Growing pen obsession.

[DrBadStrings]

Well it's not all the ink I've bought but those are all the pens so far since I started this thread. I think I'll stop buying for a while and just focus on my penmanship for the next little while. There are a few of those pens I've yet to do a proper review of.

 

[DrBadStrings]

So I showed the last photo to my brother and he had a great idea. Use our fathers old tobacco pipe rack as a pen holder. It's in bad shape right now but I think I'll take it apart and give the metal bits a proper cleaning, there is a brass post you can't see connecting the two pieces. The center pen hides it perfectly. I'll also do a clean and some oil or polish on the wood. Then I'm going to bring it to the office to use on my desk. I think it'll look sharp and I love that it gives new life to what to me was an otherwise useless object at this point. I was always fascinated by it and the pipes as a child. The pipes are all gone at this point and Dad hasn't smoked in 30 years but I've had the rack tucked away in a box for the better part of 20 years as I wasn't going to let it be thrown out.

 

[Toirtis]

The only pens I use are fountain and dip pens (I despise biros), and my pens range from new Jinhao, Hongdian, Lamy, Pilot, Kaweco, Namiki, Twsbi, Visconti, and Montblanc pens, to vintage pens like Sheaffer, Esterbrook, Pelikan, and a few others.

I tend to stick to specific ink colours...black, dark grey, intense deep blue, deep crimson/dark red, and sepia....and I collect far more than I can use.

I also collect and use mechanical pencils and standard pencils, of which I have several dozen, some new, some vintage. For mechanical pencils, I tend to prefer 0.5 and 0.3, and my favourite brands are R0tring, Pentel, and Muji for mechanicals, and probably Blackwing and Mitsubishi for standards.

 

[Toirtis]

So I showed the last photo to my brother and he had a great idea. Use our fathers old tobacco pipe rack as a pen holder. It's in bad shape right now but I think I'll take it apart and give the metal bits a proper cleaning, there is a brass post you can't see connecting the two pieces. The center pen hides it perfectly. I'll also do a clean and some oil or polish on the wood. Then I'm going to bring it to the office to use on my desk. I think it'll look sharp and I love that it gives new life to what to me was an otherwise useless object at this point. I was always fascinated by it and the pipes as a child. The pipes are all gone at this point and Dad hasn't smoked in 30 years but I've had the rack tucked away in a box for the better part of 20 years as I wasn't going to let it be thrown out. View attachment 137197

Clever idea...in my case, all my pipe stands are filled holding pipes.

 

[Toirtis]

Another day another new pen. This time an inexpensive Parker Vector XL fountain pen for $12 Canadian. Photo of the pen below is a stock photo from the amazon website. The actual pen looks close but it's nowhere near as nice as the photo. That being said for the price on it, $12 Cad, it's a great pen. Writes very much like the Pilot V7 liquid ink. And I'll even give it bonus points for having a uniquely designed converter that allows for one handed filling. I can see buying a couple more just to play with different inks while keeping a nicer pen for my journaling.

The ink nearly didn't make it to the page. It leaked during shipping. Thankfully the outfit I bought from puts all of their ink bottles in individual sealed ziplock bags so it didn't get over everything. And about 2/3rds stayed in the bottle, the box the bottle was in however was ruined. I like the color though, purple mojo just makes me smile.

View attachment 136729

View attachment 136730

Have you considered any of the Chinese Jinhao pens? They are very inexpensive, and models like the 159, X450, and X750 get great reviews from the pen community. For ~$40CAD, you could have 5 of these from Temu, and they all come with converters. Be aware that you want Jinhao brand specific cartridges for these, though.