early 70s?), but they got an enthusiastic uptake among people who cared about pens, at the Scottish school I attended.

They worked amazingly well... for a while.

My impression was that Parker over-promised, by focusing on one component.

They said something like "they'll write for 5 miles", and their sintered tungsten carbide ball might well have trundled that far, but the ball seat got looser and looser, and then sooner or later you had worse blobbing than a cheap Bic.

I like a cheap Bic Cristal 1.6mm these days for my shopping lists, because I can read it without glasses.

At least they are out of ink before the ball or the seat are mechanically damaged, so there is design realism.
 
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I like a cheap Bic Cristal 1.6mm these days for my shopping lists, because I can read it without glasses.

Same here.
I too keep a 1 mm ball pen for the general notes and for that I prefer a Schneider Slider Edge.
It's got a lot of ink, comes at $1 and designed in a way that spine of my journal or diary (spiral) doesn't get damaged.

Pilot G2 0.7 are the best bang for the buck, I wrote my exams with it and it always exceeded the expectations.

In India we have a healthy market of cheap yet good quality ball pen market, let me know if you would like to try some of these pens.

I'll be happy to send some your way.

Ps: will the pen get spoiled due to change in air pressure in the cargo area?
 
Same here.
I too keep a 1 mm ball pen for the general notes and for that I prefer a Schneider Slider Edge.
It's got a lot of ink, comes at $1 and designed in a way that spine of my journal or diary (spiral) doesn't get damaged.

Pilot G2 0.7 are the best bang for the buck, I wrote my exams with it and it always exceeded the expectations.

In India we have a healthy market of cheap yet good quality ball pen market, let me know if you would like to try some of these pens.

I'll be happy to send some your way.

Ps: will the pen get spoiled due to change in air pressure in the cargo area?

I used to take those or similar Pilot to work meetings (they were reliable starters, looked presentable, and I didn't want some boss borrowing my FP).

These days I'm either at home, where I'll use a broad nib FP for notes, or it's shopping or preparation, and Bic, but thanks for the offer.

Funny how you often don’t realize how bad something is until you try some thing better.

That applies to so many things!
 

AimlessWanderer

Remember to forget me!
I got sick of losing refillable pens at work, particularly when I was out and about visiting clients, that I ended up with a stash of disposables... which never seemed to do a Houdini on me, like the refillable ones did. Having stopped work a few years ago for health reasons, they all sat unused in a drawer. I also moved to fountain pens for home use, around the same time.

Needless to say, within the last couple of weeks, I've thrown out oodles of pens. Completely dried up disposables, advertising pens that looked smart enough, but felt like I was writing with the fat end of a chicken drumstick, and refillable pens which I'd have to spend an hour or two wading through online specs, to find out what the heck bizarre insert it took.

I'm now looking at keeping a few ballpoints ready to go, but the lesser used ones (kept mainly for the memories) will all be getting Fisher inserts, or Schmidt P950M inserts, so if I don't pick it up for the next three to five years, it'll still put a line down. The more frequently used ones might be trying out one of the hybrid gel inserts soon, for the same ballpoint convenience, but with bolder ink, and less pressure needed.

I still like ballpoints for stop-and-start writing. Shopping lists, food labelling, and phone notes. It's when sitting down with an A4 pad to empty my brain onto a page that I really get the benefit from fountain pens and wooden pencils. Then again, I'm also somone who buys instant coffee as well as ground, and teabags as well as loose.

As for wearing out the pens before they're empty, and having pens blob everywhere, that's something I used to encounter way more a few decades ago, when using carbon paper and triplicate books. You had to really "lean in" with those, and it knocked seven bells out of the pens. Nowadays, I'm less brutal with them, and seldom having to write on glossy or greasy surfaces either. However, even if I do get a blobby pen, I just consider that insert done, and move on. Half the disposables I've chucked over the years, were "finished" for reasons other than being empty.
 

steveclarkus

Goose Poop Connoisseur
I find ballpoint and roller ball pens to be too slick and harder to control. Much prefer fountain pens and pencils.
 

AimlessWanderer

Remember to forget me!
I cleared out a couple more ballpoint pens today.

I'd decide my ballpoints weren't getting enough use, despite there still being more of them than fountain pens in the pen drawer. so I reached for a Zebra F-301. it was blobby, faint, and far less comfortable to use than the cheap fountain pens I tend to reach for nowadays.

Is it just a trick if the mind, or all all my non-fountain pens this bad? I ended up working through the lot, just to remind myself how they felt in use. I ended up casting out the two F-301s, and a dried up gel refill from one of the Parker Jotters. With the other ballpoints, I started noticing just how much pressure I need, and how much less presence the ink has on the page.

I guess I've finally become a fountain pen convert, after several years of sitting on the fence.

I have still kept 10 ballpoints and one rollerball in the drawer though. They all work, and work comfortably, so long as I'm not writing multiple pages. They're better for some greetings cards, survive a splash of water better than my water based fountain pen inks, and actually more likely to be pocket carried away from home. Particularly in bad weather.

I think the ballpoints still have the edge in terms of convenience and practicality for me, but fountain pens definitely have the edge in terms of enjoyment now, so long as I'm in a clean dry setting, with a decent grade of paper to pour my scribbles out on.
 
I cleared out a couple more ballpoint pens today.

I'd decide my ballpoints weren't getting enough use, despite there still being more of them than fountain pens in the pen drawer. so I reached for a Zebra F-301. it was blobby, faint, and far less comfortable to use than the cheap fountain pens I tend to reach for nowadays.

Is it just a trick if the mind, or all all my non-fountain pens this bad? I ended up working through the lot, just to remind myself how they felt in use. I ended up casting out the two F-301s, and a dried up gel refill from one of the Parker Jotters. With the other ballpoints, I started noticing just how much pressure I need, and how much less presence the ink has on the page.

I guess I've finally become a fountain pen convert, after several years of sitting on the fence.

I have still kept 10 ballpoints and one rollerball in the drawer though. They all work, and work comfortably, so long as I'm not writing multiple pages. They're better for some greetings cards, survive a splash of water better than my water based fountain pen inks, and actually more likely to be pocket carried away from home. Particularly in bad weather.

I think the ballpoints still have the edge in terms of convenience and practicality for me, but fountain pens definitely have the edge in terms of enjoyment now, so long as I'm in a clean dry setting, with a decent grade of paper to pour my scribbles out on.
I always reach for the fountain pen first. All my ballpoints were freebies. I have one that writes surprisingly smoothly. The rest require more pressure and aren’t comfortable to use, which I never would have noticed had I never used a FP.
 

AimlessWanderer

Remember to forget me!
The rest require more pressure and aren’t comfortable to use, which I never would have noticed had I never used a FP.

Indeed. In fact, it was only using fountain pens extensively for a period of time, and getting fully acclimatised to them, that ballpoints started to be noticeably less comfortable.
 
I have been on an all metal "clicky" ballpoint pen quest for a while. Zebra 301s begat the 401 begat the 701 begat the newest newest 701s that are all metal everywhere.

Parker Jotters got in the mix with their gel refill being replaced with a Schmidt brand gel refill as it was both superior and cheaper.

Discovered the Pentel Energel Alloy series. Loved how it wrote but a bit put off by the circumference.

Recently tried out a Zebra Sarasa and Zebra 750 (think all black 701 with gel refill).

All brands mentioned with gel are satisfactory. The Energel is the smoothest to me. If I was a student and writing on the daily with a gel pen, that would be my pick so long as the circumference worked long term. If I could have a second pick, the lines of the Parker Jotter are quite elegant.

All of these can be had in the "tenner" range (87-15USD) in all "metal" bodies which is my preference given their weight, feel, value, durability and practical applications.
 

AimlessWanderer

Remember to forget me!
All of these can be had in the "tenner" range (87-15USD) in all "metal" bodies which is my preference given their weight, feel, value, durability and practical applications

All metal is my preference too, although I do have one Parker Jotter with a plastic barrel.


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