What was your first fountain pen.

[inklord]

Pelikan Pelikano ca. 1969 (model 3), to be followed by the 1975 model (the first having been claimed by the hazardous [school] environment. Both pens were my only writing implements after graduating from slate pencils to fountain pens in 3rd grade.

[Barry Gabay]

With apologies to my friend jar for borrowing his style, actually in homage to jar for his interesting history lesson.

Clear green Sheaffer slip-cap student pen, rounded barrel & cap ends, steel M nib. Traded three army men with a third-grade classmate for the prize. Suppose that meant I was growing up, though I doubt it. From then on, I carried my favorite army man in one pants pocket and my fountain pen in the other. It was 1961: we had a new president, a record snowfall, Bay of Pigs, Berlin Wall, Uri Gagarin, Alan Shepard, and met my hero - Rod Laver. My parents had a gray Parker 51 and a periwinkle Sheaffer Snorkel on their desk; my grandmother had a marbled brown Sheaffer desk pen on hers, and my great aunt had a brown striped Sheaffer plunger-fill on hers. I no longer needed to sit at their desks for my fountain pen fix; I now posed my own weapon. Little has changed since.

Thanks, jar

[stub]

Sheaffer Cartridge Pen a.k. a. Sheaffer "School" Pen.


... followed by Steel nib (usually bent) P45s (also good for a weapon or digging a hole) and later a very futuristic (buy ca. 1979 standards) and Star Wars looking P25.

We had a lot of Sheaffers around as a kid and I also distinctly being fascinated by Sheaffer Reminder clip ball pens which we had all over the house. We also had Scripto, Autopoint, Skilcraft, Papermate and Esterbrook. But lots of woodcase pencils and Sheaffer School pens. Usually got a Sheaffer in a blister pack and one of those similarly candy colored and translucent Scripto mechanical pencils, a ruler and a Mead Composition notebook for school. In later years I think we got packs that had cartridges of all different colors in them. That was fun. No body was leaning over the sink with a bulb syringe in those days. Pop in a new color and watch the color shift. heh.

[Kaputnik]

I was born a couple of years after the events mentioned in Jar's post, about 10 months before Sputnik went up. Growing up in the 60s and 70s, I never used a fountain pen, and don't recall seeing anyone using one. Admittedly, I may just have forgotten.

In my fifties, for some reason, it seemed that trying one would be an interesting thing to do, so I bought a Parker IM, maybe because my favorite ballpoints were Parker Jotters, and I thought it had to be a good brand. I could never get it to start without measures such as dipping the nib in water. Eventually I found out that the cap wasn't sealing properly, letting the nib dry out very quickly. But by then I already had a couple of fountain pens that worked properly, and was hooked.

The IM, however, in those intervals where I had persuaded it to start writing, gave me some hint of what a good fountain pen could do, so it wasn't a total waste. If my second, or at most third inexpensive fountain pen had had similar issues, I probably wouldn't be here writing about it.

[christof]

a fifth generation Pelikano from 1979:



Got it with six years and still have it somewhere.

My collection started with a Black Parker "51" Demi which I bought with sixteen years in a thrift shop. Still have this pen too! Since then, the collection is growing....

C.

[Sailor Kenshin]

a fifth generation Pelikano from 1979:



Got it with six years and still have it somewhere.

My collection started with a Black Parker "51" Demi which I bought with sixteen years in a thrift shop. Still have this pen too! Since then, the collection is growing....

C.

I have a 2000 and an 03. Is the '73 model really that much shorter than the others?

[gbryal]

I'm not sure, but I think it was probably a Parker Vector in the 1990s. I think it came with a cartridge and they weren't commonly stocked anywhere near where I lived, and I remember it being a hard starter too, so it put me off fountain pens for quite a while. It eventually shattered.

Still, whatever it was I wish I still had it because I probably could have gotten it to write better now that I know a bit more.

[christof]

p[QUOTE=Sailor Kenshin;186493]

Is the '73 model really that much shorter than the others?

Yes. Because of the tapered barrel, the cap post much deeper.
C.

[DaveT]

I do not remember exactly what the first one was.

But I do remember one time as a child, I think I was about 10 years old, my mom gave me a fountain pen (the origin of which I do not know). I knew at the time, the technology of the pen was from the past and I did not know how to use it. But I thought I was smart and I could figure this thing out. I finally got the cartridge loaded in the pen and it would not write.

So in my infinite wisdom of a 10 year old I proceeded to "fix" the pen. Within an hour I had completely ruined it and tossed it in the garbage. I wonder today what treasure I had ruined.

Many years later after I started making pens I started using fountain pens. The exact first one I do not remember.

[WmEdwards]

An old Parker I "borrowed" from my Mom's desk.

[Freddie]

"What was your first fountain pen."

That would be the Parker "51" my mother gave me and usin' today filled with Montegrappa blue
sportin' a broad stub nib......Hmm..what was goin' on.....High Noon..Singin' in the Rain..and Ikiru....
President Truman / Steel Seizure..Summer Olympics Finland..Diary of Anne Frank published in US..The Natural..
Invisible Man..The Old Man and the Sea...SS United States Maiden Voyage {thumbsupthingie}..
Rocky Marciano..The Today Show Dave Garroway..UK Atomic Bomb......

Fred

[CaptainRon]

My first was a Jinhao 750. About 3 weeks ago

There's been too many already since then though!

[Hawk]

At school they loaned us Esterbrook pens. They had a white cap and a maroon body with the school district engraved on the body. (I wish I could find one).
Walking to school or home one day I found a black Parker 21 with a cracked barrel. I still have it and occasionally use it. It sports a green barrel now. Looks good with the black section.

[carlos.q]

In sixth grade our teacher tortured her students by making us use Sheaffer cartridge school pens. After years of using a pencil having to use a fountain pen was a traumatic experience. It would be many years before I used another fountain pen: a Waterman Laureat.

[benjitzu]

Quite enjoyable to read the variety of first fountain experiences. Thank you all for sharing.

My first fountain pen came through a Kickstarter campaign back in 2013 - the Visionnaire.

It took all of a day after the Visionnaire pen arrived for me to find the pen forms, the different online stores (Goulet Pens, Anderson Pens, etc), and the hinting of an addiction.

I didn't like the Visionnaire pen at all, but it sparked my curiosity and interest into fountain pens. Luckily, after reading through all the pen forms, I bought a better 'beginner' fountain pen (Lamy Safari), learned of black fountain pen ink that didn't feather like crazy on 'normal' paper (Noodler's Black), and off I went.

I'll always be grateful for that crappy Visionnaire fountain pen for opening the door to my love of all things pen/ink/paper.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[mcorrea]

I'm not sure what my first pen was. When I was a junior in high school, a teacher who was also a calligrapher suggested that I should try fountain pens to help improve my handwriting (it was so bad with ballpoints that many times I couldn't understand what I'd written).

The first pen I remember owning was a Montblanc 144 burugndy. I'm not 100% sure of its origin. it could have been that my father had recieved it as a present and did not want it (he had a Parker Sonnet silver ciselé that he loved, however, his roller pen was a MB). I used it exclusively for a couple of years until the section broke. Since then, I've lost trust in MB, too expensive to be that brittle.

I've used fountain pens almost exclusively for 30 years and today I own between 30 and 40 pens.

Matias

[titrisol]

Parker 45; plastic body in green olive. Got it when I was to begin 3rd grade (1978) so that I could learn to write with ink.
I went with my mom to the store and picked the color; I was the happiest boy in thw world

Still have it, even though the nib has been chaged twice and the body is dented from posting the pen too hard.....

[southpaw52]

My start into fountain pens was almost thwarted by a salesperson. I walked into a well known pen retailer in a mall. I picked up a fountain pen and the clerk quickly noticed that I was left handed. He began to explain to me that fountain pens were not meant to be used by left handed writers. That I would be much happier using a roller ball. Needless to say I walked out.

I ordered my first fountain pen a Waterman Phileas on line. That began my journey down the rabbit hole.

[Jerome Tarshis]

Like so many others who started school in inkwell days, I began with a dip pen (which we called a straight pen) and ink supplied by my school. There was an ink monitor. When I advanced to a fountain pen, it would have been some kind of inexpensive lever filler: Wearever is the obvious guess at the brand, but it needn't have been a Wearever. During the late 1940s I began my long experience of the Parker 51, supplemented at the time by an Eversharp Skyliner. (As I still spell the name, although Eversharp changed the spelling.)

It had a wonderfully lush nib but seemed otherwise, even to a young person, rather a flimsy pen. At least the conspicuous design went with good writing performance. Now that I have reached man's estate my opinion of Henry Dreyfuss as a designer has become more let us say qualified than it was expected to be in 1949, the high-water mark of streamlining.

[Kaputnik]

My start into fountain pens was almost thwarted by a salesperson. I walked into a well known pen retailer in a mall. I picked up a fountain pen and the clerk quickly noticed that I was left handed. He began to explain to me that fountain pens were not meant to be used by left handed writers...

That's funny, and I say that as a right hander. It's funny how salespeople will try to become experts on the things they sell, but don't quite get all the nuances.