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Today marks the 12th year that Fountain Pen Day has been celebrated around the world. It is a day to celebrate writing with that most environmentally conscious of writing implements – the fountain pen. With care, a good fountain pen will be passed down to your grandkids. Contrast this with most ballpoint and rollerball pens which are tossed away when they run out of ink. They have their purpose especially if you have to use multi-part forms. But for freedom of expression in a journal or signing your name with a flourish, nothing beats a fountain pen.
I am traveling today so I only have a couple of fountain pens with me. I went with an old standby along with one of my newer pens. The old standby is a Pelikan 205 in transparent blue. It is a piston filler. The newer pen is a Sailor Compass 1911 in transparent olive. It fills using a convertor or you can use ink cartridges. Both have steel nibs in Fine and Extra Fine.
The latter pen is a great introductory pen for someone who is just starting to write with a fountain pen. I believe I paid $30 for it from Goulet Pens. It is one of the smoothest writing pens that I own and it starts up every time. Many fountain pens take a bit of priming to get the ink flowing.
While my Pelikan and Sailor are made in Germany and Japan respectively, you can get very decent pens from China and Pakistan. I have a number of Chinese pens along with the Pakistani “dollar pen”. The Dollar Fountain Pen (717i) is a pen used by students in Pakistan. It is actually a great pen for day to day use despite the low price. It is a piston-filler with a medium steel nib. I think I bought 10 of them for about $15 off of Ebay and I have given a number of them to my fountain pen loving friends. That plus a $10-12 bottle of ink is all you need to get started using a fountain pen. I have always like ink in the color blue-black. Think of a very dark navy blue and you have blue-black.
Pens are a lot like firearms. You can have expensive ones and you can have cheaper ones. They will all do the job. Also like firearms, you are always wanting to get just one more. Ask me how I know!
I have 6. I like one of them best and so find myself using it to the exclusion of the others. Oddly, three of them are identical Levenger True Writer Classics, including the one I like best, just in different colors. Not sure why I don’t like the other two as much. I actively avoid buying new pens cause I don’t need more. Meanwhile, the other five live lonely lives.