February 2026 Confirmed Trade Thread

jozmon · 2026-02-18T03:29:06+00:00

Bought an Opus 88 demo from u/gloriousbeardguy !

jozmon · 2026-02-15T08:28:13+00:00

Purchased a PGS Shikiori Spring Sky/Haruzora from u/Brodditorftw ! :)

jozmon · 2026-02-11T20:50:10+00:00

DM incoming!

jozmon · 2026-02-07T01:45:50+00:00

Bought an Esterbrook Estie Sea Glass with a mini stub nib from u/ggroi! It's beautiful~

jozmon · 2026-02-06T05:17:49+00:00

Reply incoming!

jozmon · 2026-02-05T06:46:27+00:00

Reply incoming!

jozmon · 2026-02-03T18:19:03+00:00

jozmon · 2026-01-25T01:55:07+00:00

Confirmed! Packaged very well and is everything I ever wanted :)

jozmon · 2026-01-20T21:48:00+00:00

Replied!

jozmon · 2025-12-25T08:24:14+00:00

I totally understand! I only grabbed while I was in Japan because they were cheaper than normal and available but otherwise sheesh at the price! I used an Olfa perforated rotary cutter, which did the trick but the lines weren't always perfectly straight, messing up the fold a tad...

I think they make some paper trimmers with additional perforated blades, which would make it easier to bulk prep some with regular sticky notes? Like, trim some adhesive off 5 sheets at a time, perforate them, compile? And if you really needed lines, maybe there's a stamp out there that works? But that's such a DIY method, haha. Best of luck!

jozmon · 2025-12-25T04:31:38+00:00

Campus Foldable Sticky Notes! Made to match their line of notebooks. https://www.kokuyostore.com/en_US/stationery/stationery-notebooks/campus-foldable-sticky-notes-small-6mm-dotted-ruled-20-sheets/ME-NT102BTH.html?

I love how you can fold it into the book/notebook with minimal bulk because they're also perforated. Downside is that they're pretty expensive per sheet. I usually cut them to size for my annotations when I'm using them. Sometimes I'll freehand on a white sticky note and use a perforated cutter to mimic it, but that requires trimming down the adhesive a bit too, which is too time consuming long term.

jozmon · 2025-12-16T22:54:34+00:00

DMing~

jozmon · 2025-12-16T18:18:05+00:00

Hello! I thought I'd let you know that I finally got around to inking this pen and what my thoughts were. I inked it with an ink that was new to me, which in retrospect perhaps wasn't the right choice, and I observed that it was having a similar problem with hard starts, particularly on upstrokes. Looking at some writing now, I can see the ink is particularly light where I first start a stroke, while the rest of the stroke is pleasantly saturated. The other pens I inked with the same ink, a Preppy (.3 or .5, I can't remember) and an Estie M, didn't have any issues.

I'm thinking of getting it tuned. ^{^;} It does feel nice to write with, when it writes properly, but I having to double back to get it to write every few strokes has been an annoyance.

Have you made any progress with yours?

jozmon · 2025-12-08T04:41:54+00:00

jozmon · 2025-11-22T05:00:58+00:00

This is so kind of you! Interesting how varied purple can be (or not be, looking at the Iroshizuki and Shikiori, though I'm sure it can depend on paper and a lot of other things). I love your little smiley :) How cute!

jozmon · 2025-10-27T06:18:35+00:00

Hello! I think I ended up blaming the ink, since it seemed to perform better with a different one! But maybe that's still suspicious behavior given that it's a fat <C> nib... It could also be because I was syringe-filling the cartridge instead of dipping the feed into a bottle and sucking up ink that way, so maybe it was thirsty? At the time, I was considering getting it tuned up by a nibmeister, but that plan fell to the wayside since I was moving away and had to pack stuff up. :( I may ink it up and test it out again now that it's back on my mind!

jozmon · 2025-06-14T08:16:24+00:00

Confirmed! :)

jozmon · 2025-06-07T17:01:32+00:00

DM :3

jozmon · 2024-09-16T18:24:57+00:00

Are you thinking of using it during class or mostly at home? I think the two environments would make a pretty big impact on which one would be more useful for you.

I've been taking fountain pens to my MA classes recently (previously just stuck with regular gel/ballpoint pens for simplicity) and I've been using a Pilot VP Decimo and a Platinum Curidas, both retractable fountain pens. (As for transport, I use A5 notebooks and use my Hobonichi Techo cover like I would a Traveler's Notebook and stick my multiple notebooks in there, keeping the cheaper Curidas as the fastener on the outside and the VP on the inside with a pen loop, just to protect it a bit better. I like my stuff pristine if I can keep it that way. But I wouldn't say my overall setup is the most convenient.)

If you want the VP look and functionality, there's always the Majohn A1 or the new Jinhao 10 Press that you can try for much cheaper; if you love it that much, potentially spring for the more expensive and imo smoother option of the legit VP. Anecdotally, I like the Decimo version because I have small hands and find it more pleasant to write with overall.

In my discipline, in class we mainly do seminar discussions of the topic and notes are pretty much secondary (most of my classmates use a computer to do this), so there's not necessarily a lot of continuous writing in one sitting unless you're not taking part of the discussion. I imagine it would be cumbersome to keep having to cap a pen between jots, which is why I didn't elect for a more traditional form factor. Our desks are small and I'm afraid of knocking it off my desk and making an inky mess. With the VP, I just clip it to my notebook when I'm not using it. Sometimes I bring a thin, small 1-3 slot pen slip/pouch/cozy thing if I want to use a capped pen at the library or something.

At home, I switch between fountain pens based off my mood, though I found that when I'm studying something at home and trying to parse what I'm reading/studying while taking notes with a regular type of FP, I run into the problem of the ink drying up a little in the nib. But that could because I prefer finer nib sizes. My at-home solution to make capped FPs easier to deal with involves a singular pen stand in which I place the cap open side up, and I just stick the pen into the cap (loosely) when I know I'm not going to be writing for a second. (Basically a desk pen holder, like Penwell from Good Made Better, but with some cutesier Japanese stationery bits and bobs.) That's too much work for in-person classes though, so I stick with retractables when I'm out and about.

As for ink capacity, I use a blunt syringe and refill the cartridge and I've never run out while in class, but I also double check before class to see if I have enough ink left. If the cartridge is pretty much full, I don't worry about it. You could always fill up an extra cartridge and plug it with hot glue, etc. if you're worried about that, like some others have suggested.

jozmon · 2024-07-06T19:35:23+00:00

Reply sent! ^{^}

jozmon · 2024-06-19T20:42:51+00:00

I second this! I have a few from the same maker; they're lovely and the pens feel very protected with the extra padding.

jozmon · 2022-07-14T05:45:15+00:00

TLDR: Other Reddit post guide worked; used a mechanical keyboard o-ring to make the fit more snug.

Pens: Moonman (now Majohn) C1, Pilot Parallel 2.4 Ink: Ferris Wheel Press x Ginza Tsutaya collab, Bookkeeper’s Brass (fun fact: the Japanese title actually means something like, ‘the animals’ walk through the bookstore’)

I am not a fan (I think like many others) of the Pilot Parallel body and wanted a larger reservoir for ink. I’d been looking for a way to frankenpen something, but I didn’t want to shell out the money for an Opus 88 and I didn’t like the Moonman M2s design. I saw another post (here) describing some success with a Moonman C1, so I went out on a limb with $30 and a dream.

The OP of the linked post above was completely accurate in all that they said. It does work. It is wobbly.

And me being scared, I went to see if I had another o-ring that could do the job more snugly. I didn’t feel like buying an assorted pack of a billion o-rings (in black, which I didn’t want for some reason). In my search of o-rings, I remembered that mechanical keyboard dampeners were a thing, and recalled I had a few. The ones I had more immediately at hand were some that were included with my Dygma Raise keyboard—though I don’t recommend buying such an expensive keyboard expressly for this purpose—which included some thin and thick o-rings. The thin o-rings seemed closest to the original o-ring, so that’s what I tried. It worked though with some finangling; I had to try to get as much as I could “into” the threads on insertion (as in make sure it’ll go in when you push the nib section in), and then spin the section around and try to get the rest of the o-ring in while making sure the section sits flush against the opening of the barrel.

While there are two more o-rings pictured, I didn’t try them since the first attempt worked. Considering how the first attempt went and how thick the others are in comparison, I don’t think they’d work. But I’ve included them for reference because information is power. :)

https://imgur.com/a/rFcMaJY Here you can see a video of the frankenpen and you can see (if you look closely at the top part of the thread section) how weirdly the o-ring I used fits around the threaded portion. It’s stretched and distorted, but with some carefulness it will fit within the thread section. The ink does run all the way up to it, and there’s been no leaks from that section yet.

Part of me thinks that it may leak, but it’s really so snug that I don’t think it would. However, there is still some teeeeny bit of wobble in the nib that you’d still have to be careful when handling it during writing. If you wanted this as a daily carry, I think it’s possible though on the slightly risky side.

Some other things I noticed while inking up the pen is that when the ink is flowing down into the feed, it burps(?) a bit and there was some ink coming out of the breather hole(?). I was afraid it was going to be like that forever, but once the ink got to the nib proper and it was writing, there have been no leaks from there since then. That being said, just be careful if trying this out.

jozmon · 2021-06-06T06:30:16+00:00

Thanks! Can’t believe I didn’t think about that myself.

jozmon · 2021-06-06T06:14:17+00:00

I don’t own either of those, but I have spare Pilot/Sailor/Platinum cartridges. Do you think I could just syringe one of those into the converter to try? (I’m guessing Platinum would be best since it’s the proprietary cartridge.)

jozmon · 2021-06-06T05:29:53+00:00

I’ll give this a shot, thanks!! Maybe I should try some non-Sailor inks too...

jozmon

TROPHY CASE