2015 SF Pen Show Ink Testing Stations
I'm still getting caught up, and intend a broader report on the show, but somewhere else I was asked about the Ink Testing Stations (ITS) and it is a story worth sharing.
So that you have an idea how this came about: the SF Pen Posse are the people who organized the ITS. The call went out to friends far and wide: we want the most inks in one place to play with. So everybody went through their inventories, checked an online spreadsheet that had been made up (I believe that was over 1200 entries of known inks, past and present), and people submitted sample vials.
They finally decided to make a cut-off point for the show at 500. A bulk purchase of the Dollar 717i pens (I think that was the model) was made directly from Pakistan; these are student-level, transparent piston-fill fountain pens. That whacky Pen Posse met on successive weekends to collate, catalog, gather the inks, print labels for the pens and then eventually fill them.
Each of the 5 stations had 100 pens. A list was made, alphabetically first by maker, then by ink name. These were printed on placards, placed on each table. Here is a pic I took that gives a rough idea of each table's setup:
At each table (station), you looked at a list with 100 inks on it, numbered to match the pen; the pen also had the name of the ink and number on a label as well; note that there were no swatches of inks to look at, just a list of the brands and names. There were ample supplies of various papers to use, though many people had their own journals, etc, to log their samples. While the pens all sported a nib that was probably about a Western f/m, you certainly could get a good example of how the ink behaved on paper (multiple nibs would have been impossible). The bonus was that these were clear 'demonstrators', so you could see the ink in the barrel.
The actual rigs were ingenious, and AFAIK were the brainchild of AltecGreen (Ricky Chau). Beautiful to look at, they found that the clip on each pen cap could be unscrewed. The cap was inverted, placed in the holder, and a matching screw secured it from underneath. The pen was then placed in the cap, nib down, and screwed into place. Yeah, there were times when people came up and attempted to just pull the pens out, but eventually it became clear that they all screwed securely into place.
(Photo: sfpenshow)
No one really knew how well, if at all, this would work. It turned out to work remarkably well! Lots and lots of people got to try inks, many of which you couldn't find anywhere (there were a few sad people when they realized some of these were unobtainum inks), but on balance, the opportunity to sample something like Montblanc Racing Green, Sheaffer Persian Rose, Parker Penman Sapphire, and many others, in addition to the hundreds of currently available inks, meant that the tables were routinely filled with eager inkers. Here is a quick pic of ethernautrix filling page after page in her lovely, calibrated hand (I'm pretty sure she 'sampled' into her ink journal between 10% and 20% of the total):
I have to stand in awe of my friends from the SF Pen Posse who put this all together. Many people gave very generously from their personal ink collections, and in addition to Ricky's work, I also have to single out Loren Smith, who worked tirelessly in gathering all the samples, working the spreadsheets, printing labels, keeping this entire thing on track. I wasn't physically there during all this (I live in San Diego), and I don't mean to slight anyone's contribution by omission - many, many people made this happen, and all the materials and time and ink was donated, and this was not a project done on the cheap. A team effort of stellar people.
A rather singular and remarkable pen show event, certainly a first. It won't be the last - come next year!
(Photo: Franz Dimson)
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Originally Posted by lsmith42
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