ASA I CAN ebonite pen with 1.1 JoWo stub ol.jpg
I will often spend $40.00 (a little less, a little more) on a pen that otherwise I might not get to try. That's what I did with this one.
This is an I CAN pen from ASA in India. $28 for the pen with an additional $4.00 for the broad nib. While I have Ranga pens that I truly enjoy, I'd never tried a pen from ASA. I ordered it a month ago and it showed up yesterday.
It comes in the elephant sleeve, wrapped in bubble wrap. An eyedropper, I flushed all of it in homemade pen wash, let dry, greased the barrel threads, and inked it with Noodler Bad Blue Heron.
Wet doesn't describe what came out. It was more like a double-triple broad. I heat set the nib and feed, but it didn't help. I changed nibs to a Goulet (JoWo) 1.1 stub, one of my favorites. Heat-set, and it still gushed. Fiddled with it about an hour more. Nib in, nib out, heat-set, gusher. Over and over. Nothing I could do would help.
Finally, thinking about the ink, I remembered that Bad Blue Heron had been very wet for my Neponset and Triple Tail, causing me to not use BBH in those pens.
So I emptied, cleaned, and inked the pen with Noodler Black.
What a difference! You can see the difference in the lines. Top line BBH, bottom line Noodler Black. Now it writes like my other 1.1 stubs. This is 26 lb copy paper. The BBH was worse on Rhodia.
The pen is nicely made, it's not a Ranga, but it's still a good writer. I'm happy I bought it and happier I've learned that some inks just don't work for me. Bad Blue Heron is one such ink.
If you want an inexpensive ebonite pen, this one may interest you.
Sometimes it's not the pen, it's not the paper, it's not even you - it's the ink.
Cheers.
Sg
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