Unnatural Love: Pens, Stationery, Office Supplies

[simpleSimon]

I am a sucker for Montblanc pens—I mean Writing Instruments.  Anyone else?

https://www.montblanc.com/en-us

[Juvenal]

I've had a Montblanc for over thirty years and have not used it for nearly that long.  Sooner or later (sooner, usually) ink gets all over my fingers.  It lords it in the pen/pencil holder on my desk, sulking among the riffraff.

And, lately, I'm not even convinced it might not be a fake.  Would a real Montblanc stain your fingers?  Anyway, it's so old that the now-present inscribed serial number was not a standard then, so doubt remains as to its nobility.  Anyway, I recently bought a handsome little fountain pen on Amazon for about $16, and no inky fingers yet.  Good boy!

[simpleSimon]

Juvenal:

Thank you for sharing your story.  Was yours a fountain pen?  Rollerball?  Or Ballpoint?

Fountain pens seem to have fallen out of fashion as penmanship has been eclipsed by keyboards.  Both my parents had beautiful penmanship, alas, I did not inherit that gift.  If I had, I would have favored fountain pens for sure.

My most recent Montblanc was a Meisterstück Rollerball instrument... I used it lovingly for two decades... it was lost in my last move three years ago, and I have been mourning it ever since—particularly because it was a gift.  I am inclined to treat myself to another one following my tax refund.  My boss recently gifted me with a nice Cross pen... but it's just not the same.  Once you've had the best . . .

[Juvenal]

Juvenal:

Thank you for sharing your story.  Was yours a fountain pen?  Rollerball?  Or Ballpoint?

Fountain pens seem to have fallen out of fashion as penmanship has been eclipsed by keyboards.  Both my parents had beautiful penmanship, alas, I did not inherit that gift.  If I had, I would have favored fountain pens for sure.

My most recent Montblanc was a Meisterstück Rollerball instrument... I used it lovingly for two decades... it was lost in my last move three years ago, and I have been mourning it ever since—particularly because it was a gift.  I am inclined to treat myself to another one following my tax refund.  My boss recently gifted me with a nice Cross pen... but it's just not the same.  Once you've had the best . . .

It was/is the "Classic Meisterstuck."  Fountain pen.  I have used fountain pens on and off since the mid-Fifties.  Off, now for a long time.  My first fountain pen was a Parker--"Parker 51"?  Anyway, replaced once or twice (dropping a fountain pen to the floor, nib down is a recipe for...), and I think the last is around somewhere.  In the Seventies I tried to improve my handwriting by taking up Italic and an Italic nib.  This worked for a while.  Then came the keyboard era and hand-written correspondence dwindled to cards and my script aspect declined to that of an idiot.  Generally, however, properly spelled.

[ergative]

If anyone has an old Parker 51 floating around a study that they never use, I will very happily take it off their hands.

[Liquidambar]

Are stickers germane to this thread?  I just spent a fun evening placing an order from Kawaii Pen Shop.  Most of it is cute stickers, since apparently I have the tastes of a 6 year old, but I did order a metallic highlighter and a couple colorful pens.

I don't know why Japanese stickers are so much better than other ones.  I have some classy, high quality stickers that are Okuyama brand, along the lines of these or these, which look like they're made of origami paper with metallic accents.  I bought them at a Japanese store in Hawaii but unfortunately can't find much online for reasonable shipping to the US.  One of my students gave me some lower end Japanese stickers that were really cute, since she saw my planner and we were bonding over stickers.  I'm hoping the ones I just ordered will be similarly cute.

[mleok]

I have a bunch of fountain pens, including a Montblanc LeGrande 146, a Pelikan M805, a Waterman Le Man 200, a Waterman Carene, a Pilot vanishing point, and a bunch of Waterman Experts. My travel pen is a Pelikan M150, which is a nice and compact piston filler, and seems to have a very good seal that keeps the nib wet even with infrequent use.

[ergative]

I, too, have a bunch of fountain pens, but they are much cheaper. They include a TWSBI 580, a Waterman Hemisphere (inherited from my late grandmother), three Pilot Metropolitans, an Esterbrook J, a Wing Sung 601 (very  nice, that one!), a Moonman Q1, a couple of Sheaffers that don't write for various reasons, and a vintage Sheaffer Snorkel that does write well. Most of my pens are under $30, and none is more than $100.

[paultuttle]

I have some Sheaffer cartridge fountain pens. I haven't used them in years, after being caught in a drenching downpour once and losing an entire binder full of important class notes (they became quite beautiful, but unfortunately unreadable, watercolors).

Colleagues bought me a Mont Blanc ballpoint when I left a wonderful position seven years ago.

Other than that, my pen attraction has been limited to relatively cheap ones I can find in stores or on JetPens that are thick in the barrel and that dance over the page fast enough to keep up.

[ergative]

I haven't used them in years, after being caught in a drenching downpour once and losing an entire binder full of important class notes (they became quite beautiful, but unfortunately unreadable, watercolors).

Far be it from me to proselytize too hard, but I'll just mention, briefly, in passing, a breath on the wind you can barely hear, that there are a wide variety of waterproof fountain pen inks available these days, and I'd be very happy to say more on the matter if anyone expresses any interest.

[mamselle]

Go for it!

Also, sorry for the loss of the 'beautiful notes'...

And stickers can be quite beautiful.

Some are just silly, some are tiny works of art.

M.

[paultuttle]

Yes, please proselytize.

[ergative]

Yes, please proselytize.

Aha! An invitation. Ok, There are three categories of waterproof fountain pen inks that you can explore. The first is brand-specific; the other two are more an ink-making technique than a brand.

Noodlers
Noodlers is an American company run by one Nathan Tardiff, who makes his libertarian politics part of his brand. He names his ink colors things like Bernanke Blue and Bloody Brexit, and at one point in 2015ish he couldn't get glass bottles from his supplier at regular prices and released a youtube video explaining, at great length, what a travesty it would be for him to have to raise prices, and why, rather than succumb to this calamitous development, he had decided to temporarily switch to plastic bottles. Part of this philosophy also involves filling bottles all the way up to the very tippy tippy top, so that when you open them for the first time you're liable to spill them because they're so full.

Noodlers is wildly prolific in its varieties of inks. It is the maker of the infamous Baystate Blue, which eye-searingly vibrant, waterproof (on everything, including hands, clothes, pens, furniture, sink basins, and pen barrels), and had a bit of a bad moment back in 2013 or so when it caused the feeds of a batch of Lamy Safaris to melt. I believe that's been fixed now--Lamy changed their manufacturing of their feeds. However, it fades badly in light, and it tends to feather and bleed through paper, so I don't recommend it.

For waterproofness, you have a couple of options among the Noodler's brand. First is the series of Bulletproof inks, which are designed to chemically bond with the cellulose of paper, and so is perfectly waterproof. There's a bulletproof Black(which I don't love--a bit too greyish for my taste, although I know many other people swear by it), but the line comes in many other colors, including Brexit Royal Blue, 54th Mass, Britannia's Blue Waves, and No. 41 Brown (so named after Scott Brown was elected to Ted Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts, ending the Democrats' supermajority by becoming the 41st GOP senator. As I said, Tardiff leans into his politics.) I've used 54th Mass and Zhivago from this line, and they've both behaved well for me.

For more permanence, you can go with the Warden series, which are designed to be tamper proof as well as bulletproof. They all have the word 'bad' in the name: Bad Belted Kingfisher, Bad Black Moccasin, Bad Green Gator, and Bad Blue Heron.

Outside of these series, his ink Kung Te Cheng is also famously immovable in water.

Noodler's has a bit of a mixed reputation among inkophiles. Leaving aside the politics, his focus on experimenting with different ink qualities (bulletproof, tamper-proof, freeze-proof, glow-in-the-dark, shading, anti-feathering, etc.) can lead to extremely inconsistent results. Many people love some of his inks, but consider other ones unusable, too prone to feathering or bleeding or too slow to dry (or never drying). Even within batches there is inconsistency, so you might get a sample and like it, but when you buy a bottle it is from a different batch, and looks or behaves differently.


Iron Gall inks
Traditional inks are made from iron gall, which oxidizes as it dries to a dark black color. In the past, there were a lot of fountain pen inks with a color called 'blue black', which were a combination of iron gall, which went down very pale but dried/oxidized to black, and blue dye, added to make the wet ink--otherwise too pale to see comfortably--more visible as you wrote. These old blue black iron gall inks were extremely corrosive, and tended to eat steel nibs (gold nibs, however, were resistant, hence the frequency of gold nibs or gold plated nibs in traditional fountain pen manufacturing). Modern iron gall inks are much less corrosive, possibly because of superior chemical manufacturing, but also possibly because the iron concentration is just lower. Also, they often contain added colors other than blue.

All iron gall inks are waterproof at a minimum in their iron gall component: The added dye might wash away in water, but the iron gall will leave behind legible letters. They're also quite fun to use, because the color changes dramatically from wet to dry, as the dye component is dominant when the ink goes down, but the iron gall darkens it as it oxidizes.

The Polish brand KWZ makes quite a lot of iron gall inks that are reputed to behave nicely. I've used Iron Gall Green #3 and it behaves nicely. I also have a bottle of Iron Gall Turquoise, but it had a tendency to clog my Pilot Metropolitan (F nib), and left behind a dark film on the nib that didn't come off in rinsing, and instead required me to physically take apart the nib and feed and rub with a toothpick, so I can't recommend wholeheartedly. However, the color is really beautiful.

Diamine has a traditional blue-black iron gall ink called Registrars, and Rohrer & Klingner make two iron gall inks: a blue-black (Scalix) and a dusky purple (Scabiosa). I have not tried them myself, because they have a reputation of being quite dry, but if you have a wet-writing pen they may well work out for you. Both Diamine and R&K are very well-established brands, and have good reputations for making consistent, well-behaved inks. Certainly I've liked every Diamine ink I've ever tried, although I've not tried their Registrar's ink myself.

Pigmented inks
Your third option for waterproofness is to go with pigmented inks. Usually fountain pen inks are dye-based, because pigments have a tendency to clog the feeds. However, in the past ten years or so pigmented inks have become more common. I don't know what's changed--pigment-grinding technology, or something. One pigment-based ink that a lot of people swear by is Platinum Carbon Black, which is absolutely immovable in water, although I think it has a tendency to feather/bleed. Other pigment-based waterproof inks can be found in Rohrer & Klingner's dokumentus line, which includes a variety of colors, including magenta, green, light blue, dark blue, brown, and black. I've tried the R&K magenta, and although it behaved very nicely and was definitely extremely waterproof, it left chunks of dried pigment on the feed of my nib, and I had to spend a fair amount of time with a toothpick and nib flush to get it all off.

Summary
Waterproof inks come with trade-offs. Noodlers is a whole thing, on its own, from politics to consistency. Iron gall inks--even modern ones--tend to write dry in the pen (except for KWZ, which I think uses lower iron gall content and so are less waterproof), can be corrosive to nibs, and leave behind a film of sediment. This isn't a problem if your pen comes apart easily, like a Pilot Metropolitan, or if you have a dedicated pen that you just keep filled with the same ink all the time, ideally with a gold nib, but it's a bit of kerfuffle if you like to change inks a lot, which I do. And pigmented inks, while absolutely positively immovable in water, need special cleaning and have cloggy tendency.

I'd probably recommend you get a bottle of Noodler's 54th Mass: That particular ink tends to be well-behaved, easy enough to clean, looks reasonably professional, and won't wash away if you drop your notebook in a stream. When I bought a fountain pen and bottle of ink as a thank-you gift for a research assistant, that's what I got her.

Additional resources
Fountain Pen Network, a forum for all fountain pen users. It is the embodiment of Rule 34 as applied to fountain pens: If you've thought of it, it's been discussed on FPN. I've linked to the 'inky thoughts' subforum, which on the first page as of this posting has a question from someone looking for a waterproof, easy-to-clean ink, but there's a huge amount of information there if you poke around.
Jet Pens comprehensive guide to Noodlers inks
Jet Pens evaluation of waterproofness of a variety of inks
Goulet Pens collection of water-resistant inks (include all the ones I've mentioned here, and multiple others besides)[/url]. Goulet Pens is quite good also for getting small samples of inks before you commit to a whole bottle.
Anderson Pens also sells sample vials, as do Shigure Inks but I've never bought from them myself. Really, any good pen store should sell samples of its inks. Don't go to Amazon for your ink. Buy it from a retailor that knows inks.
Mountain of Ink is a SUPERB blog that by now has reviewed thousands of inks, and carefully tags them by properties. I've linked to the page summarizing a variety of water resistant inks, although I think that page just provides a representative sample, rather than an exhaustive link of all inks reviewed with high water resistance. Whenever I'm considering buying a new ink, Mountain of Ink is one of the first places I go.


And, of course, I'm always happy to write more here if you have other questions about fountain pens. Or inks. Or paper. I have All The Thoughts.

[mamselle]

Whoo-hoo!

Very glad you accepted the invitation!

Thanks--

M.

[Morden]

Thank you ergative. I have no practical interest in ink, but found your explanation fascinating.