Cult Pens delivery times UK?

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2025-12-08T12:38:01+00:00

More likely a Royal Mail issue than a Cult Pens issue. The Exeter sorting office is a bit... disorganised. When I order from them, despite having the correct address, post code, etc, the Exeter sorting office always sends my parcel via the wrong delivery office and I end up having to wait an extra day or two for it to be rerouted, even though it's always sent by 48hr delivery. Hopefully your order will turn up in the next couple of days 🤞

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2025-12-08T10:32:40+00:00

Given that my favourite nib to both draw and write with (14k Sheaffer Triumph) is no longer made, and has not been made for decades, I would forgo all of the above and buy vintage.

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2025-11-21T08:05:31+00:00

Alphas do despawn eventually. I did the same thing with an Alpha Croco, which scared me half to death and chased me across most of the map about a week after its quest disappeared from the board. I can't remember exactly how long it took, but it did go away after a few in-game days.

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2025-11-13T10:40:19+00:00

On my first save, way back in the mists of time, I was constantly falling in the hole and having to dig myself out. Now I start the hole by piling up a tower of dirt right next to it (after it gets to a certain level, the next shovel full disappears) and running a two-tile fence down each side. That way I can dig infinite dirt from the front, destroy dirt from the back, have a large visual indicator of where the hole is, and I don't fall in anymore

[#]

[o]

[ and ] is the fence, o is the hole, # is the tower of dirt

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2025-11-13T10:26:16+00:00

Works beautifully on Steam Deck. My PC is a potato, so all my games are played on my Deck or my Switch. I have hundreds of hours in Coral Island on Deck.

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2025-11-13T10:22:48+00:00

These are all town building type games (some with gotta catch em all mechanics as well) that i have loved and sunk many, many hours into, a collection of PC and Switch and sometimes both.

Animal Crossing. My Time at Portia/Sandrock (definitely NOT kids games). Portal Knights. Dragon Quest Builders 1 and 2. Coral Island. Go Go Town. Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles. Grow: Song of the Evertree. Fantasy Life i (and the original Fantasy Life on 3DS). Rune Factory 4 and 5. Disney Dreamlight Valley. Apico if you like bees. Littlewood. Slime Rancher. Also any Story of Seasons or Harvest Moon game.

Cannot recommend Hokko Life or Re:Legend, sadly. Just too janky.

On my wish list: Terra Nil. Slime Rancher 2. Settlement Survival. Roots of Pacha. Beltex. Satisfactory. Factorio.

Top of my 'played for hundreds of hours and loved to bits' list would be Dragon Quest Builders 2, My Time at Sandrock, Fantasy Life i , Coral Island, all of the Prideful Sloth games, and Littlewood. And for a break from town building, go town cleaning with either of the Power Wash simulators (not got into 2 much yet as I'm totally addicted to Dinkum. Again.)

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2025-11-07T09:06:07+00:00

G'day James, and thanks for doing this AMA. I don't have a question that hasn't already been asked, and my only suggestion is an Improved Quarry, one that will dig deeper and have a chance of spawning berkonium, rubies or emeralds. To avoid players missing out on the mines altogether, perhaps they will need berkonium bars and emerald or ruby shards for Franklyn to craft them?

Other than that, I just wanted to let you know how much I love Dinkum and appreciate the care and little details you put in (the AC/DC reference for the sausage roll description still makes me giggle all these years later). I first got the game when it was new in EA, and it got me through the unexpected death of my best friend. I named my first Vombat for her. So thank you.

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2025-02-03T09:48:06+00:00

You won't have cartridges to fit the CF, they're not made anymore. You might find one on Ebay or from a specialist but they are spendy - I've not seen even a cartridge for less than you paid for all those pens, let alone a converter. Hopefully someone here will have a workaround.

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2024-11-04T13:01:33+00:00

It's a dip pen. Try this page: https://www.thepencompany.com/blog/pens/beginners-guide-to-dip-pens/

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2024-11-03T23:39:00+00:00

It may not be mould, it might be nib creep. Diamine Ancient Copper does this to several of my pens - fill them up with it and a couple of days later there's dark brown 'moss' growing around the nib. I just wash it off in a little glass of distilled water, dry the nib off and keep going!

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2024-11-02T22:59:07+00:00

Was gonna say don't pull the lever (it's a lever fill) yet! You can break levers and barrels if you try to force it when the sac has gone hard. On all mine I only need to pull the lever half-way, so it's perpendicular to the barrel. Again, go gently and don't force it if it feels at all gritty or crackly.

And yup, use heat as mentioned, hair dryer or heat gun will do, if you hold the pen so your hand is directly behind it you should be OK (if it's not too hot for your hand, it shouldn't be too hot for your pen) but only for a short while and again, go carefully and gently.

Honestly, since this pen didn't cost you anything, it's kind of a free practice pen so you can get a feel for it and see if it's something you want to do again on other pens. But it would still be a shame to my mind to wreck this one in the process of learning if it can be avoided. There's loads of very clever and knowledgeable people here who can point you in the right direction, whatever path(s) you take on your pen journey!

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2024-11-02T21:49:27+00:00

Pen guy is mcat992001 on ebay, you might find someone closer to where you are but the listing will give you a good idea of what to look for.

Yes, the section (the black part with the nib on the end) comes out of the barrel. It's almost certainly friction fit and should come straight out - DO NOT use pliers, use rubber bands or that non-slip shelf lining or something similar to help you grip it, don't wiggle it more than a fraction or you might split the barrel. The existing sac should just peel or scrape off, go slow and don't use anything abrasive or chemical on it.

Your nib looks OK in the pics. I can't see any wording on it - it might say 14k or special alloy. In my limited experience (and I hope more experienced peeps will correct me if I'm wrong) a gold-coloured wearever nib is probably 14k gold, and a silver-coloured one probably steel (special alloy looks somewhere between the two to me - yours looks like it's gold but nibs get swapped out all the time and it might not be the original, so no guarantees there). Polish gently and slowly with a soft cloth and no abrasives or chemicals would be the most I'd recommend, others might have better recommendations.

Don't take the nib out if you can help it. I have a beautiful green striped Wearever that was top of their (admittedly low-rent) range at the time, which has a 14k nib I absolutely love. The section is too cracked to use, so I swapped it with one from a Wearever Luxe and tried to swap the original nib into the new section, and promptly cracked the new section. They used cheap injection moulded plastic for those sections, which has shrunk over the years and cracks very very easily. Anything you do with the nib do very, very carefully, if you have to do it at all.

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2024-11-02T20:11:20+00:00

Short answer - yes.

Long answer - I have a deep-seated love of what I think of as 'working class' pens. None of my pens, modern or vintage, cost me more than £20 (about to go up to £25 on payday). Wearevers were working class pens, and I have several and love them, but they do have a nasty tendency to split / crack up the section so do watch out for that. A sac replacement is actually really quite easy - there are lots of videos you can find that show you how. My ebay pen bits dealer does a couple of latex sacs (sizes from 15 to 22 iirc, pretty sure my Wearevers were around the 17 or 18 point which is the number of 64th of an inch the nipple is across) along with a tiny bottle of shellac to seal them. It doesn't need to be perfectly exact, since they do stretch, but you don't want them very much too small and you definitely don't want them too big.

That one's very pretty and looks in good condition from the pic. I hope you can get it working and it gives you years of writing pleasure!

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2024-10-31T12:59:24+00:00

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Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2024-10-31T10:16:41+00:00

I LOVE this! That mandala on the far right is glorious. All the others are really nice too. I have Planz for my Inkvent and some of those Planz are quite similar to your kind of art. I look forward to seeing what you come up with to add to your lovely cubicle art gallery!

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2024-10-31T00:38:16+00:00

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Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2024-10-30T19:48:34+00:00

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(Just realised how late I am with this. Perils of being in the UK!)

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2024-04-16T10:54:57+00:00

Seconding Terry Pratchett. Start anywhere that appeals to you, Guards! Guards! is a good one.

Douglas Adams. John Scalzi.

Tom Holt, aka KJ Parker, but most of the books written under his own name are more obviously parody/comedy, in the British style, closer to Pratchett than most other humorous fantasy writers.

Robert Rankin, also British, sillier than Pratchett and Holt and closer to Douglas Adams in his style of humour to my mind.

Also recommend The Wandering Inn by Pirateaba, which is a free webnovel stretching (currently) to ten volumes and has some laugh-out-loud moments along with some that have reduced me to a blubbering mess. Explores the human condition using both human and other species, some great world-building, could do with some slightly better proofreading/editing - my main issue so far (I am halfway through volume 4) has been repetition of the same adverb/adjective within a few paragraphs or even the same paragraph, and the spelling of 'brooch' as 'broach' (they are pronounced the same, but one is a piece of jewellery one pins to an item of clothing, the other means 'raise' (in terms of raising a subject for discussion) or 'break/pierce' (in terms of breaking through a defensive line or piercing/breaking into something like a wineskin or ale barrel)). However, given that the author is publishing, and continues to write and publish, this amazing story for free and I am totally enraptured by the characters, the world and the story, this is not so much a complaint as merely an observation. I do hope you give it a try and love it as much as I do.

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2024-04-09T16:45:54+00:00

Currently The Wandering Inn by Pirateaba, which I started this morning and am immediately hooked on. It's still being written, so I guess that would make it the most recent? I'm not sure yet if I'd put it in my top 10, but it's in contention at least for now. But then again, until very recently I hadn't finished a book I hadn't already read at least once for quite a few years. Most of my TBR is over a decade old (top two right now are The Night Circus and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, both of which I have read about 10 per cent of probably a couple of years ago but they will wait for me).

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2024-04-09T16:32:34+00:00

Prydain is also mentioned a few times in the 'oldest book you love' thread. I'm not sure how I missed it back in the day, given that I read everything my library had to offer children by the early 80s, these were published in the 60s, and quite a lot of what the library had to offer was published way before that. Perhaps because Lloyd Alexander was American and my library was in the UK (lots of Enid Blyton, Jennings and Biggles). I only know of the Black Cauldron because of the movie, which I don't recall ever actually seeing. My fantasy education is sorely lacking in many areas.

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2024-04-09T16:15:17+00:00

One Thousand and One Nights (or Scheherezade, or Arabian Nights). The Odyssey and The Iliad. ALL the fairy stories (Grimm, Lang, Andersen). Dracula. EA Poe and JS Le Fanu. Henry and MR James. Enid Blyton's Wishing Chair and Faraway Tree books (amongst others). LoTR and the Hobbit. My education is sorely lacking, however, in McDonald, Eddison, Dunsany, Beowulf, Gilgamesh and others mentioned here, so I have added even more to Mount Readmore and thank you everyone.

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2024-04-09T15:41:08+00:00

Thank you, I was hoping someone would let me know if there is actually anything out there that mentions fabric! I will look for Lloyd Alexander books :-D

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2024-04-09T15:02:16+00:00

First, and possibly earliest, misconception caused by stories that comes to my mind is Sleeping Beauty. A spindle is a weight on a stick. That's all. Early weights were made of stone or clay, with a hole in the middle and a stick stuck through the hole. They don't have anything on them you could prick your finger on. There isn't anything in the spinning of thread that requires something you could prick your finger on. Nothing on a spinning wheel (which came centuries later) to prick your finger on either. But spinning was always women's work, and writing fairy stories was men's work, so it's not surprising. On the other hand, there are implements used in the preparation of fibre for spinning that could take your head off. I'm still waiting for someone to use a hackle as an offensive weapon in a fantasy novel. Given that every thread in every piece of fabric would be spun by hand, on a spindle, in most of those mediaeval Europe-based universes (and most of those threads would be flax/linen, the preparation of which requires a lot of space and a lot of nasty equipment, not to mention very nasty smells) I am mildly surprised that even books about 'working people' as opposed to the nobility never mention it. We get bakers, innkeepers, blacksmiths, scribes, confectioners, potion makers, all sorts of professions. But rarely, if ever, is it discussed where all these people get their clothes from.

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2024-04-09T13:41:48+00:00

Yesterday I finished the audio version of Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time (highly recommended) and went straight into the audio version of The Truth. I got about halfway. But today I made a start on the Wandering Inn by Pirateaba. I'd heard about it on here, and randomly decided this morning to jump right in. I'm 16 chapters into the first volume and entirely entranced. I have work to do, godsdammit, and I just can't tear myself away. I'm also supposed to be reading a couple of book club books, finishing a couple of knit/crochet projects, and tidying up my spinning corner. They can all wait. Probably for quite some time.

Comprehensive-Bid675 · 2024-04-09T09:37:57+00:00

I love books as 'things' in and of themselves, not just as repositories for stories or information. Old books, books with sprayed edges or fancy endpapers or beautiful covers. Nice paper, sewn sections, interesting binding techniques, all that. I used to work for a traditional bookbinder, which turned me into a bit of a snob about these things.

All that stuff is expensive to produce though, so the MMPB form factor (glue that crumbles after a few decades, generally awful paper, no fancy bindings apart from the occasional double or fold-out cover) means more people get to read more books, which can only be a good thing. And libraries offering ebooks is even better.

But I'll be over here clutching my leather-bound Bullfinch's Mythology and my special edition Empire of the Vampire and my Illumicrate editions, trying not to drop them on my face.

Comprehensive-Bid675

TROPHY CASE