A Good Fountain Pen Lets You Enjoy the Finer Things in Life (2022) | Hacker News Reader

A Good Fountain Pen Lets You Enjoy the Finer Things in Life (2022)

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33 pointsaxiomdata31667 comments

10 year fountain pen user. Nobody seems to have mentioned what are, in my opinion, the most compelling and practical reasons for fountain pen usage: their ergonomics.

Fountain pens are supposed to be held lightly, so much so that someone should be able to pull it right out of your hand without friction (apparently schoolteachers once did this to test students' proper grip). Additionally, because of the water-based ink and capillary action of the pen, very little pressure is needed to mark the paper. Fountain pens are also able to be held at a greater angle than most other pens allowing a grip where the pen lightly rests on the back of the hand. This provides the ability to write for long periods without fatigue.

This is in contrast with ballpoints which require a significant amount of pressure to mark and which also cannot mark at the greater angle required which would allow the pen to rest comfortably on the back of the hand. This leads to all kinds of awkward hand positions that people learn to write with (a teacher or student will be able to attest to the numerous hideous and painful hand contortions some students employ) and more rapid hand fatigue because of the pressure required. It is not uncommon for carpal tunnel syndrome to develop in writers of ballpoints, and for doctors to subsequently recommend the switch to fountain pens. I also find that it is considerably more difficult to produce good handwriting using a ballpoint rather than a fountain pen. The hand positioning and technique really makes all the difference.

This is exactly it- the required pressure to write. Fountain pens are effortless in marking, and flow. This leads also naturally to flowing cursive text. While I love fine liners, ball points or gel pens, few write like a fountain pen (and the ones that do are called fountain pen like).

Provided we're all talking about our own preferences, the ergonomic argument is I think pushed too far and kinda idealized.

For instance looking at the Lamy 2000 mentionned in the article, it's 25g for the plastic version, 54g for the metal version [0].

A Pilot G2 weights 11g, that's half to a quarter of matter to move around. [1]

From personal experience the G2 is also extremely smooth, and while I never bothered buying premium fountain pens, it was way lighter and smoother than any fountain pen I've used as a student.

Then when we try to go further on the form factor, needing an ink cartridge limits the minimal size of a fountain pen. I recently switched to much thinner triangular shaped pens, they were more comfortable for my current writing style (and I almost don't write much anymore), but it's just not an option outside of ballpoint.

So yes fountain pen can be great, but if ergonomics is the primary concern, there will be many other (potentially way better) choices out there on the market.

[0] https://thenonessentialists.com/the-lamy-2000-fountain-pen/ [1] https://www.jetpens.com/Pilot-G2-Gel-Pen-0.38-mm-Black/pd/26...

The ergonomics generally are not about the weight of the pen, but about how hard you must grip it to press it to the paper so friction can melt the ink when you roll the little ball across the page. You also have to write at a higher angle to keep the ball on the page.

Gel pens are great. I keep my wife supplied with them, because she thinks fountain pens are too fancy. But the difference is still night and day. I let her use my Lamy 2000 once. She picked it up and started making a snarky comment, "See I don't need a fancy... Oh!" The moment it hit the page and she started writing it literally shut her up. She never made a comment about "fancy pens" again after that. We had a good laugh about it.

Fountain pens are like fixed-gear bikes. Some people enjoy a difficult interface that punishes them for making mistakes. Other people hate that.

To me, "enjoy the finer things in life" means "buy the $20/lb coffee when it's on sale for $15" and not "splash $500 on a pen the size of a sausage that will be ruined if you don't write for a week, and tear the paper you're writing on if you do."

NB: the above may be slightly exaggerated for effect; standard sausages are a few cm longer. If you're offended that I've used the pen wrong, know that I've also used Bic pens wrong: they make terrible pry-bars and get ink everywhere. It was just the once in middle school, I swear.

Get a $3 Pilot Varsity, and use it however you want. It works slightly better if you keep the flat metal part on the top, but I've used one in every orientation.

No special way to use it, disposable, and cheap if you don't like it. Addicting if you do.

The Pilot Varsity is very good value.

I bought a fancy TWSBI with different inks only to discover that my favorite ink was the Pilot Varsity blue. So now I just use the Varsity.

Where can you get a single pack for $3?

https://www.jetpens.com/Pilot-Varsity-Disposable-Fountain-Pe...

And they're $3.20, sorry...

EDIT: Amazon also offers them, but at a markup ($5). I've also seen them in Staples' pen isle.

Nah, I'm the black sheep in my family with regards to fountain pens. I've entertained their insistence that I'd love The One if I ever found it, and tried everything from the Varsity to the $500 sausage. I found them all lacking.

Fair enough. Mind sharing your fountain pen wishlist?

I've loved Pilots; the G7 when I'm dashy, the V5 when I'm neat, and anybody's gel rollers when I want a pretty ink. Oh, and don't forget fineline markers!

My brother tells me "oh you'll love the Varsity, it's the ballpoint of nib pens!" But, you see, it isn't. Ballpoint pens do an excellent job of being ballpoint pens, and the Varsity does not.

The tradeoff is that it rewards you for doing the right thing- less hand strain, prettier ink, more lightfastness if you pick the right inks.

On the result, it's really about more choices of pretty ink.

Lightfastness isn't an issue with standard black ink, and hand strain is a solved issue on the disposable side (you still need to find the right maker and right shape for your style, just like for anything ergonomic)

The pressure required for a fountain pen is much less than that of a ballpoint pen. Your nib just glides over the paper and ink comes out. That's what makes fountain pens more ergonomic than other pens.

You should really try the pilot g7. It's like using a brush. I'll grant that bic pens take some pressure, but that just isn't true of all ballpoint pens.

The G7 was my favorite prior to discovering the Varsity.

I had to write with a fountain pen as a kid. It felt normal then, but looking back it seems silly.

Those things blot. Not just while writing, but also when handling the paper afterwards. So you'd have to use blotting paper, and/or wait. In the mean time a ballpoint pen would be done and dry.

You also have to hold a fountain pen juuuust right to write. Not rotated correctly? You're scraping paper instead of writing. Pressing a bit too hard? Waterfall of ink on your paper. Ballpoint pens will write in whatever rotation and with whatever pressure you want. Pencils will even write upside down.

Ink also runs out way quicker for some reason. So you're messing with refilling those pens more.

Ballpoint pens are just a superior technology, which is why fountain pens are so rarely used nowadays. I feel the love of fountain pens is just nostalgia. A love for the past that makes people overlook flaws.

This sounds precisely like the mechanical vs quartz watch debate. The $50 Casio keeps better time, is more durable, and requires less maintenance than the $10k Rolex. Practically speaking, there is no debate to be had. But it won't stop people from being fascinated by the prospect of time being kept solely by the movement of highly precise little gears.

When it comes to fountain pens though, the practical concerns you brought up are not wrong but somewhat overstated, and to me a fountain pen honestly feels nicer to write with than a ballpoint, so it's not solely an aesthetic.

I love that you can get mechanical watches for between $50 an $100 now. They don't keep great time (loose/gain a few seconds a day), but there's something mesmerizing about watching that second hand sweep.

Yeah, I got a Seiko 5 for under a hundred bucks awhile ago which was actually scary accurate. The only thing that irks me about cheap mechanicals is that the movement is essentially disposable like a battery, as it's way more expensive to service than replace. To me, this diminishes the mechanical cool factor a bit.

I agree, for under $100, they'll probably last under a year of solid use. And I agree that they're not generally worth getting serviced (though, if you want a new hobby...), the lack of good jewels on the pivot points will kill you.

I swap mine out with some Citizen solar powered analog watches, and both of my mechanical ones are still going strong.

I have several Seiko 5s, the oldest is around 20 years old. Never been opened.

The trick is to use them in turn regularly.

I also have an inherited Omega which is 60+ years old. This was serviced once when I got it, 25 years ago.

just slap $200 on your $100 watch budget and get a proper mechanical seiko. beats a rolex any time. why? because rolex is just an eta movement slapped in a rolex casing. a seiko is a seiko movement in a seiko casing. and such a seiko watch can be serviced in seiko stores which you'll find in many larger towns all around the world. even if you want to spend four digits on a watch - never a rolex. so many better options.

There are two kinds of fountain pens; or rather, there are two kinds of fountain pen nibs. There are the kind that have a little ball or flattened wedge at the end — which makes the stroke of them uniform, and thereby essentially just makes them into an "aesthetic" ballpoint pen. That's the kind that the article is talking about. It's silly, but I don't think it's the kind you used. These nibs really are engineered to just act like a ballpoint pen in a weird shape — they are paired with more viscous inks, whose surface tension prevents outflow except on dry paper, and so stops blotting.

Then there's the other kind — the kind with a nib that comes to a sharp, thin, flexible point of metal — which is the "traditional" fountain pen that someone from the early 1900s would recognize. I think this is the kind you recall using.

I don't think anyone today is of the opinion that a "traditional" fountain pen makes a good "writing pen", any more than a hunk of charcoal would make a good "writing pencil." They're not for that. (At least, not any more.)

"Traditional" fountain pens are instead sold and marketed, in the modern era, as being for art — specifically, calligraphy. Where all of the things you mentioned aren't really a problem, because you're being very careful and slow and exacting, to put down a sparing and precisely-controlled amount of ink, on very carefully selected paper, after a lot of practice strokes on scrap paper.

It's not about the convenience. It's about the ritual.

People either get it, or not.

Ballpoint pens require pressure to melt the ink paste to apply it to the page. For those with arthritis, this can be a problem. Fountain pens apply liquid ink to the page through capillary action, meaning the nib merely needs to touch the paper for ink to be left there. Advantage: fountain pen.

In order to apply the pressure, the writing angle of a ballpoint pen to paper must also be much higher. This is less ergonomic in general. Advantage: fountain pen.

If you are pressing a fountain pen into the page, you are using it incorrectly. It's meant to glide across the page. Because it glides, and you can use it at a more ergonomic angle, without pressing, you can relax your hand. This means you can write for longer. Advantage: fountain pen.

Fountain pens are not disposable, you refill them with ink, and if you use a converter, or an integral filling system (vacuum, lever and sac, piston, eye-dropper) you are not discarding any kind of plastic pieces to clutter the environment. Advantage: fountain pen.

With the same fountain pen, you gain the use of hundreds of different inks across the entire spectrum. Inks that sheen, inks that shade, inks with shimmer, perfumed inks, even invisible inks! Advantage: fountain pen.

Ballpoint advantages: cheap, useful for carbon forms, work for super-cheap paper, and yes, they work in zero-G when pressurized.

Roller ball and gel pens are superior to ballpoints. But fountain pens have them beat, especially for people with RSI or arthritis issues. As for nib sweet spots, Lamy Safari's can write from most rotations just fine, and their grip will help you orient the nib properly.

You probably also haven't used quick-drying inks. They often don't require any sort of blotting, though that depends on paper "sizing" (the coating on the paper).

A TWSBI Eco with a medium nib or maybe a Pilot Prera in fine would be a good start for anyone, both under $50. Maybe a Pilot Kakuno since they are under $20. Lamy Safari are often recommended, but have a forced grip pattern due to the shape of the barrel. Pilot Vanishing Point is going to be the best for retractable, but at just under $200-- it isn't super practical, although it will last a lifetime and Pilot will typically warranty them for free/cheap for the life of the pen. A Majohn A1 or A2 is close enough for 10% of the price if you want a retractable fountain pen.

For kids of my generation in Germany (born 1966) fountain pens were mandatory, pencils and ballpoint pens were not acceptable for schoolwork. This was a mixed blessing, while it was nice to write with a fountain pen they didn't really stand up to abuse from elementary school age kids. Also, having a "Tintenkiller" (ink eraser) that still worked was a constant struggle.

There were two tribes at that time: Geha and Pelikan with incompatible cartridges. Obviously and senselessly you'd fight for your tribe. Later in life I had the Lamy the author describes but I didn't love it, somehow it was less reliable than the chunky kids models.

In retrospect I have a vague nostalgia for fountain pens but zero desire to go back and use them for anything other than ceremonial purposes.

i'm generation lamy vs pelikan. even back in elementary school i already knew that those "chunky" lamy pens with their red knobs aren't on par with my sense for aesthetics. the slick style of a pelikan was where it's at for me.

i recently started writing more with hand and noticed how uncomfortable ball point pens feel after few minutes of writing. i ordered a bunch of pilot v-pens and hope this will work out better for me.

I was really into fountain pens and nice inks when I was 25–35, and yes, writing with them was a finer thing in life that I enjoyed.

You know what else I had during that time? Lots of free time and disposable income. Now that I don’t have any free time, a fountain pen is just fussier to use, and more than anything an annoying reminder of how little brain and energy I have left at the end of the day.

A good fountain pen does not let you enjoy the finer things. What you need for that is free time and disposable income.

The practical tradeoffs all cut against fountain pens: they run out of ink quickly, they dry out quickly, the ink smudges until it dries, the ink will run or be erased if the paper gets wet, they are very sensitive to the quality of paper, they can leak easily in your pocket, etc.

Nonetheless I have several fountain pens, and I enjoy writing with them. There is a bit of ceremony about it. It slows you down somewhat; this is good. It's rather like kneading bread dough by hand instead of plopping the ingredients into the bread maker and pushing the button. It puts me in touch with the craft of writing instead of its mere utility.

> they run out of ink quickly, they dry out quickly, the ink smudges until it dries, the ink will run or be erased if the paper gets wet, they are very sensitive to the quality of paper, they can leak easily in your pocket, etc.

Wut?

It sounds like you're talking more about dip pens than fountain pens? Because aside from the ink drying time (it does smudge for up to a minute for really thick lines), most of those are artifacts of older inks and pens. And there are a lot of varieties of inks to take care of fast drying or waterproofness, etc.

And a good cap will keep a pen from leaking in your pants.

I have a Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen and the ink in it evaporates really quickly. I bought a Platinum Preppy fountain pen for $6 and it’s much better in this regard.

> the ink in it evaporates really quickly

I wonder, what kind of ink? Noodler inks last forever in my pens, and I've also been having good luck with some of the india inks.

That said, some of the older style pigment inks do tend to gum up a lot more, but they're falling out of favor more and more.

Pilot Namiki black ink.

> Wut? It sounds like you're talking more about dip pens than fountain pens?

No. These things don't happen all the time with fountain pens, but they can happen much more frequently than with ball point pens.

Fountains pens are nice if you write by hand a lot.

When I was taking humanities classes, I would get assigned 30 page of readings a week -- which meant a ton of summarizing and note taking. I started out using a ballpoint pen, but I would get tired after a few pages of writing.

I decided to invest in a fountain pen, which allowed me to write with a lighter grip. It was a quality of life improvement. It made writing feel pleasurable (similar to how I feel when I see the PDF produced by a LaTeX file).

I started with a $15 Japanese Pilot Metropolitan (not a good pen IMO, the fine nib was too scratchy for me) but eventually moved to a $30 Taiwanese TWSBI ECO and nowadays my go-to is a $30 German Lamy Safari. ($200 pens are a luxury; the sweet spot is ~$30; also Western pens and Asian pens are different in their nib sizing).

Those of you who are using BiC pens -- you can do so much better. However, I will admit that gel pens come pretty close, so if you don't care for fountain pens, gel pens should be your go to.

Next up from Wired:

* Cassette Tapes Let You Enjoy the Finer Things In Your Music

* Expert Audiophile Proves Vinyl Has Superior Audio Quality

* Real Men Drive Still Drive a Manual

* How to Calculate Anything With a Slide Rule

Should we expect anything less for the publication headquartered in the city that is (was) literally the USA's hipster factory? The folks that huff on nostalgia like it were paint thinner?

There's no need to spend $200 for a good fountain pen. There are some very good pens for under $30, for example. I always have a fountain pen in my pocket, one in my desk at work, and one in my desk at home. And 3 or 4 others, empty and just waiting to be filled. I have the ink recommended in the article (well, not that exact colour, but 3 other colours in the same line) and the bottle is a joy to look at: engineering and art married perfectly.

A good pen, with good ink that matches good paper: that is what make writing fun. When I'm doing mundane writing, I just start typing. But when I am looking for an interesting phrase to start a document, or to make a transition from one part to another, or to weave the threads into a conclusion at the end -- that always starts with ink in paper.

Ink on paper is also where all my ideas start, with words, math, and diagrams.

I do know how to use a ballpoint or a felt-tip or those gel thingeebobs. But they are all just seem like work. With a ballpoint, I have to actually press on the paper, like a caveman scratching on a wall. With a felt-tip I have to, well, discard it after a couple of uses because they always seem to dry out. I suppose a gel thingeebob comes closest to a felt pen, but can I have 5 bottles of different colours, ready to load up according to my mood?

But enough about me. Another thing I've noticed with fountain pens is that students who learned with them can write well. I don't mean the characters they draw on the page -- I mean the way they organize their ideas. But I don't know if that's because of using a fountain pen or just being educated in a place that encourages the use of fountain pens.

To anyone who wants to dabble -- get a 3-pack of Pilot varsity disposable pens for $17 (today's price online) and see if you like them. The ink will last a long time because they have a big repository (the whole insides, I think). There are others at a low price, but I can only vouch for the Pilot ones. (Their whole line is agreeable to my hand.)

> There are some very good pens for under $30

Pilot Varsity: $3

High quality nibs, no fuss, and I've had a few sitting around for years and they all still work perfectly fine. Great entry point into the addiction.

I learned to write with fountain pens. Fountain pens are a delight to write with, in cursive.

Who is going to (be able to) read my cursive writings? Just as I am, fountain pens and cursive writing are of the past and to be reminisced over for a short period, then forgotten.

The first eight years of my education involved many hours learning to write cursive. The only thing I still know how to write in cursive is my name, although I can still read it.

But, honestly, I don't think that's a bad thing. Writing in cursive is not a necessity, it's an art form. And I am no artist.

The only writing I do nowadays is in (horrendous) cursive.

my signature.

Signatures are more line art than cursive. They're intended to be roughly unique and roughly repeatable, not legible.

What's wrong with using them for regular writing? I don't write cursive. At all, at least not since I learned it in school. I quite like my fountain pen. I used other pens my whole life and it just felt right when I tried it. They don't write all that different than a ballpoint.

> ... regular writing ...

My experience with fountain pen 'print writing' is drips and sloppiness. This happens because the tip has to be picked up between each letter and the tines will have some extra ink on them, making drips more likely.

I can't even read my own cursive, let alone anyone else's.

I basically didn't learn how to write in school for like 4 years because somehow that's how long it took my teachers to realise I was incapable of writing cursive readable by anyone, including them, and stop forcing me to write in it.

This was around the turn of the millennium, so not that long ago, but all the teachers were old and set in their ways. Terrible school, just terrible.

I used fountain pens a lot in the 80s and 90s. They are expensive and fragile, but I really like the feel of a good nib against sketchpad paper.

[Never let someone borrow your fountain pen. It can be . . . terrible]

Lately I've pivoted to cheap disposable fountain pens. The nibs are not bad, they last a reasonable amount of time, and if I lose one I'm not tearing up the cushions or retracing my steps for the day to try to recover a pen worth several hundred bucks.

I'll also happy to loan you one. There are more in my pockets.

Fountain pens are like mechanical keyboards. People use them because they make the act of writing _feel_ good. It's not about the tech, but rather about the pleasure of using the instrument. How smooth do you want the nib to be? How much feedback? How bouncy/flexible? How much line variation? Discovering (or modding) your preferred nib is a bit like discovering the one switch that suits you really. A bit of a rabbit hole... And then of course you get into inks.

> And then of course you get into inks.

Shimmering inks (inks with glitter suspended in them). You will probably need to use dip pens (I like glass ones), but the results are stunning. Not something you'd ever expect to see out of a pen.

Plus, you an also use thinned acrylic paints with dip pens...

> "The textured finish on a perfectly shaped barrel - innovations from German industrial designer Gerd A. Müller - means the pen fits great in my hand and provides perfect friction on my fingers, with a silvery metal section toward the nib that keeps them from slipping too low. Look at that subtle off-white coloring. The tasteful thickness of it."

OMG, what drama!

But, it’s a really nice pen.

I wonder whether the piston mechanism ever breaks, because unlike other lamys, this part can not be disassembled by a layman.

> The textured finish on a perfectly shaped barrel

It's made of polycarbonate. Polycarbonate scratches easily. The solution was to sell it pre-scratched.

(I have a Lamy 2000. It's a nice pen. Perhaps not as nice now that it's twice the price.)

I used to love fountain pens, they feel amazing to write with, and the variable line thickness makes everything look awesome.

They are also a massive pain, the higher end ones use gold alloys for the nib, making it delicate, if they aren't used enough the ink dries in the nib, they tend to get ink everywhere, and they can be really inconsistent.

Those sound more like dip pens with some old iron gall inks.

Modern nibs are able to be used in pretty much any orientation, and they use modern inks which don't dry out, if you keep a cap on them. I have several pens with caps that sit for years and don't dry out, nor do they require any different writing methodology.

I first used a fountain pen in an art class in high school. That's when I learned they don't really work for lefties since we push the pen across the page instead of pulling it. Unless you're one of those people who curls their hand around crazily to write with a pulling motion.

Either way, the ink is gonna get smudged all to hell.

Da Vinci was a lefty, he solved the problem by writing from right to left. So long as you're the only one who has to read it later, it's a good solution.

Now I'm curious how right handed people solved it when writing a right-to-left script.

One of the points of writing with a nice, thick fountain pen is that you can vary the line width quite a bit while you are writing, by applying more pressure on the nib. This leads to more pleasant calligraphy than you can ever get with a rollerball.

Random example: https://www.penparents.org/img/twsbi_with_flex_nib_twsbi.jpg

I'm going to do all of you a solid and introduce you to my crack, err, fountain pen/ink dealer (as well as all the other styles of pens).

Jet pens: https://www.jetpens.com/

Also, consider trying out glass dip pens, since you can play with "shimmering" inks then. And they're pretty.

I don’t get fountain pens. The ink doesn’t look good and no, they don’t feel good to write with either.

I have the same reaction to smoking and alcohol, though. “Ugh, no thank you.”

Before they sold out and ruined themselves, my favorite pen was the Sanford Calligraphy pen.

Now I use the Faber-Castell FinePen 1511. Ink doesn’t bleed and dries fast enough that my dragging left hand won’t smear it.

I wonder if they've found fude pens / sign pens... But I enjoy all types for the finer things in life.

Finding jetpens.com has been a blessing and curse

They're crack dealers, to be sure. But they offer a lot of stationary supplies you can't get even in dedicated office supply stores. Like .3mm gel pens. And automatic rotating/advancing mechanical pencils.

No need to get a 200$ 2k Lamy to have fun though, the 50$ Safari (cartridges, M nib) and midori notebooks (10$ each) are a joy to use.

I love fountain pens, and I have many good ones. However, I now prefer Uniball Signo gel pens to any of my fountain pens.

Those are some good gel pens. I like them too, but I in turn prefer my fountain pens over gels or rollerballs.

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