July’s Currently Inked Fountain Pens

A mixture of some pens left over from last month, coupled with a slew of new pens in mostly long unused inks characterizes this month’s lineup.

The paper is Hobonichi Techo 2024 this time (I bought it on Black Friday, to compare with the original Tomoe River Paper in my 2014 Hobonichi). The paper in it is almost as good as the original Tomoe River Paper for showing off ink properties.

From June’s rotation I only have:

The mauve Sailor Pro Gear Slim with a music nib and delightful yet discontinued Sailor Jentle Apricot. A readable reddish orange ink with generous shading.

Kaweco AC Sport Carbon fine nib with Diamine Ultra Green. It’s almost written dry but has seen less use than I planned since I’m not in love with the ink colour. It is growing on me though.

In the end of June I added two new pens into the rotation:

Franklin Christoph x Stilo x Stile 03 Sparkling Rock EF nib with Diamine Earl Grey. Earl Grey is still one of my favourite inks and if you want a readable, interesting grey I highly recommend it.

PenBBS 456 Smog with a RM nib and Pelikan Edelstein Golden Lapis ink. I have no idea what possessed me to fill a vacuum filler with this ink, but I’ll pay for that later. Golden Lapis was a gift from the Pelikan Hubs and has turned out to be my favourite shimmer ink.

The proper July inked pens are:

Franklin Christoph 46 Polar Ice EF nib with Diamine Inkvent 2019 Holly. I reviewed this ink here and I liked it enough to purchase a full bottle of it, though I have rarely used it since. Holly is a dark blue green with a wild red sheen and is saturated enough to pass as a serious businesslike black at a cursory glance, so you can sneak it into office use 🙂

Pilot VP Matte Black M nib with Pilot Iroshizuku Chiku-rin ink. I used to use my VPs a lot more, especially to take notes in meetings, but now I rarely use them because they have a tiny ink capacity and are a bit of a pain to clean out. They do have beautiful nibs, and I wanted a cheerful green ink so the pairing works well.

Visconti Homo Sapiens Lava black EF with Sailor Shikiori Yama Dori – this is the original Homo Sapiens pen, before Visconti did dozens of versions of it, when it took the pen world by storm. I bought mine at Mora Stylos, and they customized the finial with my initials. Yama Dori is a peacock blue with red sheen, and is a wonderful ink in Sailor’s annoying flat Jentle ink bottles.It was almost impossible to fill this pen due to the bottle shape.

Esterbrook Estie Sea Glass Journal nib with Diamine Aurora Borealis. I love the Journal nib, and it really shows off the gorgeous teal of Aurora Borealis. There’s some shading with this ink and a hint of red sheen. This ink is one of the few I own in both bottle and cartridge format.

Leonardo Momento Zero Grande 2.0 Galattica Universe F nib filled with Montblanc The Beatles Psychedelic Purple. A wild pen and a wild ink that have wildly jumped in price over the past year or two. I have a handful of Montblanc inks, but I’ve been priced out of the brand now. Leonardo makes great pens, but I no longer feel the need to buy every limited edition they come out with. The Beatles purple is a wonderful PURPLE – bright, not muddy and perfectly midway between red and blue.

Last but very far from least Parker 51 Plum F nib with Sailor Jentle Peche. A rare 51 and a long discontinued ink coupled together to make sure that I use the good china. Parker 51 pens are my favourites, and this one is a gold capped aerometric with a fantastic nib.

The pens in order of appearance here, from top to bottom.

What have you got in your pens this month?

June’s Currently Inked Fountain Pens

A new month means a new set of inked pens. From my previous rotation I still have the Lamy 2000 inked with Diamine Silver Fox, the TWSBI ECO Saffron inked with R&K Helianthus (and just about to run dry) and the Manufactus Cappuccino Brown filled with a Diamine Bilberry cartridge, also just about to run dry.

This time I chose the ink hues and inks before I matched them with pens (I usually do it the other way around). I wanted a blue-black, an orange, a pink, a teal and a bright green. The only ink that was completely unknown to me was the green – Diamine Ultra Green in a cartridge. It was also the only ink that I’m unhappy with, and one that I had issues with, but more on that later.

This is the lineup:

Writing sample with all of the inks and pens. The notes were written using a Platinum Preppy 02 with black ink. The paper is a Rhodia dot pad.

Parker 51 Aerometric Teal with a Lustraloy cap and generous fine-medium nib filled with Diamine Denim – vintage Parker 51s are my absolute favourite fountain pens, both for their look and feel and for the way they make my handwriting look. I haven’t used this specific one in years, and I like the pen body colour but I specifically chose to fill it with the blue-black and not the teal, to mix things up a bit. Diamine Denim is one of my favourite go to blue-black inks, and I love it because it’s well behaved, dark and offers some shading.

Kaweco AC Sport Carbon fine nib Diamine Ultra Green cartridge – I wanted to try Diamine Ultra Green as I thought that it would fit the bill as the bright green that I wanted, but it didn’t. Two things happened – I flipped the pen upside down for a few minutes to get the cartridge going and I left it that way for too long, which meant that I got a mess. You can see it in the first writing sample and you can see it in the green ink splotch on the left of the page above. That would have been OK if the ink colour was to my taste, but it isn’t. Diamine Ultra Green is a viridian green, which is an unnatural shade of green that isn’t what I was looking for. In retrospect it looks like Diamine Kelly Green (which I don’t have) is closer to what I was looking for. The Kaweco AC Sport is nice but overpriced and I wouldn’t recommend it over an other Kaweco Sport. I got mine at a steep discount when an art supply store was closing down and looking to liquidate its stock.

Sailor 1911 Pro Gear Slim Maroon music nib filled with Sailor Jentle Apricot – kids these days will turn up their nose on this pen body colour, but at the time it was the only Sailor that you could get that wasn’t black. I was into fountain pen nibs and didn’t really care what the pen body looked like, so long as I got to try the fabled Sailor music nib – a rare music nib that had only one slit and two tines instead of the usual two slits and three tines that other brand’s music nibs had. It still is a gorgeous nib that works very well with the long discontinued Sailor Jentle Apricot. You really see the shading with this pen and ink combination.

The magical Sailor music nib (yes, the ink flow is fantastic even with one slit):

Franklin-Christoph Model 66 Antique Glass medium nib filled with Diamine Yuletide – this pen is now unavailable through Franklin-Christoph and only through second-hand resellers. It was one of my first Franklin-Christoph pens and one that I couldn’t wait to eyedropper (it’s built for that). The pen has a body that isn’t completely clear – beyond the slight fogging in the material (which is to be expected) the antique glass finish means that it has a blue-green tint, like a vintage coke bottle. It works exceptionally well with teal and turquoise inks, which is why I have only ever filled it up with teal and turquoise inks. In this case the ink of choice was Diamine Yuletide from the 2021 Diamine Inkvent calendar. I like this ink, but I’m still on the fence about buying a full bottle of it as I have a few other inks in a similar tone, some of them even Diamine inks. If you’re wondering how I eyedroppered this pen, it came with an o-ring and I have a tiny vial of silicone grease which I applied generously to the threads when filling it. So far no leaks, though as always with an eyedroppered pen, be careful with how you store it.

Sailor Pro Gear Slim Manyo Cherry Blossom Medium-Fine nib filled with Pilot Iroshizuku Kosumosu – I was planning on using an orange OR a pink ink, but eventually decided to use both. The Sailor Manyo Cherry Blossom is my nicest looking Sailor pen, one that I bought a few years ago at Choosing Keeping in London mostly because it had an MF nib and I wanted to try one of those. Sailor has been dazzling the fountain pen community with a plethora of mix and match pen body colours, but I remember the brand as an innovator and artisan in fountain pen nibs (which is why I rarely buy Sailors these days and most of my Sailor pens are black). The nib is, of course, perfect, and the ink works well with it. Kosumosu is practically bubblegum coloured, very bright, very cheerful and surprisingly readable.

Which fountain pen and ink in this rotation caught your eye? What are you using this month?

February 2025 Currently Inked Pens

I have finally written dry all of my Inkvent 2024 fountain pens, which means that after two months I get to write with a whole new set of fountain pens and inks. I normally don’t spend too much time selecting which pen and which inks I’ll use next, but this time I decided to use some criteria for the next pens in my rotation:

They need to include at least 50% vintage pens. I don’t use vintage pens with Inkvent inks, and vintage pens make up most of my pen collection.
All the pens need to be pens that I haven’t used in a long time (at least a year). It was time to mix things up.
The inks needed to be inks that are new to me, or that I haven’t used in years, and all of them need to be inks that I haven’t swabbed before. This was not only to mix things up, but to get me to use and swab more inks in my collection, instead of going again and again to a few select favourites.

Here’s February’s fountain pen lineup:

The pens from left to right: Leonardo Momento Zero Bohemian Twilight, Sailor Pro Gear Slim Graphite Lighthouse, Edison Nouveau Premiere Cappuccino, Montblanc 32, Mabie Todd Swan L2 Leverless pen, Waterman 52, Parker 51, Parker Vacumatic Standard double striped jewel.

And here are ink swabs of the inks that I’ll be using:

The Vintage Pens

Parker Vacumatic 1st generation Laminated Burgundy Pearl Double Jewel (striped jewels, striped section) – I adore Parker Vacumatics and this is a “use the good china” pen. The grip section is also laminated (and not plain black), the body is transparent, and the nib is a sharp extra fine gold nib with a bit of character to it. It’s filled with a brand new ink for me, Diamine Writer’s Blood. I never use red inks, but this got raving reviews and seemed dark enough for me to try. I bought the ink in Oxford last year, and the pen years ago from the late Henry Simpole (Henry the Pen Man) in London. I don’t think I inked up this pen since I bought it, as it was too precious, and I still won’t let it leave the house, but I am looking forward to actually using it.

Parker Vacumatic first generation burgundy laminated grip section

Closeup on the striped jewel and the grip section of the Parker Vacumatic

Parker 51 Burgundy aerometric with a silver cap and gold filled arrow clip. I love Parker 51s, they are my absolute favourite fountain pens. I believe this cap is on the rare side, though it’s far from pristine or attractive (it’s blackened in specks, and there are a few scratches and micro scratches on it). The nib is a generous fine, bordering on medium, and like all other 51s that I’ve used, it’s magic. I haven’t used this pen since I bought it, so it’s time to give it a whirl. It’s filled with Pilot Iroshizuku Yama Budo, which is a lovely, sheening burgundy ink, one of the more popular inks in the Iroshizuku lineup. In hindsight coupling this ink with this pen wasn’t the best choice, as the 51 has generous nibs and Iroshizuku inks are on the wet side. It just means that I’ll have to steer clear of cheap paper with this combination.

Waterman Ideal 52 Red Ripple fountain pen with a super flex extra fine nib – my word but this pen has the most glorious nib. The pen itself is elegant and pristine, and because of its age it doesn’t have the ebonite stink to it. The nib is why I bought this pen, and it effortlessly moves between extra fine and broad or double broad lines, with the feed easily keeping up with tines. Like all Waterman nibs that I’ve tried, there is some feedback, so if you like butter on hot pan nibs this one isn’t for you. This is the kind of nib that you can only get in a vintage pen, and it puts modern flex pens to shame. It’s only minus is that this is a lever filler, and I hate cleaning out lever fillers, which is why I rarely use them. This pen is filled with Diamine Autumn Oak, which I haven’t used yet (in bottle form at least – I have cartridges of it). I wanted a brighter ink in this lineup, so Autumn Oak was a perfect choice.

Waterman 52 cap and nib closeup. You know the nib is going to be fabulously flexy once you see that heart shaped breather hole and the slight bend down in the nib.

Writing sample on Midori MD Paper. Notes written with a Platinum Preppy.

Mabie Todd Swan L2 Leverless L205/62? Not sure – Swan did a poor job labeling their pens, and I didn’t write down notes when I bought it. This is a lovely pen that I bought from Henry Simpole years ago because of the phenomenal Swan nib. It’s an oblique flexible nib with Swan’s gimmicky “Leverless” filling system (which is a lever system in disguise, but such were the ’30s – you needed a gimmick to sell pen). I haven’t used it at all since I bought it because I don’t remember the experience of cleaning it out very fondly – imagine all the bother of cleaning out a Lamy 2000, but with a piston that has just one twist of travel. I used Pilot Iroshizuku Asa Gao with this fountain pen, and it’s a gorgeous ink with a good amount of sheen with this nib. I love this shade of royal blue, and I haven’t used this ink in a while. Take a look at the Swan above – it’s almost 100 years old and works perfectly.

Closeup on the nib and cap of the Swan Leverless pen

Montblanc 32 (1967) OM 585 nib – heavens, you can get a gold nibbed, piston filling original Montblanc with an Oblique Medium nib for less than a steel nibbed Pelian M2xx costs? Yes, you can. I love the design of this pen (you can read about it more here) and the nib is great… provided you write in the exact angle it expects. The Swan’s nib is generous in terms of the writing angles it accepts, and the Monblanc 32 is demanding: you will use the nib at the precise angle it is designed for, or it will not work at all! I only wish that the Montblanc Around the World in 80 Days ink was so exact. From the description and the illustration on the box I was expecting a brownish gold ink, maybe with a hint of green. In reality I got a dark, cold grey ink, with a hint of blue to it. No brown, no gold, nothing at all to do with the elephant illustration on the box. I had to double check just to make sure that I hadn’t landed on a bad bottle by chance.

Writing sample on original Tomoe River Paper

Modern Fountain Pens

Sailor Pro Gear Slim Graphite Lighthouse H-EF nib – I haven’t used this pen in over a year, and I wanted a pen with a very fine nib, so that I can use it for note taking. It’s inked up with Sailor Black, a new ink for me and one that’s supposed to be water resistant. I’m using this combination for my certification study notes, and I may also try it out with some watercolours in a sketch, just to see if I can use Sailor Black ink as part of my sketching kit.
Edison Nouveau Premiere Cappuccino fine nib – I bought this pen in early 2012, before they did a run of seasonal limited editions of this pen design. I haven’t used in years, and the same goes for the ink in it: Lamy Petrol. This is a limited edition ink, one that Lamy issued with the Lamy Safari Petrol, and it’s a wonderful blue-black with red sheen.
Leonardo Momento Zero Bohemian Twilight fine nib – this pen has “only” been a year out of rotation, and it’s one of my favourite Leonardos. The colour of the resin is gorgeous, and it works very well with the Pilot Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo ink that it’s filled with. Tsuki-you is a bluish-teal with red sheen and a wet flow, and it suits the Leonardo’s fine nib.

Modern pens writing sample on Midori MD paper.

August’s Currently Inked Fountain Pens

August is going to be a month of pens and inks that I haven’t used in a good long while. While I still have a small amount of ink in four of my July pens (the Kanelea, the TWSBI ECO-T Saffron, the Big I Design Fountain EDC and the Schon Design Faceted Pocket 6), they will all be written dry by the end of next week at the latest. It was time for a new lineup, and this is this month’s assortment:

The TWSBI ECO-T is one of my favourite TWSBI designs, and so I have a few of them. The TWSBI ECO-T Mint Blue hasn’t been in use for about two years, so I decided to pull it out and use the Sailor Studio 162 with it, just for colour matching reasons. The 162 is an ink that I’ve used a few months ago but I really like it, so I felt like giving it another month in rotation.

The Lamy Safari Pink Cliff is a recent purchase that I made in Paris last April. I’ve only now inked it up as I wasn’t sure what ink to use with it — until all the discussion about the new (and not as great) Lamy Dark Lilac ink made me want to use the original Lamy Dark Lilac ink. I purchased a bottle of Dark Lilac and the Dark Lilac Safari back when they first came out, but I haven’t used the ink very much. It’s wet and very saturated and so it works best with only a handful of paper options that I have. Still, it’s a very attractive ink.

Visconti Homo Sapiens — this is the original Homo Sapiens, the one that created quite a splash when it came out. At the time it was my most expensive fountain pens, and it’s still one of my most precious pens. I bought it at Mora Stylos in Paris and had it customized with the special initial badges on the finial. I got Pilot Iroshizuku Shin Kai as a gift with my purchase, and though I love this ink I haven’t used it in a while simply because I misplaced it behind another rarely used ink.

The pens from top to bottom- TWSBI ECO T Mint Blue, Lamy Safari Pink Cliff, Visconti Homo Sapiens, Parker 51 Flighter, Sailor Pro Gear Slim Manyo Cherry Blossom, Leonardo Momento Zero Grande 2,0 Galattica Universe

Vintage Parker 51 pens are my absolute favourites, to the point where I have a hard time seeing one in the wild and not buying it. This Parker 51 Flighter hasn’t been in use in years, but in the spirit of “use the good china” I’ve inked it up. Pilot Iroshizuku Fuyu Syogun used to be my favourite grey ink — and then Diamine came out with a series of excellent grey inks and Sailor came out with the 123. I haven’t used it in years, so I dusted off the bottle and decided to give it another try.

The Sailor Pro Gear Slim Many Cherry Blossom has been in rotation relatively recently, but the ink inside it, the Sailor Shikiori Sakura Mori, is one I haven’t used in years. I don’t have or use many pink inks, but I decided I needed something to brighten up this lineup, and the Sakura Mori ink is relatively readable. It also perfectly matches this pen, which is a nice bonus.

Leonardo Momento Zero Grande 2.0 Galattica Universe is also a relatively recently purchased pen that has been in rotation not too long ago. I just love the Momento Zero so much that I decided I wanted to ink one up, and so I chose the Pilot Iroshizuku Syo Ro to ink it up with. I haven’t used this inks in years, and I love teal inks so it was about time.

What have you got inked up for this month? Anything new? Old favourites or long forgotten pens or inks?

Writing at Large

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Tag: Sailor Pro Gear