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are you or a loved one expecting to use a fountain pen for the first time this holiday season? you need this information.

fountain pens are making a comeback, with good reason. fountain pens require virtually no pressure to write, and many people used to ballpoint, gel, or rollerball pens will actually damage a fountain pen on their first use because of how much pressure they are accustomed to using. on the flip side, many people with joint pain will find that they can only write without pain when using a fountain pen.

fountain pens are customizable, reusable, ergonomic, comfortable, and utilize fantastical fountain pen inks containing shading, sheening, and shimmer.

using a fountain pen correctly for the first time just elicits that ever elusive and emphatic "oh." you will, with likelihood, understand why people use fountain pens just by using one yourself. it cannot be put into words.

but before you learn how to use a fountain pen, you need to learn how NOT to use a fountain pen.

here are my top 3 tips for how not to use a fountain pen.

first, what makes a fountain pen. a fountain pen is defined as a pen with an internal resivoir that feeds ink through a feed and to a nib. they do not require dipping.

the internals of the end of a fountain pen look like this. fountain pens are a lot of different parts. although this diagram shows a pen using a converter, most first time fountain pen users will use a cartridge, which is a pressurized pouch of ink.

the slit in the metal nib forms two tines, and the end of which is tipping. ink flows from the converter (or cartridge or other filling system) down the feed and through the slit in the nib, down to the tip.

since fountain pens are a bunch of very closely fitted different parts, they take specialized, thin, water-based ink.

which leads me to the first major thing to not do with a fountain pen.

#1: do not use anything other than 'fountain pen ink' in a fountain pen

so let me tell you a little story here. I got into dip pens before I got into fountain pens. years and years ago. I found out that a converter allows you to use bottled ink with a fountain pen, and I already had some decent ink I was using with my dip nibs. I bought a converter, a fountain pen, and then did one of the worst possible things you can do to a fountain pen: I loaded it with dip ink. if I remember right, it was some kind of india or sumi ink.

the pen no longer wrote, and I could not even replace the alleged easily replaceable parts. what happened?

ink is more than just liquid and color, it involves complicated chemical formulas. dip pens can be dipped in just about anything and then write to some degree, but fountain pens can only safely be used with ink designed specifically for fountain pens. dip ink is usually thicker and can clog the slits in the fountain pen's feed, preventing the ink from reaching the tip of the nib. but diluting dip ink is not good enough. the chemicals in dip inks can melt or rust the internals of a fountain pen. this damage is often irreparable without paying a specialist a lot of money to restore the pen, which can cost more than just buying a new fountain pen. in my case, the internals of my fountain pen melted slightly and got glued together.

unfortunately, many sellers on websites like amazon, etsy, ebay, aliexpress, and more will claim that their ink is fountain pen ink, when in reality it will destroy your fountain pen.

until you are used to which types of inks are safe for fountain pens, use a dedicated and reliable stationery website like jetpens, gouletpens, or cultpens to tell you which inks are designed for fountain pens. jetpens in particular will also tell you which cartridges and converters are compatible with the fountain pens they sell, which is essential, because many fountain pen cartridges and converters are proprietary and only fit certain pens.

when in doubt, just buy compatible cartridges.

#2 do not expect the fountain pen to flex

calligraphy videos are really popular right now. many of them involve fountain pens and dip pens using flexible lines to create gorgeous cursive. in reality, most modern fountain pens do not flex, and trying to make them flex can break them.

this is a dip nib. if you try to do this to a fountain pen nib, you will damage it. this is what NOT to do to a fountain pen nib.

there are two main materials used for making fountain pen nibs: steel and gold. steel is harder and stiffer, gold is softer and generally more bouncy or flexible. vintage gold fountain pens gained a reputation for writing like "wet noodles" and creating fantastic line variations. they are very desired for calligraphy. but vintage flex fountain pens start at hundreds of dollars each. and virtually no modern fountain pen with any degree of flex will skip on the chance to advertise themselves as flex pens. anything not blatantly advertised as a flex pen should never be flexed.

and honestly? your first fountain pen should not be a flex pen.

fountain pen nibs, as mentioned above, are metal pieces with a slit to form two tines. where the tines meet together is where the ink is dispensed. since most modern fountain pen nibs are NOT designed to flex, trying to use them like flexible dip nibs or even just using the fountain pen at the wrong angle can cause the nibs to splay and not be able to go back together without some skilled repair. there are fountain pens worth thousands of dollars with shining gold nibs that will promptly get fucked up if you try to flex them.

in my opinion, your first fountain pen nib should be steel. gold nibs are softer and way more easily damaged, while steel nibs are firmer, can be just as smooth in writing, and are a lot friendlier to beginners. not to mention, a lot more difficult to damage. the smoothness on paper is mostly determined by the grinding of the tip of the nib, not by the material the nib is made out of. there are plenty of steel nibs that write smoother than gold nibs, and they are a hell of a lot cheaper, too. a slight impact to a gold nib can cause them to bend to the point they cannot write, but a steel nib has a greater chance of surviving a drop.

fountain pens require very little pressure to write. you want to write with as little pressure as possible, without separating the tines (for the majority of pens).

flex pens are also not the only way to do calligraphy with a fountain pen. since flex pens required varied pressure, flex calligraphy is way more likely to cause joint pain and hand strain than doing italic calligraphy, which uses angle-based line variation at a steady pressure. there are a ton of fountain pens out there that come in italic nibs that are great for this type of calligraphy. a cheap way to try out italic fountain pen calligraphy is by grabbing some pilot parallel pens, which come in up to 6mm nibs, and are sold in many retail stores.

for a more practical daily use fountain pen that comes in both rounded and italic, grab a pilot metropolitan in medium (rounded) or cursive medium (italic).

and if you do still want to try out flex nibs, fountain pen revolution makes affordable steel ultra flex nibs that work better than most modern gold nibs.

#3: do not expect any paper to work / DO NOT USE MOLESKINE

with this post now apparently at over 75,000 notes, I am one of the most prolific moleskine haters in the world. and with good reason, I know a thing or two about fountain pen paper. moleskine is garbage. there is nothing it does that other paper companies do not do better and/or cheaper, aside from maybe the brands that agree to collaborate with them. they have some notebooks with hello kitty, pokemon, james bond stuff on the cover among other things.

if you roll into any fountain pen community and say you are trying to use moleskine with a fountain pen, you will get laughed at and/or pitied. yes, even though moleskine literally sells kaweco fountain pens on its website. kaweco is not exactly known for being ethical.

as I mentioned before, fountain pen ink is thin and water-based. most ball-tipped pens have thicker ink made up of completely different chemicals. ballpoint ink is made of oil and alcohol, gel ink is made of a thick water-based ink, rollerballs often use ink that is almost as thin as fountain pen ink. basically, most writing utensils use thicker ink than fountain pens. which means, paper that works well with any other writing utensil might still work very badly with fountain pen ink. most paper sold in united states stores, as an example, will probably not work well with fountain pen ink. even if it is an expensive notebook. trust me on this.

there is no way to tell whether or not a paper will work with fountain pen ink without trying it first. do not rub paper to try and guess if it will work well with your desired ink, rubbing paper just damages the paper. there are tissue thin papers that work better with fountain pen ink than heavy art papers, there are rough papers that work better than smooth papers, there are ugly papers that work better than pretty papers, there are cheap papers that work better with fountain pen ink than expensive paper.

fountain pen ink looks best when it dries slowly rather than absorbing into the fibers of the paper. and since fountain pen ink is so thin, it can often cause feathering (fuzzy spreading of lines) and bleeding (going through the page). if your lines look fuzzy or if they go through the page, it is almost definitely a problem of the paper you are using, and not the problem of the pen or the ink.

some examples of showthrough, bleedthrough, and feathering from a jetpens article on fountain pen paper. while showthrough is not necessarily a problem depending on how you want to use the paper, if you have high bleedthrough or high feathering, you are definitely going to want different paper.

fountain pen lines should look crisp. paper that can handle most fountain pen inks is considered "fountain pen friendly paper". the best way to find fountain pen friendly paper is to look up reviews of paper online. there are a lot of fountain pen enthusiasts who test out fountain pen inks on different types of paper.

one of the reasons I really like jetpens is they test fountain pen ink on all their paper, and show the results. as far as stationery stores go, jetpens has the most testing of their products that I have ever seen. the information and testing from jetpens can be used no matter where you wind up buying stationery supplies.

if you are getting a fountain pen, or if you are gifting a fountain pen, expect to need fountain pen friendly paper to go with it. ink problems are usually actually paper problems.

I recommend products like midori md, maruman mnemosyne, rhodia, clairfontaine. if you want the best possible color for fountain pen inks, check out tomoe river paper and cosmo air light/snow, but they feel very different from typical types of paper.

do not ever get moleskine.

with these 3 tips, you are way less likely to flub your fountain pen. happy inking!

ko-fi

#fountain pens #calligraphy #queue

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