You've been hearing that fountain pens are still a thing and you've decided you wanted to learn more. Read on to learn the basics of fountain pens, with suggestions for buying your first pen.
Fountain pens never really went away, in fact they have been improving. Innovations with materials and manufacturing have created high quality fountain pens for everyone. The same is true for inks, innovation has created tons of colors that are bright and durable.
Now is the best time to pick up a fountain pen and lose yourself in the joy of writing.
The pen's nib
The metal nib is the tip of the pen that touches the paper, and feeds the in ink to mark a line. Fountain pen nibs are made out of few different materials, but the two most common for almost all pens you will encounter are gold and steel. Each of which have their own benefits and characteristics.
Nib materials
Steel is a common material for pen nibs because it is inexpensive and easy to make. Steel nibs are common on beginner pens, and inexpensive fountain pens from all manufactures.
Gold nibs are the classic material for fountain pens. It used to be that ink was more acidic than today, and gold nibs withstood the corrosive nature of the ink better than other metals. Today gold nibs are known for their durability and flexibility. A gold nib will be bend and flex, to give variation in the line, more so than steel nibs.
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Some people hold that gold nibs make the best fountain pen nibs, however steel nibs are not to be frowned upon. Pen makers who care about quality have improved the manufacturing process, and using new metal alloys, make steel nibs that rival the quality of gold nibs.
Gold nibs come in different variety, with differing amounts of gold, and in multiple styles. A lot of gold nibs are silver in color, as they are plated with rhodium or other silver color metal.
Nib size
Nibs come in a several different line widths, which affect the line size and quality. Nibs are manufactured by many different companies, but can be classified into two large categories, Japanese nibs and Western nibs.
The common sizes are Extra Fine, Fine, Medium, and Bold.
The different manufactures have a different understanding of what each nib size means. Japanese pen makers will have smaller actual size with the same name as the Western named size. Which means that an Japanese Fine writes more like a Western Extra Fine.
Some Japanese manufactures offer extreme sizes, such as the Platinum 3776 Century Ultra Extra Fine, which is used for writing very tiny characters.
The size of nib you choose will determine the style of writing, or task, best suited to that pen. The smaller nibs allow for writing smaller letters, while the bold nibs make for large words. What is your writing style now, if you want to write a log of words to fill the page then choose a smaller nib. While using a larger bolder nib is best for writing headlines, or quotes.
Start with a steel nib pen. You will find it inexpensive without sacrificing writing quality.
Start with a Fine or Medium pen. It will allow versatility in writing.
Filling mechanisms
The filling mechanism is how your fountain pen will store the ink you write with. There are three main types of filling mechanisms, cartridge, cartridge-converter, and piston.
Cartridge
The most straight forward of the three is the cartridge. It is a standalone ink container, which is sealed when it is filled with ink. The cartridge is pressed into the pen, which pierces the cartridge as it is fitted to the pen. Cartridges are nice because they are convenient to carry with you. Being sealed means they won't leak or dry out, and you'll always have one ready.
There are drawbacks to cartridges but these are often not that painful. First, several of the larger pen manufactures have their own proprietary cartridge size and shape. This means that a cartridge from one manufacture won't work with another manufacture's pen.
For smaller pen makers there is a common Standard International cartridge size. This common cartridge allows for compatibility between different ink makers and pen manufactures.
Second, the ink colors available in cartridges are limited when compared to bottled inks. For everyday ink use this is not really an issue. You are bound to find a blue, black, or red color that you like in a cartridge. It will be when you want a specific blue, with shimmers and shading, that you will need to leave the cartridge behind and use ink from a bottle with a converter.
Converter
Bottled ink is used with converters and piston fillers, which are very similar in how they work.
The cartridge converter is a small ink reservoir with a piston. The open end of the converter is sized to fit exactly as a cartridge would, hence the name.
The converter is set into the pen, the piston pushed all the way down, and the nib submerged into a bottle of ink. Then you twist the piston, which creates pressure similar to a straw, and ink is pulled into the converter. Shake off the nib, and use a paper towel or rag to dry off the excess ink. The pen is now full.
The converter is very common and available for all fountain pens. You will use a converter when an ink color you desire is not available in a cartridge, which will be most of the time. This is also how you use ink from one manufacture with any fountain pen you have.
Piston
The piston filler is similar to the converter in that they both use a piston to suck ink into the reservoir. However, the piston filler, has the piston built into the pen body. Where a converter can be used on a pen that also accepts cartridges, the piston filler only uses the piston to fill it's reservoir with bottled ink.
Filling is the same as a converter, except that the reservoir holds much much more ink that the smaller converter. Often 3 to 4 times as much ink.
Start with a pen that uses cartridges.
This will let you play with different ink colors without having to buy different bottles of ink, while still being able to use a converter later when you do find that special bottle of ink.
Fountain Pen Ink
One of the great joys in using a fountain pen is choosing that special ink out of all the variety of inks available.
There are hundreds of inks for fountain pens, but it's important to know that not every ink is fountain pen friendly. Stay away from india inks, or those specifically made for dip calligraphy pens. Those are thick with coloring and could clog your fountain pen.
Inks come in many many shades of colors with many different properties. Some sparkle, and some shimmer. Some inks are more "wet" than others and will lay down quickly on the page, others are more "dry".
It's important to know that the characteristics of the ink and the pen itself combine to give the full experience. A specific ink with one pen could act completely different when in another pen. A good example is Noodler's 54th Massachusetts Ink, which is wet and writes with a thick line even in a Fine nib pen, but writes a more narrow line when used in an Japanese pen with an Extra Fine nib.
Bottles are large compared to cartridges, they cost more as well, but in the long run they are inexpensive compared to the actual amount of ink in cartridges. A bottle of ink will last a good amount of time, especially when you have a few different colors you like to switch between. There are companies that sell ink samples, a small amount of ink for a small price. Ink samples are a great way to try many different inks before you know if you really like the ink.
Start by buying ink samples.
Buy a nice blue as a general writing ink, and then buy a few other colors and brands to see what different things you enjoy.
Friendly Paper
Much more than gel or ballpoint pens a fountain pen will interact differently to the different of types.
Gel and ballpoint pens lay down a thick ink on top of the paper. A fountain pen lays down a liquid ink that seeps into the paper's fibers, bonding with them. The more porous the paper the more absorption it has and the more the ink will spread and feather. On standard printer paper fountain pen ink is likely to feather which is not really what we want. It blurs the writing and distracts from the qualities of the ink.
There are papers which are friendly to fountain pens, not just in preventing feathering, but in how the ink interacts with the surface of the paper as the ink dries.
Tomoe River Paper is a very thin, yet wonderful, fountain pen paper. It is very smooth, and coated, so that ink will glide across the surface and dry with shading, giving the color of the ink depth and character. While also preventing ghosting and bleed through. It really is a remarkable feat when you consider paper many times as thick that bleeds through at a slight touch.
Start with quality paper from Tomoe River, Rhodia, or Maurman Mnemosyne.
Welcome to your Fountain Pen
Finding joy in writing has never gone away, and while the fountain pen fell out of favor to rollerballs, it never went way. In fact the fountain pen has kept on evolving and improving. When you want to enjoy your writing process, when you want to connect to the page in a special way, you want to write using a fountain pen.
Now is the best time to buy a fountain pen and enjoy writing.
Start with an inexpensive pen from a well know pen maker. We suggest either a Pilot Metropolitan, a Lamy Safari, Platinum Plaisir, or TWSBI Eco.