Thinking about Writing: The Pen
We fully intended to write a response to Mike Rohde’s great blog post about being a Pen Freak and in fact thought we had. A quick search indicates that we may not have recorded for posterity our thoughts on writing devices. So here goes.
A pen is a very personal choice, and for those of us who enjoy writing or drawing, an important one. You don’t need much to write—a piece of paper and a pen. But if you’re going to be putting a lot of ink down on paper, it helps to have a tool that you’re comfortable with. We need something that flows smoothly, and this is very important: writes with a narrow stream of ink. Our handwriting is such that a medium nib on a fountain pen or a medium-sized roller ball reduces our scrawl to illegibility.
For best all-around inexpensive pen, we’ve been using the Pilot Precise V5 since college. It writes smoothly and has an extra fine tip. The ink is a luxurious black. This is a pen that writes well, and one doesn’t mind losing them occasionally. We buy them in boxes of 12 and are available at any office supply store. Pilot calls it the “ultimate writing machine,” and they’re pretty much right on. It’s an excellent pen.
In my house growing up, there were also a lot of antique fountain pens lying about, and these were decidedly fun to write with. Some of them had reservoirs that one would fill with India Ink.
We don’t remember when we got our first fountain pen of our own, but we’ve pretty much always had a couple that we use especially for writing letters. In 1991, we went the way of industrial design and purchased a black Lamy Safari fountain pen from the museum store at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. At that time, it was $25 and was constructed mostly of plastic. But it looked cool, and it was of course a fountain pen.
A year or two ago, we were looking for a place to buy fountain pens and came across the excellent Fountain Pen Hospital. They have a showroom at 10 Warren St across from City Hall in New York City. But they also do a great mail order business. They’ve got pretty much everything you could want in fine pens.
We purchased a Lamy Safari fountain pen in yellow with an extra fine nib from the Fountain Pen Hospital and were very pleased with the service. We also bought a bunch of ink cartidges at the time as well. Their prices were good. That Lamy Safari pen still lists for $25, and the FPH sold it to us for $21.95. Not a bad deal for a nice pen that catches everyone’s eye.
Our only complaint about Fountain Pen Hospital is that they’ve inundated our mailbox with catalogs and flyers. Sure, we appreciate a fine writing instrument as much as anyone else, but our interest in $4,000 fountain pens is pretty limited. If you dig around, you’ll see that FPH has a lot of fountain pens in the $125-$625 range, but they’ve got some great pens for under $100 as well. Us? We totally dig our yellow Lamy Safari and leave it at that.
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Why oh why do you always write with the royal "we"? By the way, if Dan's mom is reading this, "Hey, Girl! How are you? Have you ever heard of a singer named Dido? Dan has her CD, and I think you would really enjoy it."
Annony
I'm a bit of a pen freak myself and have had really good luck with the Pilot Dr. Grip Gel, which I first read about at Kevin Kelly's Cool Things. It's my daily pen of choice. It's the only (disposable?) pen I can think of that I've actually wanted to refill more than once.
I also like uni-ball jetstream they came out with last year. It is a gel ink pen, but it doesn't smear like many of the other gel pens out there. It writes really smooth like gel, but dries very quickly like a regular ball-point pen.
I haven't really tried out gel pens enough to say much about them, but I recently bought a pack of Pilot gel pens that have been mediocre at best. I'm still partial to roller balls. If Pilot ever degrades their V5 standard, I'd definitely check out Uni-ball because I've had good—though brief—experiences with their roller ball pens. Roller ball pens are a lot more fluid in my opinion. Fountain pens are of course great, but appropriate more for situations where you want to accentuate the handwriting aspect of whatever you're writing.
Thanks for the mention Dan; I have recently returned to Pilot G2 gel pens and they seem to be good in the 0.7 size for flow compared to 0.5. And of course there are fountain pens which are always nice but not always practical for every situation.
One thing I do like about many of the gel inks: permanence once dry. I read an article by some crazy user who literally boiled the paper with gel ink and it still didn't come free of the paper. This is handy if you still write paper checks and are concerned about protecting yourself againsd identity theft.
Yes, Mike, I had tried the Pilot G-2 in the 0.5 extra fine size and have really not been impressed with them. Since I do tend to use them for things like check writing as you mention, I'll have to give the 0.7 size a go. Uni-ball markets their 207 pen as being good for preventing identity theft by check washing.
Do you have any idea which Pilot pen Steve Jobs is fixated upon? I read a quote about him favoring one of their pens years ago and don't remember the model.
Ditto on the "royal we".
Hey, Mr. Siegling, always the critic. Haven't heard from you in a while. What's new?
Those look like they are good desk/office pens, but what about one that fits in your pocket? I've been using a Cross Ion Gel Pen since they came out and I find it extremely handy.
As for the "royal we", it's your blog so use it if you want.
Thanks for the suggestion, Mark. Yes, sometimes having a small pen that you can take everywhere is pretty handy. I have a friend who has a detachable pen that hooks onto his keyring. It's small. It fits in his pocket, and he always has a writing device with him when he wants to scribble down notes onto the piece of paper he always keeps folded in his wallet.
You touched on fountain pens, have you ever tried a MontBlanc? I love their pens, owning a Meisterstuck along with a StarWalker ballpoint pen, great for everyday use. May be a little costly, but will last a lifetime.