Fountain Pen Day 2023

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!

Fountain Pen Day 2019

The first Friday in November is celebrated as Fountain Pen Day. It is a day to celebrate, embrace, promote, and share the use of fountain pens.

This year I’m going international. The two pens I have currently inked are from China and Pakistan respectively.

The former is a Kaco Edge made in Shanghai. It is a smooth writer, feels good in the hand, and remind me of a Lamy 2000. The only downside is that the clip is so tight that it is hard to fit in your shirt pocket. It is available on Amazon for $17.50 and does come with a converter.

The latter is a Dollar i717 demonstrator (clear) pen made in Pakistan. I picked up a dozen of them for about $15 on EBay. It is a piston filler that starts right away. Fountain pens often are hard to get the ink flowing if they’ve sat for a day or two. I have given away a number of these pens to fellow fountain pen geeks. You can read a review of it here.

Happy Fountain Pen Day!

The first Friday in November has been Fountain Pen Day since 2012. It was started as a day to “embrace, promote, and share the use of fountain pens.”

I have been using fountain pens off and on since elementary school where we had to use Sheaffer cartridge pens for penmanship. They came in a pack with five “washable blue” ink cartridges.

Now I have a wide assortment of fountain pens in my desk, around the house, and elsewhere. Some are cheap Chinese knock-offs, some are older American-made Esterbrooks, some are various German-made Lamy Safari pens, and the list goes on. I even have a couple of old Parker Duofolds in the traditional orangish red with black end caps from the 1920s. I hope to have those restored sometime.

I plan to celebrate Fountain Pen Day by deciding on which two or three fountain pens to take to this weekend’s MAG-20 class to be held in Charlotte. From what everyone who has taken either the MAG-40 or the MAG-20 classroom portion has told me, you will be writing as fast as you can.

If you are thinking of trying out a fountain pen, now is a good day to do it as many vendors are offering specials in honor of Fountain Pen Day. You can find a list of them here. I can personally vouch for Jet Pens and Goulet Pen Company as I’ve dealt with them in the past.

Happy Fountain Pen Day

The first Friday in November is officially Fountain Pen Day.

It is a day to celebrate ink-stained fingers, old-school technology, and leaky pens. In other words, it is a day to celebrate those curios and relics of writing instruments which some of us still hold dear.

Recognizing that this is a gun blog, let me put it into a firearm perspective. The difference between a fountain pen and a ballpoint or roller ball is like the difference between a Browning Hi-Power and a Glock 17. Both shoot 9mm, both have double stack magazines, both have been carried by military units, and both will get the job done. While the Glock 17 is a well-engineered, highly reliable, efficient handgun, it is still a blocky mixture of utilitarian steel and plastic just like a Bic ballpoint. By contrast, the Browning Hi-Power is a old-school sensuous blend of blued steel and walnut that comes in a variety of configurations. It was handed down to us from Heaven by John Moses Browning and delivered to us on Earth by Dieudonné Saive.

Just like the Glock and the Browning Hi-Power, the ballpoint and the fountain pen both have their place but my heart will always belong to the Hi-Power and the fountain pen.

Many of the sponsors of Fountain Pen Day are having sales and giveaways. You can find more on them here.

Next year I promise to have up photos of my fountain pens. Just like anyone who holds a Curios and Relics FFL will tell you, I have a few.

Went Junkin’

The Complementary Spouse and I enjoy hitting thrift stores, antique malls, and the like. What we call “junkin'” is a cheap way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Inspired by a post by SayUncle about safety razors and having seen the prices for Gillette Fat Boys and Schick Kronas on EBay, I thought I might find something at one of the local antique malls like the one below.

I had no such luck. I did see a handful of straight razors but the thought of trying to correctly use one of those to shave is too scary for me.

However, the trip was not made in vain. The first thing that caught my eye was the bright red Prius below. Unlike the usual Prius seen in Asheville with its “Another Mama for Obama” bumpersticker, this one had of all things a NRA sticker on the front door window!

An older gentleman (but not the owner of the Prius) sitting near the door of the mall saw me taking the picture and said he was a NRA member. He said he’d joined a couple of years ago and now was being audited by the IRS. While I would hope the story is somewhat apocryphal, one never knows nowadays given the way the IRS under the Obama Administration seems to be targeting groups and people opposed to Obama.

The second thing that caught my eye was a nice fountain pen in a variegated green. I knew it was a Sheaffer the moment I saw the white dot on the cap. I ended up getting it for $20. When I got home I did some Internet sleuthing and found out it was a Sheaffer Triumph Lifetime Vacu-fil in marine green striated made between 1942 and 1949. It is in excellent shape but I still need to test to see whether it will hold ink. The band and the clip show some brassing but I can live with that given the great shape the nib is in.

It was all in all a fun day. As to that safety razor, I may end up doing what SayUncle did and just buying a new Merkur from Amazon. The prices of those old Gillettes on EBay are a bit much.

It’s All Marko’s Fault

I am a loyal reader of Marko Kloos’s blog, The Munchkin Wrangler. His posts on fountain pens for writing caused me to again start using them. He also pointed readers towards a forum called The Fountain Pen Network which has reviews of pens and ink along with a very good classified section.

If it weren’t for Marko, I wouldn’t have seen this pen and given it more than 30 seconds of thought. I mean, does anyone really need a $125 Pelikan fountain pen highlighter when you can get a Bic one for 99 cents? That could buy a heck of a lot of ammo!

PS: I’m not buying the pen but I think it is really cool. If you want it with a 15% discount, use the code FPN and go here.