Lamy Safari

Until a friend introduced me to the wonderful world of fountain pens almost two years ago I always used fine tipped ballpoint pens to draw my mazes. The mazes are drawn with somewhat narrow passages so when I use fountain pens they must have fine nibs. Up until recently I only had five pens, 2 Pilot Vanishing Points, a Ducati Limited and 2 Noodler's fountain pens. I had done well to resist buying anymore.

Anyone who hasn't become afflicted with the fountain pen bug would think five pens is quite enough. Of course they are wrong. Five is not even a half dozen or a six pack. How can anyone be expected to survive without at least a six pack. Plus five is not even an even number. So I went ahead and bought two more pens, to give me a total of seven pens. I know seven is not even, but even is in the word. Plus seven is a prime number. Of course, five is too, but six isn't. So once you have six, you might as well get seven.

Once I had a good enough reason to get them, my choice for these two new pens was simple. I got two Lamy Safaris. They are relatively inexpensive and they have the ability to use bottled ink if you purchase the available converter. They are available in a wide variety of nib sizes, EF, F, M and B. Mine are both Extra Fine. The Goulet Pen Company sells the nibs in steel and black steel. I like the look of the black nibs.

This pen design has been around for many years. It has been in production since the 1980s. Still it is new to me as almost all fountain pens are. Here are some pictures of one of my new pens.

The O-Ring at the base of the finger grip serves as the friction point to hold the cap in place when the pen is not in use. This seems to be an efficient design feature.

The pens are made of a sturdy, but lightweight plastic. There is a triangular shaped grip which happens to fit my hand perfectly. If you post the cap it shifts the balance too much towards the rear to suit me, but with the cap off it feels terrific. I could draw all day with one of these pens. If you look at the Lamy site you will see that the Safari is listed under their “Young Writer” category. I think that just means less expensive, or less snobbish. At 55 I think I'm still young enough to use one (or two) of these pens.

The Extra Fine nib puts down a line very similar to the Fine nib of my Pilot Vanishing Points. Here is a page of my fifth maze in progress. The orange part is drawn with the Vanishing Point using Diamine Pumpkin. The blackish part is with the Extra Fine Safari using J. Herbin Poussière de Lune.

I assume that as with any mass produced nib there will be variation in the smoothness of the feel when writing. This particular pen is very smooth straight out of the box. I haven't tried my second Safari yet to see how it performs.

I will be putting my pens to work on the August 2011 Ink Drop right away.

Jonathan

Bittner the Pleasure of Writing

Hidden away amongst the art galleries, shoe shops, clothes boutiques that make up downtown Carmel is a little shop which fountain pen aficionados will enjoy. It is Bittner on Ocean Ave. In this new world of online shopping it must be tough going for a brick and mortar store and especially one in an upscale tourist destination.

We don't always visit Carmel when we stay in the Monterey Bay area, but if we do I always visit this shop.

It is fun to look at pens I could never afford. This is where I bought my first Pilot Vanishing Point and where I bought my Ducati Limited.

They carry fine watches as well.

Before my friend told me about Goulet Pens I bought most of my ink here. Needless to say Goulet Pen Company has a much bigger selection of brands and colors.

Bittner has an online presence as well and I received a very cool print catalog last year. There were pens in it going for thousands and thousands of dollars. I seriously doubt if the thoughts that I would write with one of those would be any more profound than the ones I write with a Bic Ballpoint pen. I would try harder though.

Anyway, it is worth a look if you are in the area.

Jonathan

Another Fountain Pen - Ducati

Aliens, they walk among us. They are difficult to spot in normal day to day life, but put one on a MotoGP motorcycle and they are easy to recognize. Their blinding speed compared to the best of the rest gives them away. From time to time a youngster will join the cast of riders at racing's top level and be revealed as another such alien.

Currently common opinion is that there are four aliens riding in MotoGP. There is Dani Pedrosa the Spanish rider at Honda. There is Casey Stoner the Aussie who won the World Championship for Ducati in 2007. There is aging super Champion Valentino Rossi. Now there is the youngster Jorge Lorenzo who in the reigning World Champion. Over the last two years Lorenzo made Rossi's life at the Yahama Team less than comfortable with his sheer speed. Finally Rossi decided to leave Yahama for greener pastures. And by greener, I mean redder. As in Ducati.

An Italian riding for Ducati is a big deal, but if that Italian is 9 time World Champion Valentino Rossi it is a huge deal. The Ducati GP bike has for years been a bike that only Casey Stoner could win with. Stoner moved on to Honda and it is Rossi's task to get the red machines to work for him. So far this season it hasn't looked good.

Here is a model of Casey Stoner's Ducati in 2008.

Ducati is known for their motorcycles, but they also make fine fountain pens. I recently purchased one of their limited edition pens. I figure there when be a limited edition Rossi pen out in a year or two, but I had to have this one.

 

Today I got it out and inked it up for the first time.

Only 500 of these pens were made worldwide. Each is numbered on the ring around the cap.

It is made out of aluminum which might make you think it is light. It is not light. It is a substantial pen. I like the styling of it. It is a retro look, almost Flash Gordon like.

I inked it up with the Easter Egg #2 ink from Goulet Pens April Ink Drop. Now it is time to try it out on a maze.

I have the first Ink Drop maze done. I just have to scan and edit it.

Jonathan

Drawing The Line - 5

It is clear that the Pilot Easy Touch ball point pen I have been using for my Line Around The World Project is going to fail me. It only has a few hundred feet worth of ink left in it. This means that it will soon be time to write this Project off as another of my brilliant ideas that failed for some reason beyond my control.

As an aside, here is an idea I came up with today while I was in the shower. Imagine a company that will store online all of the memories that a person would like to have in a future life. Say that you put a 1000 bucks in a bank account before dying. Instead of your heirs receiving and living it up with the windfall, you keep it secret and store all of the information you will need to collect it if you are reincarnated. The company, for a fee collected in advance, will keep the information safe and available to the new you. If it takes a century or two to find it, all the better, for the interest will swell the account to a huge sum. Of course there are some technical difficulties to work out, but there the idea is for anyone that wants to run with it.

Back to my Line, just when it seemed doomed, a new product arrived on the market in time to save the Project. Noodler's has produced a roller ball piston filled pen called the Nib Creeper. Here is a picture of one I ordered:

This pen will allow me to carry on with the Line Around The World Project using a small number of pens. Instead of using 50,000 or more regular ball point pens, I can use this refillable one and a few hundred bottles of fountain pen ink. I have already done some scientific testing with this pen and discovered that one load of ink will draw a line 3,266 feet long, or 0.62 of a mile. That is as far as the Pilot ball point. According to the folks at Noodler's it has been specially designed to be low maintenance. It is possible to purchase replacement nibs for it at a cost of 2 per dollar.

I have purchased two of these pens. One as the main line pen, and the other as an emergency backup pen. Thinking ahead I also purchased two different inks from Noodler's Polar inks series. These inks are mostly water proof and will supposedly not freeze up in winter conditions. Hopefully these will work in Arctic conditions. That will be the true test. The colors I'm testing now are Polar Black and Polar Blue.

Armed with this new writing instrument and ink I am well prepared to face the rigors of the project and will carry on.

Tomorrow is a day off, but the next page of my maze will be posted on Monday.

Jonathan

Pen and Ink Log

Making lists of important things is one of my occupations. It doesn't pay well, but it is a passion. My journal pages are the place I make my really important lists. These lists include, but are not limited to:

Books that I have read.

Books to read.

Albums or CDs that I listened to and what I was doing while listening

Fastest Laps around various race tracks. (Computer simulations only!)

Flight hours and destinations (MS Flight Simulation)

To do lists for days off (I can usually carry over 90% of the previous week's list)

Work hours

Motorcycle rides and mileage

Bicycle rides and mileage

Daily food log

How much I owe Micro Soft for Solitaire

Letters and Cards sent

Wants and desires list (wish list)

Idea list (pretty short list)

Most important is my pen and ink log. Until I bought my first fountain pen I didn't have such a list. Why would I? It would be rather tedious. Not that that's a bad thing.

It would look sort of like this:

1/01/2003 Pilot Easy Touch Black Fine

1/24/2003 Pilot Easy Touch Black Fine

2/25/2003 Pilot Easy Touch Black Fine

and so on....

Actually now that I've done that, I wish I had kept such a list. I'll put it on my To Do list, or should it go on my Idea list? I don't know, but I'll figure it out.

Here is a picture of my Pen and Ink Log which is in my current journal.

At some point a list may become important enough to merit its own notebook. For instance, my Flight Hours log is now kept in its own book. Since my current journal is to be retired at the end of the year, it was necessary to transfer the Pen and Ink Log to its own book. My buddy gave be a nice orange notebook with Clairefontaine paper in it, which is perfect for the job. Here is a page from this new listing:

Each pen has its own page. At some point I want to have each ink I own and use to have part of a page with sample writing. I have great plans for this log.

Of course until the end of the year I need to make an entry into both lists, the old and the new. Yep it is happy days around here!

Jonathan

My Pens

It is time to introduce you to the tools of my trade. The first thing that you need to know is that because they are first and foremost tools, or instruments, to me these pens are of a more functional design than beautiful art objects. My work requires that a pen have the ability to produce very fine lines combined with great portability and durability.

As a total novice in the world of fountain pens I know of only one type of pen that satisfies these criteria. This is the Pilot Vanishing Point fountain pens with a Fine nib. It writes very fine lines, as fine as any ball point. It has a retractable nib that works like a regular retractable ball point pen. You just press on the button at the top in to click the nib in or out. This means that the all important nib is protected while not in use. Finally it is portable. It is small, lightweight and doesn't have a separate cap that can be lost or left behind. It looks a bit bulbous and funky, but is ideal from a functional point of view.

As I have mentioned before, I now have two of this type. The first one I bought, Pen One, was recently lost. I believe that it fell out of my backpack somewhere during transport.

Sigh.

It has been rough, but I'm almost over it. Anyway, within days of that tragic loss I had purchased a replacement pen of the same type which I have named Pen Three. So perhaps you can figure out that my other Pilot pen is called, Pen Two. Here is pen two:

And here it is with the nib out:

Pen Three is almost exactly the same, the only difference is that it has a solid black body. Actually it is different in another way too, but I will discuss that in another post.

Now those are the pens that I use to draw my mazes, write in my journal, and make various lists of things I keep track of. Recently certain persons with whom I correspond  mentioned, or perhaps complained is more accurate, that the handwriting in my letters was too small. They are probably correct about that, so I recently bought a pen with a Medium nib. This is a Monteverde Invincia. Here it is, Pen Four:

Here it is with the cap off:



It is very difficult to make it out in these pictures. It is so black. It matchs the black plastic of my Casio Illuminator. Darth Vader probably carries one of these for personal correspondence. It is cool and more importantly it forces me to write larger so that human beings can read the silly nonsense I tend to fill up paper with.

So there they are, my four … I mean, three pens. I really wish I could do a video for you. Maybe later!

Tomorrow is a day off. On Monday we get the next page of the maze. Tuesday is another day off, so that means that Wednesday it will be time to check and see how much progress I've made on the Line Around The World.

Jonathan

The Point Of The Point

Last August my buddy was down here in California for a visit. While he was here he showed me the fountain pen he has been using. It was a Pilot Vanishing Pen with a Fine Nib on it. It was very cool, but I didn't think that it would work for my mazes or for writing in my journal. I write very small and draw narrow passage ways. I didn't think a fountain pen could handle it. He let me try it and I was surprised to find that it was capable of detailed work. I didn't buy one right away. I waited a week, and I have been using one, actually two, of them ever since.

What was the point of the thread of posts about the Ball Point Pens? Just that I like to run them out. I could have just said that, but that is not my usual way. I mean, if I would have said, “Hey Dude, I like fountain pens”, you may have thought that I was some kind of crank. After reading my earlier posts you will see that I have a very good reason for liking them, dude.

The great thing about fountain pens is that they run out of ink much more often than ball point pens do. While you are sleeping all comfy in your bed at night, I am carrying out scientific research into just how much more often they do run dry. No, I'm not asking for a medal, it is what I do. Then there are literally hundreds, maybe thousands of different inks to try. It is a whole 'n other world. So in the last year I have purchased four fountain pens. While that might seem like a lot, it is fairly restrained compared to many addicts.

Take this gentleman for example. It is clear that he likes his pens. Notice that this is part one of his collection. I'll spare you further episodes, but I think I'm a bit jealous.

Some people have enough money that they can take their addictions to extremes.

Addicts such as these have an online meeting place called the Fountain Pen Network. Yes, I'm a registered member, but haven't made any posts there. Yet.

Here, completely off topic and with no point in mind, but because it came up as a related video for some unknown reason, are three fellows and their cellos. There may be a connection I'm just not seeing.

Yes, I know that it is sooooo 2007, but I don't get out much.

Jonathan