Let's take a pen poll! Here are some of the pens I use in my Filofax. As you can tell by the ink level, the Pilot G2 (.38 mm) is my everyday favorite. I like to use different colors to highlight things like holidays, special occasions, and weather.
As always on Friday, feel free to discuss anything related to ring-bound organizers!
Current rotation:
ReplyDeletePilot G2, or Mitsubishi One (both 0.38)in Big Idea Design pens (because they are adjustable and can take different refill formats)
OHTO needlepoint ballpoints in any Parker compatible pen
Sailor FP with the 21k XXF nib
Pilot Capless FP with Japanese XF import nib
Titanium "Lamy Safari" import with a 14k Lamy xf nib
Hongdian C1 with XF nib
I am currently using Diamine ink exclusively in the fountain pens. I like Grey and Washable Blue a lot because they tend to perform well without feathering or bleed even on the worst Filofax paper.
If I am at home though my favorite combination is a vintage Josiah Mason dip pen nib with Windsor and Newton India Ink, which will write perfectly on any paper and it's fully permanent.
Does anyone else use different pens for different organiser formats? For me it is very important to scale the line width in proportion to the page size.
ReplyDeleteFor Personal or pocket this means a 0.38 nib usually in blue black because it lays down a finer line or Japanese / Chinese xxf/xf fountain pen because they are finer than the Western equivalents.
For A5 it has to be a 0.5 rollerball or gel and western XF nib. Generally speaking.
Or am I just weird!
In my The Bridge A5 organiser I use a Parker Flight 45 propelling pencil with a .5mm lead and a matching ball point pen (a 21st birthday present from my sister) with a roller ball fine blue refill. It has a pearly button on top which I half melted when I used the pen to straighten the wick of the candle I was working by during the miners’ strike!
ReplyDeleteIn my personal organiser I have a double ended ball point pen with a turned wood barrel. It has mini refills at both ends, blue and red, I used it for essay editing at Uni many years ago. The red end is now redundant, how I wish there was such a thing as a mini mechanical pencil to replace it with for sketching. Until then I’m looking for a refill with grey ink instead.
I use a variety of pens in my Filofaxes: either a Montblanc 164 or some old Parker pens (old Premier, Sonnet, 51 bp, etc.), Lamy (cp1), or Caran d'Ache (849 or ecridor). I gave up on fountain pens after realizing that Filofax paper was, and still seems to be, designed for ballpoint pens. I've never really liked gel pens; they're too slippery for me. Very rarely do I feel tempted to use a mechanical pencil.
ReplyDeleteIn my personal Sherwood organiser, I have two pen loops that hold a Parker Jotter (blue ink) and a 0.5 mm Pentel P205 mechanical pencil for on-the-go use. At home, I use erasable Pilot Frixion Clicker 0.7 pens, with red for notable dates such as birthdays and anniversaries, and blue for recurring events. I also use a 0.5 mm Uni-ball Kuru Toga M5-1017 Self-Sharpening Mechanical Pencil for one-off appointments and my financial sheets.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to the above, I use Staedtler highlighters: Pink (Bank Holidays), yellow (regular workday holidays), orange (non-workday holidays), green (Sick days), and Blue (Flexitime days off).
DeleteI'm into Jetstreams right now from uni ball. I also bought a pack of 3 uni ball erasable pens as they were selling them off cheaply at a closing WHSmith store. I had frixions but IMHO they are pretty poor. These uni ball erasable pens are better but in prefer Jetstrea clickers.
ReplyDeleteI have a a Zebra Delguard, bought because they have a good reputation for those with heavy hands. I kept breaking my 0.7mm mechanical pencils in the past. I probably snapped half the length of each lead. The delguard works well.
Is there anybody who makes positive experiences with using fountain pens? Any special ink - pen combination?
ReplyDeleteExtra fine nibs like the hooded nibs from Hongdian or Pilot / Sailor XFs. The Pilot Preppy is an economical option.
DeleteDiamine Grey in an xf pen works well. Avoid Western XF nibs because they come up broader.
Or Winsor and Newton India Ink but obviously only with a dip pen. The shellac in the ink means that it settles on top of the paper, unlike fountain pen ink which is strictly speaking a water based dye that soaks in.
I use two fountain pens that are excellent in terms of releasing a lovely consistent ink flow that means I can jot down info and facts while people talk to me without falling behind. My budget pen is a Parker Urban Fountain Pen ( Ebony) that I bought from Amazon about a year ago. It is a light weight but well balanced pen and I use Parker’s Quink Blue Ink in a refillable cartridge. My luxury pen is a Graf von Faber-Castell Classic Anello in Ivory that I bought the best part of 20 years ago and I use a Waterman black ink cartridges. I dropped the Anello nib down onto a tiled floor in 2020 and bent the tip. I was having a good amount of trouble with the ink distribution through the nib after that and it got put into a drawer and not used but I realised from YouTube videos that I could take the nib unit apart quite easily and reset it myself and after that, and a really good clean, it’s been rejuvenated. I was loathe to buy a new nib. I have some old Parker fountain pens that I filled with different coloured calligraphy inks for journaling to make it more fun but I found the ink distribution poor as the ink is more grainy than Parker’s Quink so it’s a bit more frustrating to use them.
DeleteThe reason why I personally use and would recommend the very delicate extra fine nibs is that on cheap paper fountain pen ink spreads to a fatter line. Also, because it is a very watery (in fact a dye) medium, intense amounts bleed through the paper. XF nibs reduce the load being delivered and the likelihood of bleed.
DeleteThe other consideration is dye intensity in the ink. An ink like Waterman Blue-black, considered the pinnacle amongst some pen restorers because of its viscosity, is terrible on filofax paper due to its dye saturation. You are better off with a "cleaner" ink. Washable blues and grey inks work well in this context, but this can depend on manufacturer.
The Pilot Preppy XF seems to use a hybrid ink which behaves more like a gel ink and consequently performs suitably on nasty paper. It is inexpensive, refillable (cartridges) and is a dream to use.
Thanks for the advice, Nibscratcher and Lucy.
DeleteA late pen-related question: can anyone confirm that the Filofax Organiser Pen (061044) uses a 'D1' refill? These are available from many manufacturers, in different colours, widths, etc, and cheaper than Filofax refills.
ReplyDelete@Lucy I read on a FP reddit to avoid Parker Quink ink as it had a rep for causing issues. I still have a black-blue one and a black one too from Parker and I am too tight to waste it. So I only use it when I know I will run the ink out.
ReplyDeleteI like Diamine ink. Not the best but they offer decent ink at reasonable prices IME. I have really not tried much more except Lamy ink in cartridges and I think I used Kaweco pen with cartridges from them too. Although now that Kaweco is with Diamine in a converter.
I haven’t tried Diamine ink but I will give it a go when I next need some given you and Nibscratcher recommend that one. I don’t have any issues with the Quink, it doesn’t go viscous in my pens so I’ve been very happy but it’s always good to try new things out. I’ve used Liquidraw in red and olive and also Poussiere de Lune but much prefer the Quink as the flow is better than those two.
DeleteBleeding is very marginal with the Watermans, I’ve had another look at it this afternoon, I hadn’t noticed it before but there is some when I look closely. I have very large, pretty poor handwriting so the bleeding as a proportion of writing is very low. If my writing was better then maybe…🙂. Thank you both for the good suggestions.