Hi Guys,

i recently bought my first fountain pen in 20 years. I settled on the Jinhao x450 as it seems to be the most mentioned for beginners. got a few Diamine inks, and currently have one in it a the moment.

as soon as i got it i flushed it, dried it, and inked it. after a little priming, it wrote fine on bog standard printer paper. after a while though it started to fade in/out a fair bit. no hard starts or dry spells, just a little dry then wet etc. took it to work and the cheap ring top pads have no issue with ink flow, but being naff things, there is a fair amount of bleed on them. so i decided to get a rhodia no16 squared pad. but the pen wont write on it at all really. a little ink goes down, but for the most part it just glides with zero ink going down at all..

i thought Rhodia paper was meant to be perfect for fountain pens, so why on earth is no ink going down at all?