Jargon.

This will be an ongoing post where I take some terms I'm going to use and define what they mean to me.

Bleed - where you can see an echo of your writing on the reverse of the page.  At best it's annoying, at worst it will mean that it will mark pages through a few leaves. Standard photocopy paper is among the worst for this.

Cartridge Converters - very useful things these, will lead to ink on hands. But you can use other inks in your pen, and there are some very pretty inks out there.

Feathering - This is where you get blurring around the edges of letters due to the paper being too absorbent or the ink being too wet or a combination of both.

Fountain Pen Friendly Paper - paper that exhibits not a lot of feathering, ghosting or bleed.

Ghosting - where you can see some echoes of your writing on the next page, related to bleed but usually you can use the reverse page.

International Standard Cartridges, Cult Pens explains it quite well; these are the most commonly used cartridges, most of my fountain pens use them, except those that don't like Lamy (though there is a German company Online who have cartridges that do both, I will be stocking up again).Not all pens who take International Standard Cartridges take the long ones but they all can take the short ones.

Nib Width - this is such a messy thing.  If in doubt, and the brand isn't Japanese, the nib is probably medium.  Back when I was learning how to Calligraph (yes I will talk about calligraphy in a proper post and link it here) I didn't know that standard cartridge pens came in anything other than medium, I certainly didn't know they came in left-handed.  There are many nuances within the widths.  When you first buy a pen I would suggest looking at your handwriting, if you write small, get a fine nub, if you have big writing get a broad nib.  I would also suggest getting a few sizes and seeing how they suit you and your paper..  I often use a broad nib to illustrate the page that I use for the beginning of a month and use flourishes and enjoy it but every day extra fine or fine are more my mileage.

Test page: It is often useful to have a page at the back of a notebook to test pens and paper, write the pen and what ink you're using, some ink is less watery than others but often you will find that a particular pen puts the same amount of ink onto the page.

Erasable Pens

Everything here is purchased by me, I haven't been asked to review anything here and receive nothing from this except where links take you to Amazon where I am an affiliate.

This isn't about fountain pens.  You can get eraser fluid that works with some inks.  This is a series of pens that can be erased by friction, mostly using built-in erasers.  This is actually the reason I started this.

 This is most of the collection, mostly Frixion they have the best range from my experience, the greatest variety and once I run through some of these I plan to buy the metal bodied one.  Frixion also do refils

Left to right Uniball Signo; Papermate Replay; Papermate replay premium (empty); Muji Erasable; Pilot Frixion Clicker; Pilot Frixion; Pilot Frixion 0.5   

I also did a test with each pen, it's proprietary eraser, and a standard eraser.  Down the column I used each propriety eraser, as you can see, the papermate actually smeared it's way down.








These are the Four Basic from each company and the eraser I used.

The Papermate Replay's eraser is the least cross compatible and the ink is the same.  I often do lists (like my books on loan from libraries list that gets erased and rewritten occasionally, so I like being able to use whatever pen is to hand so I tend not to use the Papermate. The eraser is quite like a standard eraser.

If you look at the erase and rewrite list the Uniball Signo is the worst for rewriting, it seems to leave a greasy residue that resists rewriting by itself and is even worse with other brands.  However it has two erasers, one on the lid and one on the bottom, so you can erase while you have the pen posted. One of them is also nice and fine and you can be quite exact with erasing. The black isn't a bad colour but the green and blue are relatively faint and really don't work when you rewrite.

The Muji is a nice fine line but the eraser is just along the edge of the lid, handy for when it's posted but I found myself occasionally scratching the page.  But like you can see it is erasable with the others (this is why I have an empty Uniball Signo)

Frixion is my favourite, good choice of colours and weights and while the eraser isn't as good for fine erasing it's solid and well made and writes well, I am very glad I took the opportunity when Tesco were selling some of the refills very cheap.to buy several.  The Highlighters are great for knitting and cross-stitch patterns because when you have to rip you can erase what you've had to erase.

The Eraser is by Maped, I do like it.

Cheap Pens

Now don't get me wrong I adore my Platinum Preppy's you can also get them from Cult Pens but I get nothing for that purchase (even if one has cracked in the body) and the Platinum Plaisir is a wonder for the price, then again I like fine to extra fine nibs, mostly as they don't ghost or bleed through a lot in notebooks.

However I have two pens I don't intend to purchase again.

One is from Paperchase (the lighter blue one) and one from Tesco. Both have significant damage to the lids, I didn't notice the damage to the paler one when I cleaned it out after using it once.  The darker one didn't even survive one full short international cartridge.  If I still had receipts and they were under a year old I would bring them back for credit, neither were great writers, so bin it is.

New Blog for something different.

So I'm an Ink person, I use fountain pens a lot and have quite a collection.  I also collect other pens and try to use them as much as possible, I have journals and all sorts of things

is my pen carousel that has most of my pen collection, except a few in use, in work (I regularly sign invoices and I sign them in ink) or elsewhere (like being cleaned) I have created a list online and in an a5 filofax with all the pens and samples of the ink.  I hope to be sharing some of these things as I write.

This is mostly going to be about pens and ink but also about notebooks and some ordinary pens.