Pens

J. Herbin Glass Dip Pen

Appearance: This pen is BEAUTIFUL!  It is an intricately crafted spiral and a lovely darker purple that matches J. Herbin’s Poussiere de Lune ink.  While the tip is clear, it does sometimes reflect the violet color of the body.

Weight: Comfortable and well balanced.

Functionality: The spiral in the lower body (near the tip) functions almost like a grip.  The grooves in the tip beautifully hold the ink and writes between two and three lines before having to dip again.   The pen does need to be rotated while writing to get the most longevity out of each dip.

This pen provides wetter and more saturated lines than most fountain pens, and I have been using it to test all my new inks.  It provides a quick and easy way to test inks, especially when I am anxious to try a new one!   Because of the increased wetness, the inks appear darker and have more shading than they do when loaded in a fountain pen.

This is a gorgeous pen and I am happy to have it as part of my collection.  Now I want more…

Please see below for detailed photographs of the pen and ink on the tip of the pen.  Click on the thumbnails for full size shots.

Review: Monteverde Mini Jewelria

Thanks to Monteverde and some luck, I recently won one of their Mini Jewelria pens in green. Here is my review.

Appearance: This is a fantastic looking pen. The green striation area is pretty. The whole pen looks to be high-quality and well made. The iridium nib also has some engraved swirls for extra visual aesthetics. One feature I really like is that not only does the pen cap screw on to cap it, it screws on the top of the pen to post it. This insures the cap will not fly off or flop around when writing.

Size/Weight: When capped, this pen is quite small. When uncapped and unposted, it is tiny. I think the only way to use this pen is posted. I like light pens and this pen is quite substantial. It is not as heavy as some of the larger high-end pens, but it does hold its own in your hand. Depending on the day, my arm may tire after a few pages, although I have written many pages with it before.

Writing: My pen is a medium nib, which is definitely medium. I prefer Fine points, so this is different for me. The pen lays down a smooth wet line — most of the time. The pen often stops writing and I have to scribble with it for a minute until the ink starts flowing again. This is quite annoying when trying to write continuously. I’m not sure why it does this, but I wish it didn’t. I also do not know if this is typical of these pens or if it is my pen in particular.

Ink: This pen only uses Monteverde mini-cartridges, which I find disappointing. Monteverde sells these mini-cartridges in many colors, but I prefer to have bottled inks that usually offer more color variety than cartridges. Black cartridges came with my pen and depending on the paper, it often seems to be more of a black-brown than a pure black.

Overall: The best feature of this pen is its appearance. I do wish it didn’t skip, took a converter and was a bit lighter in weight. With that said, I do like it very much and it is in my rotation. I am very happy and grateful to have won it.

FP Filling Instructions

There is a great new tutorial on how to fill many different kinds of fountain pens over at Pendemonium.  Check the link here.

FPs on a multiple choice test?

I had to take a multiple choice test yesterday.  Like most mulitple choice tests, you had to darken the oval of your chosen answer with a No.2 pencil.  That was fine and I used my classic yellow pencil I blogged about earlier.

When the proctor was reading the instructions, he said we were to use No.2 soft-lead pencils and not to use a fountain pen.  I smiled to myself as I would have loved to use a FP on the test if it had erasable ink.  (Do they have erasable ink for fountain pens?  I have seen it for ballpoints.)

I found the test instructions to be charming and I bet most people in the room had never used a fountain pen in their lives.