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Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

I went through a fountain pen phase for about a year and finally gave up on it after a few notable incidents.

- going through the airport was hit or miss. Bristol? Stuttgart? things are perfect. interstate travel in the US? id lost two pens to the TSA. My flight to calgary started perfectly, and ended after a half full fountain pen quietly burst in my jacket pocket. not fun.

- No one seems to know what these things are anymore? signing formal documents was met with additional scrutiny from realtors and attorneys. Id had an attorney once insist I use his pen as he was convinced the liquid in the pen was not real ink.

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> an attorney once insist I use his pen as he was convinced the liquid in the pen was not real ink.

That's really funny! In Germany the opposite is true: certain transactions, like marriage licenses, are only legal if signed with a DIN standard ink guaranteed to last a century. There appears to be an ISO standard for Kugelschreiber (ball point, Byro) ink but in practice this has always seemed to be fountain pen ink (admittedly I got married over 25 years ago; perhaps things have...relaxed... a little. Kids still have to use fountain pens in school.

As an exchange student in Bayern, I've seen other students use fountain pens, though more often Kugelschreiber (ballpoint) or Filzstifte (felt tip). I'm not aware of any such requirement for fountain pens.

Are you in High School or Uni? Grundschulekinder use fountain pens (specific Pelikan or Lamy models with stiff nibs for kids) from Klasse 1. My son's homework was rejected unless he used one. By high school things had become more relaxed...and the handwriting less legible.

In the US most notaries will not allow you to sign official documents with a fountain pen- it seems to be part of the training, and many realtors and attorneys are notaries for convenience. As great as they are to write with, many FP inks cannot withstand tampering, so they don't allow any FP inks because it's hard to track which of the thousands of brand/color combos are safe. A cheapo ballpoint is better for official documents- although in this era I'd trust a cryptographic signature more than a handwritten one.

I have a bottle of cellulose reactive fountain pen ink for such purposes. Also, there are mass produced tamper-proof inks. So, in fact it's possible to sign documents with an FP.

On the other side of the spectrum is "washable" blues which are waiting to disappear in a small drop of water.

I think the problem is that a notary might have trouble being convinced that your fountain pen ink is what you say it is.

Probably yes. For these stuff I always carry a Uniball elite with blue-black ink (I'm a blue-black guy), and for other documents -like office and other stuff- I use the reactive ink.

Uniball's super ink is ridiculously tamper-proof, contrary to its cheesy name.

Most? That’s a new one to me, and I regularly use notaries, though not in the context of real estate.

I suppose in real estate transactions, your bank might insist on you using their pen, as it doesn’t want you to sign a note in disappearing ink. But the “notary” shouldn’t care how you sign most documents, once you prove you are the person signing.

They won't force you to use a particular pen, but they must take reasonable precautions that you are using permanent ink. Notaries must protect their seal, and don't want you to sign as Joe Blow, get the seal, then wash the signature off at home and re-sign as Donald Trump. Washing a signature is trivial with many FP inks, so most notaries don't want you to use them- it's too much trouble to verify which inks are safe, and much easier to ask you to use a ballpoint. Those that do allow it are risking losing their license (admittedly a small risk) if they get caught up in fraudulent signatures.

Notaries that allow FP inks are either just accepting the risk because they don't want to be a dick or they are not aware that by using FP ink you might as well be signing in pencil.

> My flight to calgary started perfectly, and ended after a half full fountain pen quietly burst in my jacket pocket. not fun.

This isn‘t too uncommon, I have been told.

Years ago, when I worked in aerospace, I had a colleague who always carried his precious fountain pen in a small black box.

When I asked him about it, he told me that the box was only partially to protect his pen but also to protect his bag and the things in it from leaked ink. He said that pressure surges during flights used to cause him a lot of trouble and he looked long and hard until he found a case that was airtight and sturdy enough to prevent leakage. I looked up the case and it was some military grade box.

I have a simple zippered pouch that I carry my pens in. It's been on at least 2 dozen individual flights including some to/from Europe. I've never had a problem with TSA in the US. And some times I've traveled with 5-6 inked up pens before.

The most important thing is to travel with them nib up because the change in pressure can force air out if they aren't full. I used to bag them in mini-sandwich bags too to be safe but found that to not be necessary.

I always take my fountain pens out of my travel bag before leaving if flying is involved. The pressure changes I have always assumed do not do good things to the pens. As an unpressurized plane owner I don’t often interact with the TSA, though.

OTOH after an extended absence from my office, my desk TWSBI 580 EF worked perfectly the first stroke after six weeks, filled with a Noodler’s plum ink (the name escapes me right now).

I almost exclusively sign documents with a fountain pen - because I enjoy the process, and I usually get just the precise sort of ink flow to accentuate the flourishes in my sig. I've never had anyone question it to date, in my experience, and it would be sad if it was not accepted on formal documents any more.

Actually, I have had a lot of e-signatures rejected recently, and ended up signing them with my fountain pen, re-scanning the pages and emailing them on!

Similarly, I took a photo of a particularly well written signature, and paste that into PDFs as my signature. It's worked quite well for any "Sign Me" PDFs I've been sent.

And the signature just looks... nice.

I was told that when witnessing documents having all parties use the same pen is actually better as it gives a higher standard of evidence that all parties were all in proximity.

Having different writing with different pens can suggest they were done at different times.

The person that told you this is full of hogwash. Being signed with the same ink provides no evidence that two people were together at the same time (unless the ink is extremely rare and hard to procure), and you cannot tell if two signatures were done with the exact same pen. Two people can sign with the same model of pen within days of each other and you can't tell the difference after a few days- and most legal disputes are going to occur more than a few days after signing. Being signed with two different pens also doesn't suggest anything other than the two signatories used different pens.

If you want legally admissible proof that two people signed a document together then you need a notary. Of course a notary could be corrupted, but the courts are much less concerned about that than they are about the chance that two people both own a Pilot G2 in black.

The fact that fountain pen inks are usually (always?) water-soluble does make them a poor choice for permanent documents which risk being altered.

I like my fountain pen, but use a more robust ink for many standard tasks.

There are a wide variety of permanent fountain pen inks available: http://noodlersink.com/noodlers-durable-ink-classification/

Thanks. I saw a few others mentioned elsewhere in this thread. TIL!

Vacuum fill fountain pens can be safely carried in airplanes, like the Pilot Custom 823 (which is good but somewhat expensive for a travel pen) or the TWISBI Vac700R and Vac Mini.

My favourite ink is the Pilot Iroshizuku take-sumi, but it's not tamper proof if it matters.

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