Fountain Pens.

[kanwar76]

MTK,

These does look like Javelins. By any chance yours says Japan on the side of the clip?

Here is one pic of the Sheaffer Targa



-Inder

Added in 47 minutes 34 seconds:
Sheaffer No Nonsense Trio



-Inder

[Mack The Knife]

Inder, the Javelin indeed has "JAPAN" mentioned on the side of the clip's base.

Lovely Targa.

[kanwar76]

Inder, the Javelin indeed has "JAPAN" mentioned on the side of the clip's base.

Lovely Targa.

Ah, so they are indeed Javelins. Your Black one looks really beautiful.

Here is Lamy Al-Star



This Parker pair was a gift from my little brother. I am not sure what model is this, there is no model name on the box.Package came with a ball point, One fountain pen and a leather pen case.

[essdee1972]

Regular Use: Lamy Safari, with Schaeffer ink; Boker Tactical pen (for meeting minutes, very fast writing). Maped clutch pencil on 0.2 and 0.5.

All inks are black.

I also use a Schaeffer calligraphy pen, mostly for greeting cards and "Thank you" notes.

I prefer the refillable convertors to the cartridges, for reasons pertaining to the wallet!

Alternate the Lamy with Schaeffer (don't recall the model offhand). I prefer the Lamy as it has a fine point, and the Schaeffer has a medium (it was a gift from a grateful summer trainee).

I restarted writing with fountain pens after a long hiatus in college and the first few years of work. Started with those old Chinese "Hero" and "Wing Sung", which those of you old enough would probably remember from your school days. Plastic body with squeeze filling system, gold coloured cap.

Graduated to Parker (Diwali gift from employers), then straight to Lamy (thank God for William Penn stores at airports).

I am also looking for a halfway decent pen under Rs. 100 for my kid to start off. Nowadays schools do not insist on fountain pens, they way they used to do in those far off days when I was being educated. And I feel that if kids do not learn with a fountain pen, they'll all have lousy handwriting when they grow up!

Thankfully, at least schools in India still insist on cursive writing!!

And Mack, XL, I passed out in 1995, but we still learnt engineering drawing with drafters and imperial sheets of paper and the trusty old Koh-I-Noor in different H's and B's. The Arch guys learnt with T squares and set squares. They weren't allowed drafters!

[sa_ali]

Wooow, how come i missed this thread. Thats a amazing collection you got there.

Hero and Wing Sung, those are walk down the memory lane

I am avid user of the fountain pen, try to use it in day to day life, but in IT, we rarely get chance to use it. I have some.
Mount Blanc, Few Sheaffers, Parkers, Lamy, Cross
Desire list is Pelikan, Sailor

I will most pics some day

[Mack The Knife]

Inder: A collectable Al-Star. Copy cat! LOL
Unable to identify the Parker your brother gave you.

Essdee'72: Let's see pics of your pens and calligraphy. i haven't practised the latter since my college days but I am quite tempted to buy a pen with a flex nib and teach myself Spencerian some day.
I am an architect but I am comfortable with t-squares, straightedges (still have my cherished Mayline) and drafters (spent a summer vacation doing drafting work in an engineering company).
As I recall, Koh-i-noor was made in India under licence from it's parent company in erstwhile Czechoslavakia. They are still live and kicking in the Czech Republic.
There used to be quite a few pen shops at Flora Fountain. Perhaps you could take your son/daughter there on a Saturday morning and let him/her choose a fountain pen that balances well and is comfortable to write with. Avoid heavy pens at this juncture.
Not using a fountain pen needn't necessarily lead to bad handwriting. I know of a few people, including my father and younger son, who have excellent hadwriting despite not being fountain pen users. I also know of fountain pen users who have bad hand writing. I consider myself to be a borderline case despite using fountain pens almost all of my life.

Sa_ali: Looking forward to pics of your fountain pens.

[essdee1972]

Mack, now that you mention it, even my Dad had excellent handwriting with ballpens. My writing differs so much with a ball pen v/s a fountain pen that it seems like two different people, so probably I was internalizing too much!

I tried to teach myself calligraphy, but gave it up and now write in a style I developed (or rather subconsciously mix-and-matched from various sources). I'll try to put up pics.

I have seen the shops in the Flora Fountain area, but staying on the opposite side of the town, visits are extremely rare. I'll take my son next time I go.

I always wanted a Mont Blanc, but whenever I manage to collect some money, knifecenter happens to have a sale!

[ckkalyan]

Drool-worthy collections of pens you gentlemen have there Mack The Knife and kanwar76! Wow!

I also remembered that Hero was a great value for money brand and the Made in Japan only added to the value. The inked shirts, school bags, vari-colored finger tips all added to the experience.

Inks I used were Parker, Quink and Camel. Does anyone recall the smell the inks gave off, of the nibs? Quaint mixture of Iron and something else. My favourite colors were Blue-Black, Black and Torquoise.

There was one strange pen that I was fascinated by. At first glance it looked looked like a slim short stick, perfectly straight and even, about 18 inches long and the thickness of my thumb. Each end unscrewed into a fountain pen!

Still working on digging out the treasures for a photo session; please bear with me.

[brihacharan]

Thanks Mack for taking the "Ink Pen aficionados" through memory lane
I too am fond of Ink Pens and have a few - Parker, Shaffer, Pilot, Camlin (will post pics asap) and quite a few Cross & Montblanc, Waterman ball pens & roller ink pens....
The inks I remember using Quink, Sulekha,Pelican, Camlin.....
My grandfather who was a civil engineer was an excellent draftsman & calligrapher made his own inks using "Ink Tablets" that used to be imported (Pelican / Staedtler)....he had several nib holders & nibs too....
I remember the ink he had used for calligraphy retained their 'blackness' for several years....
Time Magazine used to carry an 'ad' for Cross & the copy below the image of a 14K Cross Ball Point Pen ran....
" Of all the skills perfected by man writing is one of them"!!!!
Briha

[ckkalyan]

Nice reminiscing there essdee1972! Would love to see images of your collection.

I must admit that I had never heard of Lamy before this topic; now I am really curious to find out more.

brihacharan-Ji, Sulekha that's another name that I had almost forgotten!

[sa_ali]

Lamy is a working horse in fountain pens, reliable and relatively cheap compared to others, so during day to day usage its really good. Comes in pretty attractive colors too

[Mack The Knife]

Essdee'72: When you have the time, I'd like to see your script.
Since Flora Fountain is not convenient, try your local stationery shops. Especially ask for older fountain pens that may be tucked away in the 'back room'. This has proven to be quite successful many a time.
I hope you get to scratch your Mont Blanc itch soon but I would advice you to go the used pen route rather than pay the ridiculous sums they currently charge. There's plenty of them for sale on fountain pen forums and from a few reputed online dealers.

C.K. Kalyan: I know that strong ink odour you refer to.
The strange fountain pen you were drawn to, is a swagger stick / baton fountain pen. You could still have one made for you, in ebonite, by one of the few remaining pen makers in India.

Brihacharan: Ink tablets should still be available, if not in the Metros, then in the smaller towns or larger villages.
Your grandfather most probably used pigment or iron gall ink instead of the dye based ink that is commonly available today. Many dye based inks fade quickly. Iron gall inks have a nasty habit of eating into the paper they were written on but have been in use for centuries. The American Declaration of Independence is one such example.

I have also attached an example below that was written in 1925.

Glad to see all the responses and hope to see everyone's pics soon.

[dev]

Hi Mack,

Nice to see you here again. I have one Montblanc at the moment which I will paste the pic of.
We used to get these small very colorful sheaffer pens from Shillong in our school days.
Suspect that they were Chinese. Had a beautiful Wing whatever for several years at school.


Regards,

Dev

[Mack The Knife]

Hi Dev,

Don't just post pics but post your thoughts, memories, etc. on the subject as well.

Were the Sheaffers you got in Shillong similar to the No Nonsense posted above?

Take care.

Rustam

[essdee1972]

Sulekha, Chelpark, Camlin were what we were brought up on. That iron-y smell. The inky fingers. The absolute mess.

Beatings from the mater (it was the politically-incorrect 70s & 80s), due to ink spots on the pristine white school shirt! And school shirts had to be pristine white in those days, else your politically-incorrect teachers would make you kneel down or hold up your arms for insane amounts of time (say, one whole minute)! And ink had to be Royal Blue. Chelpark called it "Washable Royal Blue". Wrong branding, if there was one. It was pretty permanent on shirts!

The way a fountain pen, if you let it slip, would always land nib-first (I always liked how a nib, after falling on hard mosaic floor, would end up looking like a miniature jooti)!

The feeling when Dad let you fill a pen for the first time. And then yelled at you, because you managed to tip over the ink bottle somehow!

Using a razor blade flicked from Dad's shaving kit to clean the capillary of the nib. Blood mixing with the ink. Mom's scolding and some more whacking!

Blotting paper. Used more to observe the funky shapes when you jerk ink out of your pen, rather like what those psychiatrists do.

Ink spots on the classroom floor due to generations of students jerking their pens to get the ink flowing. Dad buying 4 pens before exams and ensuring I filled them all. Using those blue erasers to erase ink, ripping the page in the process..........

Mack, thanks a lot for the trip down memory lane! This was probably worth more than a spanking new Mont Blanc!

For most people when I was a kid, Parker was something to crave for. Unless you went abroad (and very few Indians did, way back then). Mont Blanc and stuff were like Rolls Royces - to be admired with a bit of the green monster gnawing at your insides!!

I remember my Dad's Parker 51. As far as I can remember, it was a famous model in those days, brown with gold cap and the famous "arrow" clip, looked quite like the Chinese Wing Sungs. He didn't write with it much, but woe betide if I even took it out. It was a gift from his brother-in-law, who had passed away at a young age, so it had lots of sentimental value for him. Sadly, it was lost somewhere in time, just like another of my Dad's classics - the Gillette Fatboy razor.

The fountain pens were replaced by the Pilot Hi-Tecpoints by the time I cleared school, and when I was doing my engineering, the blue-and-white Reynolds was everywhere. Since that time (about 1988) I stopped using fountain pens, rediscovering them only a few years back, after an almost-20-year hiatus. Now, if someone gifts me a ballpoint or gel pen, I in turn gift it to my wife!

I really have to give some TLC to my pens now!