here we fucking gooooOOOOOO <- has not slept
gel pens. rollerball. ballpoint pens. hybrid ballpoint pens. what do they all have in common? balls.
at the tip of every one of these pens is a tiny ball that dispenses ink from an ink reservoir (that, when replaceable, is typically shaped like a straw) onto the page through friction rolling said ball. which is why a hybrid ballpoint with a thinner, more free flowing ink is a million times better than a thicker more traditional (non-pressurized) sludgy ballpoint. and why fountain pens are some of the only writing utensils a shitload of people can use without pain, or at the very least a good fountain pen is often the writing utensil someone can write the longest, the most legibly, and with the least amount of pain. compared to other writing utensils
close up of a (presumably) ballpoint pen tip. note the ball. that is the dude who fucked up your wrists and made writing feel horrible and offset and weird your whole life. dump his ass!!!
cheap easy ballpoint recommendation: uni jetstream lite touch (way fucking better and on part with some fountain pens downward pressure wise) or uni jetstream hybrid ballpoint
cheap easy gel pen recommendation: pilot juice up, uni ball signo line, UM-151 is my GOAT because I like the feedback but most people will enjoy the signo RT1 and the shaved edges better
on smooth fountain pen paper, ball-tipped pens often struggle to write (use a writing board or shitajiki underneath), but fountain pens absolutely excel. why? because
fountain pens have no balls.
this is a kaweco sport fountain pen (a fountain pen model that failed to earn my respect, made by a company that actively lost my respect and the respect of a lot of the fountain pen community around the world with their conduct of trying to extort and punish other fountain pen companies to a degree I do not understand how they fucking got away with)
and this is the fountain pen after dissection. not all fountain pens can be taken apart to this degree, it varies pen by pen, and some suck up ink from a bottle differently. different filling mechanisms.
a fountain pen is named after the internal ink reservoir, the "fountain". in the case of a kaweco sport, a cartridge or converter. a cartridge comes pre-filled with ink that gets pierced on the back of the feed and shoots down towards the nib, and a converter makes a little vacuum to suck ink up from bottled fountain pen ink through the nib. and the ink from the cartridge or converter flows throughs the plastic feed's nipple (on the left) which has a thin groove in it called the ink channel that takes the ink towards the breather hole in the nib and then through the slit towards the very tip of the nib.
behind every fountain pen nib is a fountain and a feed. and that feed feeds a nib. and that nib? writes without balls.
or dipping! if you have to dip it, it is not a fountain pen. fountain is critical.
so the goal of a fountain pen ink is to get from the internal ink reservoir to the end of the fountain pen nib. and that way the ink is always waiting at the tip, and therefore nobody has to push down to dispense the ink. you always want to use the least amount of pressure possible with a fountain pen nib as most modern fountain pen nibs of any material type are not designed to flex and can be permanently damaged by trying to flex the nib. all you have to do is hold the pen like this so the underside of the nib hits the paper right
and go! (this nib has no ink in it though. otherwise you would not see as mucb of the paper through the slit on the left)
easy first fountain pen: pilot kakuno (~12usd) or pilot lightive (~20-$30usd) in medium nib, or fine nib if you usually write in pens and pencils smaller than 0.5mm. get pilot namiki, pilot cartridges, pilot iroshizuku cartridges, and/or the pilot con-70 converter do not get any other pilot converter if it fits a con-70. the extra fine nib is if you have already used a dip nib because it will absolutely draw blood. consider getting a writing board/shitajiki while you get used to using a fountain pen. also get a midori MD notebook, 90% of fountain pen ink performance is actually using the right kind of paper, because
fountain pen inks need to be watery! the inks need to be thin enough that they can travel through the feed and they need to be chemically stable enough to not damage the feed or section or nib or any other part of the pen with prolonged contact.
which means that long story short fountain pen inks are some of the pickiest about paper (MOLESKINE NOTEBOOK = DOGSHIT) because there are so many different ways that paper interacts with fountain pen ink. and there is no way to know without trying that specific fountain pen ink on that specific paper or finding someone who has. rubbing paper damages it for whoever buys it, some of the best fountain pen paper is scratchy, tissue thin, some combination of both.
on good fountain pen paper like midori MD and iroful and sometimes tomoe river, pilot blue and blue black in the medium nib actually reflect a metallic red, pictures can never do it justice. paper where the ink takes a little bit to dry often makes for the best color but if you have a good fountain pen ink manufacturer like pilot you want it to look clear and crisp and not blurry or marks the next page. and if that does not happen your paper unfortunately sucks
and this is all critical to know because most bottled ink in the world is not only hard to use in fountain pens, but also prone to clogging it or melting it forever. and a lot of inks very unsafe for fountain pens get sold as "fountain pen ink" on sites like ebay amazon etsy aliexpress temu walmart and a lot of very polished dropshipping websites by people who either do not know their own stock or are lying on purpose or both and none of those options are better because the damage the wrong ink can do to the wrong fountain pen is permanent. you may have to just buy another pen. dip inks are often corrosive on purpose because dip nibs are expected to be cleaned after use and eventually replaced
all because some shithead lied on a listing it makes me so mad
you have to only use inks actually designed for fountain pens. this is a glass diamine fountain pen ink bottle. diamine is a respectable ink manufacturer. diamine declares FOUNTAIN PEN INK right on the bottle label, which is good! "fountain pen ink" should be somewhere on the packaging so everyone knows this is a fountain pen safe ink.
fountain pen inks are a lot of water. almost entirely water. water and a whole lot of color. new fountain pen ink bottles are typically filled almost to the brim with ink. you spill a fountain pen ink bottle and you get a whole lot of water and color everywhere. the most common materials for fountain pen ink bottles are plastic and glass, both typically with a stiff cap of either plastic or a metal. plastic bottle walls often have a little give, but glass fountain pen ink bottles are quite infamously brittle.
right now, there is a dangerous cold front sweeping north america.
and at 32 degrees fahrenheit/0 degrees celsius, something really funny happens to water.
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