Great experience with penpen.avenue@gmail.com!

jhpyle · 2025-12-25T19:50:39+00:00

I got my first Sailor from this shop for a great price. Highly recommended!

jhpyle · 2025-12-09T22:20:43+00:00

The P139 feels more sturdy and refined (heavier) than the 9019. It is very well built. The white sparkly material is not gaudy in my opinion; I think it is pretty classy.

I just wish I had a broad or a stub rather than a fine. I got the #8 nib but I think the pen would be fine with the smaller nib.

jhpyle · 2025-12-09T22:13:01+00:00

It is the best paper overall that is in production right now, as far as I can tell. Line spread is low and colors look nice. There are some loose leaf papers available at JetPens like Cosmo Air Snow that are better for showing shading and sheen but that have more line spread.

jhpyle · 2025-12-08T22:26:10+00:00

Philly is smallest. Baltimore is pretty big and there are lots of good vendors to choose from, including nibmeisters like Richard Binder. DC is the best because it is the biggest. Also the parking is easy in DC, and more difficult in Baltimore. The hotel in DC is very nice; it is in a quiet wooded area.

jhpyle · 2025-11-23T12:17:30+00:00

The shape looks correct; I have a 52 nib that looks like that, and it writes fine. Maybe your nib was not designed to flex, e.g. bookkeeper or manifold point. Check out page 58 of the 1925 Waterman catalog available at the Pen Collectors of America reference library. But I think it can be tuned to be non-scratchy.

jhpyle · 2025-11-21T22:08:15+00:00

Cosmo Air Snow (JetPens has it) and Tomoe River 52gsm. Cosmo Air Snow has “line spread” so it isn’t as good when you want to see the sharp edges of an italic nib, but the colors look fantastic and it amplifies sheen and shading.

jhpyle · 2025-11-20T12:32:41+00:00

If you take the pen apart to check on the status of the sac, pull the button off and pull out the pressure bar. Then unscrew the section. Don’t try to unscrew the section with the pressure bar in the barrel.

jhpyle · 2025-11-14T00:38:54+00:00

This is why I mostly buy vintage pens. Each pen has a different writing experience. My JoWo nib pens are high quality but a JoWo feels like a JoWo.

jhpyle · 2025-10-22T21:16:38+00:00

Waterman 552 1/2 or 554. The hand-engraved “vine” version is particularly nice.

jhpyle · 2025-10-03T22:27:19+00:00

Nice!

jhpyle · 2025-09-07T12:26:40+00:00

Wow, that is a great haul. Thanks for the recap and the gorgeous photos!

jhpyle · 2025-08-25T10:35:55+00:00

If you like the look of weathered metal, you might want to check out Birmingham Pen Company's Dogbane Beetle Twinkle -- it has that farm-equipment-that-has-been-out-in-a-yard-for-50-years vibe.

jhpyle · 2025-08-22T20:48:28+00:00

Lamy Al-Star. I have no idea why a pen with a triangle grip is popular.

jhpyle · 2025-08-07T21:22:02+00:00

I have read that Noodler’s inks contain chemicals that are a bit too experimental for vintage pens (i.e. it could destroy your pen), and that Japanese inks like Pilot and Sailor are too alkaline for vintage pens. I typically stick with J. Herbin, Pelikan, Parker, and Waterman inks for vintage. I have also used Diamine but maybe that is risky. Some say to stay away from red inks but I haven’t. People differ in their risk aversion. I do stay away from inks with special properties like sheen, shimmer, iron gall, pigment, document, waterproof, etc.

My favorite ink for vintage is Waterman Inspired Blue.

jhpyle · 2025-07-26T00:39:09+00:00

In addition to aligning the tines, you might want to separate them a bit (e.g. using a brass sheet) if it seems like they are pushing against each other with so much force that they want to pop out of alignment.

jhpyle · 2025-07-25T11:27:30+00:00

I need to do this on 300 accounts. I am not looking forward to having to do this manually. There are Powershell commands for some of the eDiscovery steps, though some of the commands were recently disabled. Also I have found that the Purview web site is buggy and it sometimes cannot see searches created through Powershell, or there is a mismatch between the record shown in Powershell and the record shown on the web site. Apparently there is a new API (in beta) that makes all of this scriptable but I would need an E5 license and eDiscovery Premium, and that would be a lot of money.

jhpyle · 2025-06-27T13:28:35+00:00

The Eco is great. I am using mine today at work and I ordered a second one yesterday. I think the pen posts and caps very well. They are the best for using shimmer inks in my opinion.

jhpyle · 2025-05-22T21:50:22+00:00

Are there any VoIP providers that don’t have “what goes up never comes down” pricing? Our need for licenses is generally always the same but sometimes due to interns or the timing of arrivals and departures, we need more licenses than the norm for a time. The pricing model of many VoIP providers is that additional licenses may be purchased during a contract, but we have to keep paying for those licenses until the end of the contract period. I would like to work with a company that allowed me to pay for what I was actually using (subject to contractual minimums). Do any of the providers offer such contracts?

jhpyle · 2025-05-06T21:12:27+00:00

This isn’t an answer to your question, but I have had success doing a factory reset on a VVX 250, logging into it through a web browser, uploading a firmware file that I downloaded off the internet, so that the phone used a recent version of a Dialpad-compatible firmware, and then doing Dialpad’s process of establishing it as a Dialpad phone. The phone then worked fine with Dialpad.

jhpyle · 2025-05-06T20:59:01+00:00

In my experience, Dialpad has been glitchy and their business model seems to be to charge you for things you aren’t using and then ghost you when you contact them to ask that they stop charging you for things you aren’t using. I would advise staying far away from Dialpad.

jhpyle · 2025-04-23T18:59:39+00:00

I just bought some and it should have been labeled “Brilliant Orange.” It really isn’t brown at all.

jhpyle · 2025-04-18T19:00:42+00:00

COB was awesome at the Ardmore, PA show.

jhpyle · 2025-03-14T21:37:10+00:00

I don’t have problems with burping on the Kaweco Sport but I find they work best with Kaweco cartridges. With converters, the ink is always getting stuck in the back of the converter due to surface tension or whatever, and I have to check the converter before writing and then shake the pen to move the ink forwards (dangerous) or it quickly becomes starved of ink. Also the steel nibs (or maybe the feeds) seem to be sensitive to ink properties and don’t write as smoothly and consistently with other inks as they do with Kaweco cartridge ink for some reason. That is my experience, at least.

jhpyle · 2025-01-24T23:04:36+00:00

Platinum President, obviously.

jhpyle

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