Do people still use fountain pens?

din

din

Tribal Boy
Just curious (as always lol)

Do people (students in particular) still use fountain pens ?

I remember using them long back, like 18 or 20 yrs back when I was in school. It was fun and it was on the 'go green' concept. And we used to borrow ink from friends. Like they will put 4-5 drops from their pen to the desk, and we will take it into our pens lol. First lessons of sharing may be !

I know the practical difficulties, but still checking if there are any using those fountain pens nowadays. Other than the costly ones (Parker etc). Hero was one good option. It is still available ?
 
A

Aspire

Padawan
Yes, In our school students from 4th to 6th use Fountain Pens because our school made it compulsary as it makes handwriting good.

I used Fountain Pen way back in around 2002 and hated it as it leaked all over my notebook :lol:

I use Reynolds Trimax now, its quite good
*reynolds-india.com/images/products/horizontal_images/P0025.gif
 
MetalheadGautham

MetalheadGautham

AFK
I still do even though I am an engineering student. When I need a good handwriting and at the same time need to write fast, fountain pens (I use Hero pens) are the best. Normally I use Pilot or cello pinpoint but for writing records I prefer a Hero.
 
P

pimpom

Cyborg Agent
I haven't used fountain pens for a long time. Sometimes I wish I had one handy, but I keep forgetting to buy one. In certain applications, such as when making small notations in technical work, they make a more uniform mark. But the ink sometimes spreads on porous paper.

I'm old enough to remember when ballpoints were just starting to become widespread. In those days, ballpoints were not accepted for writing important documents because the ink often came out uneven and sometimes came out in globs that take a long time to dry and smudge easily. Some of the cheaper ones still do that.

OTOH, fountain pens, especially cheap ones, were messy. Have you ever carried a fountain pen on a plane? The ink is initially at normal atmospheric pressure, and when the pressure drops at high altitude, it squeezes out the ink and often stains shirt fronts.
 
D

deeply

Guest
had used fountain pen long ago........
they are tough to handle........
 
Ethan_Hunt

Ethan_Hunt

Aspiring Novelist
I haven't wrote much in a long time now. Typing has become too mundane now. I used to be addicted to writing with Fountain pens. I used it to write until my final Bcom exams, which must have been in 2006. Since then I haven't touched them.

I always had a special affection towards them when opting to write. They were much more fluid compared to the regular ball point pens. Also it was a habit inculcated since our school days which carried on till college. Now if I have to write, I have to use ball point pens.
 
Liverpool_fan

Liverpool_fan

Sami Hyypiä, LFC legend
I used to use them till class 8, but I never found them smooth and they leaked all over. But it felt good to use them. :)
Now I use Ball Point pens only.
 
Anorion

Anorion

Sith Lord
Staff member
Admin
Yeah we were forced to use them at school too. Used to gimme ink stains all over, and yeah, remember squeezing out small pools of ink on those plastic covered notebooks so that someone who had run out could suck it up. But bad paper used to get stuck in the nibs and spoil them. Don't use fountain pens anymore, come to that, don't use much of pens anymore at all.
 
MetalheadGautham

MetalheadGautham

AFK
Anorion said:
Yeah we were forced to use them at school too. Used to gimme ink stains all over, and yeah, remember squeezing out small pools of ink on those plastic covered notebooks so that someone who had run out could suck it up. But bad paper used to get stuck in the nibs and spoil them. Don't use fountain pens anymore, come to that, don't use much of pens anymore at all.
Click to expand...
Hey, doing that saved my butt a few years back. :D

As for paper, fountain pens were the reason I used to spend a lot on books. Always wanted the best quality paper. But I never got ink Stains thanks to my faithful Hero 329, 332, 333, 343 pens.
 
OP
din

din

Tribal Boy
Hero pen - The good old days ! There is a shop called 'Pen House' in Cochin. Exclusive shop for pen and pen-servicing ! Will check with them this weekend to find if they have Hero or other good brands.
 
P

pimpom

Cyborg Agent
Did you guys know this? Long ago, pens with filling mechanisms were not easily available, especially to common folks in poorer countries like India. Ink was stored directly in the bottom part of the pen.

One advantage of that was that it could hold a large amount of ink, but it was messy. Ink had to be poured in from the bottle or transferred from bottle to pen with an eyedropper. This is how the eyedropper icon came to be used for colour pick tool in computer painting programs. The thread fitting the nib section to the ink container was often not completely airtight, leaking ink while writing and badly smudged fingers.
 
Last edited:
OP
din

din

Tribal Boy
Oh yes, but not that long ago ;) Like just 20yrs back it seems lol

I remember it, pouring ink direct from small bottle (Chelpark/Camel?) to the pen. Then the eye dropper and then the eye-dropper-attached Hero pen :)

Thanks for enlightening, I never know the other part, I mean why the eye dropper icon appeared for color picker.
 
Anorion

Anorion

Sith Lord
Staff member
Admin
Yeah, used pens where you had to use an ink dropper to fill in the ink, but didn't know that pens with those squeezable cartridges (is that what you call em?) were hard to get around here.
 
P

pimpom

Cyborg Agent
One more thing I remember about fountain pens: As young kids, sometimes we somehow got the nib greasy and the ink wouldn't flow. One remedy was to burn off the grease by holding the tip over an open flame for a brief moment. Sometimes we were not quick enough and also partly melted the plastic ink channel, distorting it and causing improper ink flow.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom