Never heard of Layrite. Had to look it up.
What is a good "starter" fountain pen?
- Thread starter Rosseforp
- Start date
- Thread starter
- #42
For those sophisticated enough to use Williams or ARKO, you will love these Shark pens or these Swan pens. Schaeffer blue ink works well. Noodlers; not so good, There are two types of nibs, and fine or medium points. In other words, buy four sets.
I have a medium point and write with the back of the nib.
I have a medium point and write with the back of the nib.
Maybe put it in a Bay Rum aftershave bottle and give it to someone for the holidays.
Help me friends. I want to buy a nib but I don't have access to amazon or most of the shops you mention. However I don't all the shops that ship a nib internationally in Europe.
Does a shop in Aliexpress sells a quality nib and ink?
Does a shop in Aliexpress sells a quality nib and ink?
Kawecos are very nice and affordable starter fountain pens, highly recommended.
pilot metropolitan or lamy safariThe last time I had used a fountain pen was when I was in grade school, and lately, I've been thinking of getting a "starter" fountain pen so I picked up this Speedball 1.1mm while shopping at the hobby store with my daughter.
View attachment 1509623
The pen writes nice, and they have plenty of cartridges available, but it was a hobby store and this was all they had. I'm looking to step up a bit for my next fountain pen, this seems to be the place to get advice.
I prefer a .5mm tip for the gel and ballpoint pens that I use, with a fat grip. $30-$50 for starters.
~doug~
or twsbi eco
I haven't been at this long, but have landed on my favorites, all of which are "starter" pens:
TWSBI - ECO and 580AL
Lamy - Safari and Al-Star
Pilot - Metropolitan - nice, quality pen for 20 bucks.
I'm sure the pens costing hundreds are fine writing instruments, but much like shaving stuff (or anything really), I'm a value guy and believe in the theory of diminishing returns.
I'm honestly thrilled with my list of favorites.
As far as absolute bang-for-the-buck, it's tough to beat a Preppy for 3 bucks, converted to an eyedropper.
Surprisingly more Chinese pens could fit the list too. For bigger hands a Jinhao x159 or x750 would be my recommendation. Non vacuum (aka piston) Wing Sung 699s are mimick Pilot 823 and are well balanced. Majohn A1 is the Pilot Vanishing Point. Most of Penbbs falls under this too.
Inks are also important. The best writing values I've found were Waterman and Pilot BB.
Inks are also important. The best writing values I've found were Waterman and Pilot BB.
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Thoughts? Hell yes, and experience with several on that list and a lot more. If one wants a low-risk intro fountain pen, it's really hard to beat almost anything from Jinhao. Yeah . . . I know . . . made in China . . . but what isn't these days, really. I simply cannot believe how good they are -- I didn't want to believe that . . . I think I have never spent more than $10 or $15 on a Jinhao. I can get about 10 of the Jinhao replicas of the Lamy Safari for less than a third of one Lamy Safari!!! Some of the parts even interchange! The nibs are much better on the Jinhao replica -- more flex. OK, the nibs are nothing like that of the Safari (thank goodness) -- and no they don't interchange with Lamy's, and who cares. They do interchange with most other conventional nibs if you want to give it a try. And no, you can't get a whole lot of different original nib choices on these particular Jinhaos -- in fact, none, other than a sort of fine-ish medium, which is just you want in a starter pen anyway. Nibs are available in standard sizes, by the way, and cheap -- until you get to solid gold-alloy (not gold plated) ones, and gold ones are not guaranteed to perform better. It all depends on shape and thickness and how well the tip is made, and there are many ways to skin that cat regardless of the metal involved.
I strongly question the value of most luxury pens of European origin. In general, they simply do not have modern features. I have owned some pretty high priced stuff (Mont Blanc, Pelican, Italian stuff . . .). Price level is all about fashion, not about performance. Most nibs of higher priced stuff these days are still stiff as a nail to write with. Eventually you'll might want to get a really personal feel, or certain "feature" to your writing -- a penmanship adventure. I strongly recommend this, but it does take time and study. Anyway, regardless of the price of the pen you use in that adventure you will likely need to have a nib or nibs customized to your tastes. "Performance" really is about the nib.
OK, so you want to spend a bit more than $10-$15 on a fountain pen. By all means, get a TWSBI. What a great "modern-featured" pen -- no muss, no fuss. Performance-wise and feel-wise they simply blow most other pens away, regardless of price level. Oh, by the way, they're made in China, too. If you want to spend a bit more than $100, there is an infinite variety of good pens, and I strongly recommend anything from the Japanese Big 3 brands: Namiki-Pilot (same company), Platinum and Sailor. Careful with nib selection on Japanese pens, as they are designed around the finely detailed characters in which they write (Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji) so they are a bit on the fine side. Want a German pen? -- go Pelican or buy older Mont Blancs -- not the new ones. French? -- Waterman and Parker (manufacturing of both former U.S. brands is now in France at the same company) Italian? -- plenty of them, try Aurora for more entry level.
I'm out of breath. You'll thank me for that, I suppose. INKS!!! Don't get me started; there are tons of great inks out there . . . but study the Noodler's products -- U.S. Made by one crusty older Milton Freidman-ite dude (Free to Choose - read the book) in Massachusetts who follows the beat of his own drum -- great inks that will do what a lot that higher priced stuff won't do, has never done, and never likely will. I hate to look at my ink supply. (No, that's wrong, I love to look at my ink supply; I hate explaining it to my wife.) I'll never outlive my supply. I bet I have inks from 20 different manufacturers . . . sheesh! Need info on a particular ink? - yeah, go ahead -- ask me. I'm not young enough to know everything (Oscar Wilde said that), but I might have some experience with what you might want to try.
Cheers and Happy New Year!
Tony
- Thread starter
- #52
Wow Tony, thanks for the great write-up! Right now I'm pretty happy with my Metropolitan Pilot and Platinum Preppy, but that doesn't mean I wont be trying a TWSBI or Jinhao for my next purchase.
~doug~
Very nice write up. Having spent way too much money chasing performance, and with a drawer full of not-in-use pens to show for it, I'll add that in my experience there is virtually no correlation between price and performance. My best performing pen by far is a Lamy Safari; I've got gold nib pretty pens that look good in the drawer but that don't write nearly as well.
There are fans of TWSBI, but note that there are detractors as well. I fall in the latter category, based on a poorly performing pen and even more on extremely poor customer service from TWSBI. My advice would be to look elsewhere for the many better choices that exist, but as always in the B&B YMMV.
Doug, Those are two very decent pens. The Platinum Preppy is another great bargain - very inexpensive, fun to fool around with, different nib choices, comfortable to write with, O-ring it and fill it completely with ink, whatever you want to do. Ever tried the Platinum Prefounte? Pretty much the same as the Preppy, but better looking and a better clip, otherwise inside and out identical. And Pilot makes great stuff. The Metropolitan punches way above its price point.
Cheers!
I have the TWSBI 580AL -- only TWSBI I've ever touched. Its size and feel are just right for me. It sure works great. I know that every now and then a lemon shows up, and perhaps I've been fortunate not to deal with TWSBI service (I'd go to my pen retailer for that). What kind of problems did you have?
I've got a 580, and I love the size, weight and balance -- but it writes dry and scratchy and has skipping/starting issues.
I contacted TWSBI who said send it in for warranty repair. I did, they returned it saying that it was fixed and that they also had replaced some parts that were failure prone ...... but the writing was unchanged.
I contacted TWSBI again to express my surprise and disappointment, and they apologized and said send it back. I did, and it again came back unchanged.
So the net result is I've got an unusable pen, and I'm out the purchase price plus the cost of shipping to TWSBI x2.
I've thought about buying a new nib, but have been stopped by the "good money after bad" argument, with no guarantee that the new nib would be any better.
Damn! Sounds puzzling. Do you have any trouble like this with any other nib or pen? I did buy two nibs with my 580AL. Pretty nifty how they can be changed - that's one of the features that attracted me to TWSBI. Both of my nibs for the 580AL work well. I've got a "fine" in mine now - it's a little too fine for most of my usage. I think my other TWSBI nib is a 1.1mm stub. Not sure, I'll have to check in a couple of months as I'm a half a continent away from my TWSBI right now. I've been screwing around with line width variation for a few years by either italic stub nibs or flex nibs. It's a lot of fun, but I'm no whiz at it -- I'll never be a calligrapher. I have flex nibs in a Conklin DuraFlex (DuraGraph), and in a Platinum 3776 Century, and also a Zebra Comic nib in a Jinhao 750, and a small bunch of stub italics, one in a Rosetta Magellan, I think, and one custom one in an Edison which I really like, plus a few more. They can be real persnikety about nib alignment during the writing strokes. They don't all work for me. I've never yet tried grinding my own, just some minor adjusting/aligning of nibs on old stuff, like my parents' old Eversharp Skylines. I can't believe TWSBI can't make your pen work! Especially with a regular old round-pointed nib. Can't believe they'd send you a pen with an assymmetrically split nib or nib tip, or a nib with misalignments -- I've seen that in cheap pens, but it shouldn't happen with a TWSBI. You'd notice that. Have you tried making sure the nib is rotated properly during your pen strokes? That's why I asked about whether this skipping problem occurs for you with other fountain pens. That having been said, though, I do have pens I just can't seem to keep lined up enough to avoid skipping - faults in my technique I guess. Are you using an ink that sometimes doesn't wet out and flow readily? -- or is it some paper and not others? There are a lot of little effects of an individual's writing motions that cause incompatiblities with some pens. I'm not saying you should change anything, but fountain pens are a fiddlers game sometimes. Anyway, use what works for you and your style. Not everything is for everybody and not everything is worth the frustration of working around its idiosyncrasies. Best of luck to you.
Thanks! Yes, especially given my experiences with wet shaving I have circled back multiple times and asked if somehow user error is the problem. I honestly don't think so. I have a Parker that writes too dry and that went in for service -- it still writes too dry for my taste, but I think it is probably within range of personal preference.
To my eye, the TWSBI nib looks properly aligned. I don't know what the problem is. Even more puzzling, I have no idea why TWSBI could not correct the problem in two tries. Seems like an easy fix would be for them to just replace the nib. I can't imagine that a service person or anyone who had ever used a fountain pen would pick this one up and think that its behavior was normal.
Reading other forums and comments I get the impression that TWSBI owners either love or hate the product, suggesting to me that quality control and customer service are lacking. Too bad, because as I said I love the size and weight of the pen.
I saw and responded to your thread regarding your TWSB, and I am very surprised that TWSBI never replaced the nib.
As you know from my responses in that thread, I found the F nib on my 580AL too scratchy and replaced it with a medium. Problem solved for me, but I didn't want to give up on the pen.
Here's what I propose (if you are interested):
I have the F nib that came installed on my 580AL. You can have it to try/use on your 580 (and keep it). As you know it is as simple as unscrewing the nib section and screwing on the new nib (in this case the very lightly used nib).
I'm thinking that the odds are that your nib AND mine are both defective, and this would give you an opportunity to try another F nib with no risk. If it feels and performs better, you're done. If not, it may just confirm that the TWSBI F nib on the 580 doesn't work for you.
At least this might mitigate some of the risk in you investing a medium nib, which I did, and am very happy with.
If you want my "old" F nib, PM your address to me and you can have it. I've still got an Eco with a fine nib, to "scratch" that itch if I ever want to go back to a finer nib.
I'm another who believes in diminishing returns.The last time I had used a fountain pen was when I was in grade school, and lately, I've been thinking of getting a "starter" fountain pen so I picked up this Speedball 1.1mm while shopping at the hobby store with my daughter.
View attachment 1509623
The pen writes nice, and they have plenty of cartridges available, but it was a hobby store and this was all they had. I'm looking to step up a bit for my next fountain pen, this seems to be the place to get advice.
I prefer a .5mm tip for the gel and ballpoint pens that I use, with a fat grip. $30-$50 for starters.
~doug~
If you want a good writer, no gold, then consider the Amazon Basics fountain pen. Available in plastic, aluminium or brass, and all three in black only. In UK the brass one costs £8, the aluminium £6. Choose between fine and medium nib. Fine suits me.
If you buy then you won't regret it. Both are astoundingly good. The brass one is the heaviest. They write immediately, the cap fitting is excellent and positive, the pen doesn't dry out.
I bought the aluminium and brass.
The brass takes 2.6mm cartridges, short. Cannot take a long cartridge. The pen is blocked with brass.
Aluminium takes 2.6mm short and long cartridges, and it takes a convertor.
I have 500 fountain pens, and can find nothing wrong with these pens. They look unexceptional, but when you take the cap off you feel the good design: when you write then you know you've made a shrewd decision.
