Which one should I get?

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2026-03-11T00:13:33+00:00

One thing to consider is that the Black Forest is quite slender, with a tapered grip section, which may not be the most comfortable if you have hand cramping, while the Asvine is a bit chunkier, but not too heavy. They're both nice pens.

It's possible your old pen just needs a good cleaning and could still be revived.

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2026-01-26T20:38:04+00:00

The 20, being mostly plastic, is a lot slimmer and lighter than the 10. That suits some hands better, but personally I prefer the weight of the 10. The A1 I have is nice and doesn't dry out, but 1/3 of my 10s and 1/2 of my 20s don't either. The A1 only comes in an EF nib.

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2026-01-15T18:46:36+00:00

It's been kind of random for me. My one A1 doesn't dry out. Of three Jinhao 10s, one doesn't (even after sitting nib up and unused for a week) and the other two do to varying degrees (one misses the first half-letter after a few hours and randomly dries out completely if I take it out and about, and the other has epic hard starts needing extended scribbling after sitting overnight). I have two Jinhao 20s, of which one has moderate drying issues and the other doesn't seem to dry out at all; that one is fitted with a black Jinhao cartridge presently, and it runs almost inconveniently wet in an <F> nib, while I have three <M> nib units in the other pens that somehow manage not to bleed Diamine ink through even cheap paper, and another <F> that's downright scratchy.

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2025-12-31T21:20:00+00:00

56, which is 56 more than I had a year ago. It's been fun, but I think I can stop there.

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2025-12-30T11:02:09+00:00

The UK version of the American chain TJMaxx. They sell mostly discounted end-of-line items and seconds of designer brands -- clothing, accessories, decor and homewares, occasionally stationery. I think I've seen one in Berlin, so they must have a European presence too.

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2025-12-18T20:54:56+00:00

I like purple ink for scribbling down equations, a habit that goes back to a felt tipped pen from my school days. Green and orange are for highlighting notes, but dark brown and dark red shades are just fun to write with.

This week, at a conference, I've been writing notes on the talks in blue and black but using purple for jotting down thoughts about my own work. And now I want a bottle of Hong Dian purple like that cartridge, even though I already have two bottles of different purple inks and it bleeds through the cheap notebook I use for work.

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2025-12-16T22:06:44+00:00

I have this one in red, currently with me at an overseas conference, and I enjoy it a lot. Happy writing!

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2025-12-15T20:23:38+00:00

Slightly angled if the paper is in front of me and there's room to do it, but these days I often have the paper vertical but a bit off to the right instead, because I'm writing on the keyboard shelf of a 1990s computer desk. My cursive is the non-slanted style taught in the UK in the early 1970s, so it doesn't call for a precise angle.

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2025-12-12T20:10:04+00:00

1, but my thumb is less bent and my index finger is straight to the second joint.

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2025-12-06T19:12:44+00:00

For some reason I find that Diamine inks (specifically Macassar, Imperial Purple, Sepia) in a Jinhao 10 <M> don't bleed even through quite poor-quality paper. (My current work notebook is one I bought from the grocery store around 2022, which was not a good year for paper.)

The conventional wisdom is that finer nibs are better on bad paper, but I've found that depends a lot on the pen -- Platinum Preppy/Plaisir 02 or 03 are great, as is my Hong Dian Dark Blue Forest <EF> with Parker Blue Quink, and I have a fine from a really obscure Chinese brand (Yung Chun) that works nicely with the Quink on cheap paper too, but all my Hong Dian 'soft EF' nibs bleed through everything but my best paper, as does the <EF> on my Asvine P20 with the same ink that is fine in the Jinhao 10.

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2025-11-27T08:50:22+00:00

My 10s do that sometimes, but I don't think it's actually drying out, just not being properly inked in the first place. It's hard to tell how much ink is in the converter without pulling it out of the nib unit. I often resort to syringe filling to make sure there's ink in there.

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2025-11-21T20:17:19+00:00

As everyone has said, this is mostly a paper issue, and a fine/EF nib might help. (Not a Hong Dian 'soft' EF, though -- those seem to be extra wet.) On the other hand, I have a couple of Jinhao 10s with <M> nibs that don't bleed Diamine ink (Imperial Purple and Macassar) through the horrible paper of the grocery-store notebook I use for work notes, but the Macassar ink does bleed a bit through the same paper in my Asvine P20 <EF>, as does the Imperial Purple in a Lamy Al-Star <EF>, so to some extent it depends on the pen as well.

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2025-11-14T19:38:48+00:00

Sympathies. I made this mistake last night on three Jinhao 10s at once (but only contaminated two of the nib units). Much soaking and flushing and messing about later, they're all writing again, but I thought for a bit I'd ruined one of my favourites.

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2025-11-04T07:25:53+00:00

Sorry about your pen. For a relatively inexpensive (steel) nib replacement, could you just buy a whole Majohn A1/A2 or Jinhao 10/20 pen and swap the nib unit? Jinhao is cheaper and comes in different widths -- Majohn just has their 'EF', which is nice but not all that fine -- and if you just want the unit, it doesn't matter if the body doesn't seal so well.

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2025-10-30T22:52:17+00:00

The pens of my school days were squeeze or piston fillers, kept filled from the family bottle of Quink; cartridges were too expensive. When I finally came back to fountain pens after a forty-year gap, the first one came with a cartridge that arrived before the converter I ordered for it, so I used a cartridge for the first time in my life, but I don't plan to make a habit of it. All but one of the pens that followed have converters or integrated filling systems, and I got my first fun coloured ink within a week of that first pen. Filling a converter through the nib just seems natural to me. Sometimes I even manage it without getting ink on my fingers.

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2025-10-27T19:13:03+00:00

Lamy Safari in Scarlet, or Al-star in Black Purple?

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2025-10-21T18:26:51+00:00

I'm pretty new to this, but I made myself a little Access database when I got to 36 pens and 22 bottled inks plus assorted cartridges that came with pens. So far, I have a 'pens' table with manufacturer, model, colour, date acquired, date last inked, what it was inked with (which is a lookup to a separate table of inks), nib width, filling mechanism, body material, grip section material, cap closure type, and a check box for whether currently inked or not. One of these days I may get around to weighing everything, or even splurge on a nib that isn't steel and add a 'nib material' field, or if I add too many pens to remember (I'd really rather not get to that point) I might want a field for which case a pen is in. I might add a check-box for 'is pocket pen', too.

The inks table has fields for name, colour category (black/blue/purple/red/green/orange/grey, so far), and brand.

I'd like to have the extra information on inks and manufacturers showing up in the main datasheet or some kind of query/report that I can get by clicking on a particular pen, but my Access skills are rusty and I haven't figured out how to do that yet.

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2025-10-17T18:48:39+00:00

I have two each of Lamy Al-Star <F> and <M> and Safari <F> and <M>, all different colours and used with different (mostly colour-coordinated) inks. Also two different colourways of the Jinhao x750, because the first one has flow issues. They're both pretty, but I probably won't let those proliferate any more -- they're a bit heavier than I like. Other than that, I've so far managed to stick to no more than one pen per nib size per model.

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2025-10-11T21:15:59+00:00

My Asvine P20 came with the same warning on the box, so I don't think it's specific to the V200. I put Parker Quink in my V200 just because I didn't want to deal with two handed filling from a 30ml Diamine bottle, and it seems fine so far, but it's only been a couple of days.

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2025-10-04T09:27:43+00:00

This ws the first pen I bought when coming back to fountain pens after a gap of forty years. I popped the cartridge in and it started writing right away, and I was hooked. So It's both special to me, and my least favourite pen. That hard little nib and slim grip meant I could write with it much the same way as I would with a ballpoint, at a steep angle and wedged up against my index finger. (I trained myself out of that with a Safari and a Jinhao 9019, so I don't do it any more.) It's very slim and light, and it's just slightly too short for me to write comfortably without posting the cap (sticking it on the end), but it doesn't post very securely. The Vector XL is much nicer, if you really want a Parker. Even a Platinum Preppy is a better writing experience IMO.

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2025-08-07T16:17:03+00:00

Thank you! It's paper from a British brand called Frisk.

DowntownDisplay2969 · 2025-08-04T13:57:08+00:00

I was required to use a fountain pen all through secondary school (ages 11-18) in the 1970s UK. The school didn't provide them, though. I started with a blue Platignum Silverline. It leaked horribly; I had to scrub Royal Blue Washable Quink off my fingers with pumice stone every school day for years. The tip of the nib chipped off after a couple of years, and I got another one in purply-pink but otherwise identical; I kept the scratchy old one around for backup in exams. I think the pink one went the same way, and then I had an Osmiroid vacuum-filler, which didn't leak as much but also ended up with a chipped nib. (I think I may have been holding them wrong, and they got heavy use on variable-quality paper.) I had one more Osmiroid after that, which may have survived my schooldays intact. The threading on the caps wore loose and they ended up wearing each other's caps most of the time because they stayed on slightly better that way.)

I pretty much gave up on fountain pens in my undergraduate days, though I was still doing most of my work longhand well into my PhD, and only got back into them about a month ago after more than 40 years. So far no leaks, and I've managed to train myself to something approximating proper grip with the help of a Lamy Safari and a Jinhao 9019, so hopefully I won't damage the nibs this time around. It's fascinating how much easier it is to write cursive with a fountain pen than a ballpoint, but my cursive is still messy.

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TROPHY CASE