What do you think the best pen is?

[inklord]

Obviously the best pen is a Nakaya Piccolo Cigar, kuro tamenuri (maybe heki tamenuri), with a Pilot PO nib... and the kanji for Miyako in red urushi on the barrel (or gold urushi if heki tamenuri). Duh.

how can anyone whose posts i usually like a lot be soooo wrong! of course it's a LAMY 2000 with a home-ground fine stub... didn't i say that ever before?

[ethernautrix]

Obviously the best pen is a Nakaya Piccolo Cigar, kuro tamenuri (maybe heki tamenuri), with a Pilot PO nib... and the kanji for Miyako in red urushi on the barrel (or gold urushi if heki tamenuri). Duh.

how can anyone whose posts i usually like a lot be soooo wrong! of course it's a LAMY 2000 with a home-ground fine stub... didn't i say that ever before?

WRONG!

Hahaha! We're both right. Hooray!

[Wuddus]

The metaphysical arguments seemed to flow not from the topic of the thread (What do I think my best pen is?), rather from the idea that the monetary value of a pen, or the difficulty that one would have to replace it, should be allowed to detract from ones use or enjoyment of a pen. I will not attempt to explain or dovetail to anyone else's points on this, but just reflecting on it, it seems to me that if I don't actually use what I think is my best pen, then in some sense I am not treating it as a pen, rather as an objet d'art. If I find myself distracted by a pen's worth (in the previously described sense), then this is all well and good for collecting but rather a glitch of the mind with respect to use. If the loss of the pen would hurt me but my purpose is use of the pen rather than collecting, perhaps I am better off eschewing possession of it in the first place. This seems to me just as zen-like a reaction to the issue as working on resolving the mental "glitch". Life has challenges aplenty. I don't need to take on them all.

My solution, rather, was redundancy. I have backups of my favorite pens. So I don't worry.

Not to take anything away from your post, merely to offer a contrasting perspective....

There are many different ways to value a pen, and financial value is only one. Of course there are aesthetics, and writing qualities, scarcity, collectibility, how often you have to fill it, and what with. These can (but not necessarily will) all affect the values that we attach to our tools.

Oversimplifying things greatly, I see two specific categories of no frills user, and pocket jewellery. A no frills user suits me better, as I am hard on my daily use tools. Much like someone may chose their car according to the terrain they travel on, sometimes rugged is preferable to pretty. I'm not going to go hiking in italian leather brogues, any more than I'm going to put a £200 pen in my pocket.

I recently spent more than that on a different hobby, with no qualms whatsoever, but wouldn't spend it on a pen. That's just my choice, based on my own perspectives. Without going into personal details, which I don't do on internet forums, I don't expect my pens to last as long as they would for other people. What I have might last me forever, or my Baoer and a couple of the spares might be lost or broken by the end of the year (I have five spares in a drawer). If I have to replace something, I want to pay a tenner or less, not a couple of hundred. Again, my choice, for my reasons, and i'm not trying to steer anyone else. Jewellery doesn't interest me. I just want a pen that works and can tolerate what many here would consider neglect.

Some folks wear dress shoes, and some wear riggers or wellies. It's not just the folks who wear dress shoes that use pens. We all walk a different path. I'd rather have 40 £5 pens, than one £200 one. It's not that I'd be "frightened" of using it, I'd just be way more annoyed at having to replace it or repair it. For me that cheap pen is better, and I don't care who else thinks differently.

Someone else can have the functional art, I just want a pen.

[mhosea]

I wish I had good luck with inexpensive Chinese pens. Been through about 30 of them. My idea of a rugged, no-frills user pen that performs well is a Sheaffer No-Nonsense from days past. Good plastic, strong, slow to dry out. Sure the nib might need adjusting, but that's true of most anything.

[Deb]

I do have a couple of cheap Chinese pens that I'm still trying but for the most part I agree with mhosea. I must have bought a dozen or more of these pens. They just didn't work out in the long haul. I think there's been a huge improvement in Chinese pens over the last decade. They're not quite there yet but I think it will happen.

[Wuddus]

Having never owned a "full price" or premium pen, my judgement, or scope for comparison, is limited. All I can say with any certainty, is the cheapos that I'm currently using, are better than the ones I have used at other times in my life, and I enjoy using them more than ballpoints. Not all of them performed as I'd like out of the packaging, but a clean, and less than a minute with a nail buffer cured what I'd consider to be the ills.

Would I notice an improvement if I bought a £100 pen? Possibly. Would I want to pay an extra £90 for that improvement? Probably not. However, I do fully accept that what I love may well fall short of the standards that other people expect from their pens. Maybe it's my blissful ignorance of the other end of the spectrum, that makes it easier for me to be satisfied with what I currently own. If others need to aim higher to get the same enjoyment, that's fine by me. It's not a "one size-fits all" world.

[penwash]

Having never owned a "full price" or premium pen, my judgement, or scope for comparison, is limited. All I can say with any certainty, is the cheapos that I'm currently using, are better than the ones I have used at other times in my life, and I enjoy using them more than ballpoints. Not all of them performed as I'd like out of the packaging, but a clean, and less than a minute with a nail buffer cured what I'd consider to be the ills.

Would I notice an improvement if I bought a £100 pen? Possibly. Would I want to pay an extra £90 for that improvement? Probably not. However, I do fully accept that what I love may well fall short of the standards that other people expect from their pens. Maybe it's my blissful ignorance of the other end of the spectrum, that makes it easier for me to be satisfied with what I currently own. If others need to aim higher to get the same enjoyment, that's fine by me. It's not a "one size-fits all" world.

I am responding to your statement that I bolded in the quote above.

It depends on what you mean by improvement. To me and many others, improvement is not just how it writes, but also how the pen looks, how the pen feels in the hand, and other aspects of the design, craftsmanship, material, accents, harmony of tactile as well as visual components, textures of the material and trims, even dimensions and profile, and last but not least, history and legacy, both recorded and speculated.

So when you said that you would not pay for improvements on a $100 pen over the $10 ones, it was because you chose to employ a narrow definition of what you mean by improvement. And if that works for you, great.

But that does not work for me and I suspect for most people who embrace this hobby, otherwise, this hobby would not have gathered enough passion, love, and participation from numerous people that manifests itself in small to large events such as pen shows ... all over the world.

I agree with you, it's not a "one size-fits all" world (or hobby), but I for one am grateful that more people appreciate more aspects about fountain pens than what is limited by a certain price level.

Now, please don't read that last statement as me saying that the more expensive pens are always better. Of course not.
A lot of pens costing hundreds that are not as good as the cheaper ones, but the flip side is true also, there are lots of higher-priced pens that are truly superior to the cheaper ones.

[mhosea]

To me it's not really about the price, more about materials. If you can find an acrylic pen with an acrylic grip section, one where the material isn't too thin, fits your hand, and uses replaceable Bock or JoWo style thread-in nib unit, it will most likely serve as well as anything at any price for ordinary purposes, and insults to the nib or damage to the cartridge converter nipple will be fixable by replacement of the nib unit, if need arises. Hard rubber is also a nice material if you can manage not to drop it on a tile floor or anything like it.

[calamus]

For me, using a fountain pen is an emotional experience. I feel something that I don't feel when I'm writing with a ballpoint pen, and I don't mean the sensory experience of a nib moving across paper, or that I don't need to press as hard as with a ballpoint. Writing with an attractive, properly functioning fountain pen makes me happy, in a way that's very similar to the way that looking at palm trees or snow-covered mountaintops makes me happy. It' seems a curious thing when I stop to think about it, but the aesthetics of the pen definitely come into play, as do its size and weight and how it sits in the hand, and the various qualities of the nib. I would much rather have that experience, even if it means having to pony up the cost of 40 cheap pens to replace one I love that I've lost, rather than use a cheap pen and have 40 more cheap pens in reserve.

[Wuddus]

It depends on what you mean by improvement. To me and many others, improvement is not just how it writes, but also how the pen looks, how the pen feels in the hand, and other aspects of the design, craftsmanship, material, accents, harmony of tactile as well as visual components, textures of the material and trims, even dimensions and profile, and last but not least, history and legacy, both recorded and speculated.

We're on the same page, Penwash.

You're quite correct that there's absolutely nothing in there to make me part with the extra £90. Aesthetics and ergonomics do play a part for me, but not in the same way as for yourself and others. Odd as it may sound for many here, that stainless Baoer 388 actually ticks those two boxes for me perfectly, as well as performing how I want, even though (most?) others may find it repulsive in every way.

While you enjoy the depth and richness of the history, artistry, and artisanal elements, I enjoy the simplicity and absence of all those things. I've got cheap comfortable pens that I like the look and feel of, I chuck cheap coloured liquid in of whatever colour I choose, treat it abysmally, and its still nicer to write with than a ballpoint. Win!

We view things very differently, yet in a such a niche world as fountain pens, and despite our difference of perspectives, we can both still find our ideal pens. I'm certain that most voices here will sing your song, and I am certainly in the minority. I'm just grateful that I'm given some space for my own more simplistic version of fountain pen enthusiasm. Other spaces may not be so welcoming of someone with such low standards

[calamus]

It depends on what you mean by improvement. To me and many others, improvement is not just how it writes, but also how the pen looks, how the pen feels in the hand, and other aspects of the design, craftsmanship, material, accents, harmony of tactile as well as visual components, textures of the material and trims, even dimensions and profile, and last but not least, history and legacy, both recorded and speculated.

We're on the same page, Penwash.

You're quite correct that there's absolutely nothing in there to make me part with the extra £90. Aesthetics and ergonomics do play a part for me, but not in the same way as for yourself and others. Odd as it may sound for many here, that stainless Baoer 388 actually ticks those two boxes for me perfectly, as well as performing how I want, even though (most?) others may find it repulsive in every way.

While you enjoy the depth and richness of the history, artistry, and artisanal elements, I enjoy the simplicity and absence of all those things. I've got cheap comfortable pens that I like the look and feel of, I chuck cheap coloured liquid in of whatever colour I choose, treat it abysmally, and its still nicer to write with than a ballpoint. Win!

We view things very differently, yet in a such a niche world as fountain pens, and despite our difference of perspectives, we can both still find our ideal pens. I'm certain that most voices here will sing your song, and I am certainly in the minority. I'm just grateful that I'm given some space for my own more simplistic version of fountain pen enthusiasm. Other spaces may not be so welcoming of someone with such low standards

How could we not be welcoming to as polite and well-spoken a gentleman as yourself? I find that in general it's not differences of opinion that bother me so much as how people express those different opinions.

[penwash]

We view things very differently, yet in a such a niche world as fountain pens, and despite our difference of perspectives, we can both still find our ideal pens. I'm certain that most voices here will sing your song, and I am certainly in the minority. I'm just grateful that I'm given some space for my own more simplistic version of fountain pen enthusiasm. Other spaces may not be so welcoming of someone with such low standards

Speaking about being in the minority, looking back at my journey in this hobby, in some ways, I'm in the minority as well if for a totally different reason than yours

Cheers! to the neat little niche world of fountain pen (in a digital society).

[landrover]

seems to be no agreement of pen or even style of pen

[Wuddus]

We might even struggle to get 100% agreement on "a fountain pen"

[calamus]

What about this type of pen?




(Ron "Pigpen" McKernan of the Grateful Dead)

Probably the best keyboard-playing pen. (Didn't we already decide — more or less decide — that the "best" pen depends on what you want it to do?)

[VertOlive]

The Best Pen is my matte black Lamy Safari with it's Pendleton Brown Butterline stub nib, also in black.

I love how it feels in my hand.
Even with the nib work, it was reasonably priced.
The line it lays down is like a sharp-tongued Irish wench.
The all black coloration prevents the snipers from seeing my nib flash.

[catbert]

The ‘best’ pen is the pen that’s right for you. And sometimes, like the ‘best’ camera, it’s the one you have with you.

Everything else is ‘I like/don’t like this pen’.

[Morgaine]

The best pen is one that is functional, allows the user to write nicely, and feels comfortable in the user's hand while writing.

[penwash]

The best pen(s) depend on what you are doing with it.

If you're writing, then the best ones are the ones that make you smile in satisfaction.

If you're collecting, the best ones complete a certain theme, focus, or display case.

If you're tinkering (I include restoring, servicing, modifying), then the best pens are the ones you managed to restore from utter neglect and was about to be trashed.

If you're making one, the best is the one that you are proud of making.

[Manny]