Polonius

Nougat , 2 months ago

Same. kbin.social is big enough that it needs extra people behind the scenes, not just with development but with community engagement and spam control, probably other things I am not thinking of. I threw a message to volunteer for anything, and I'm not rescinding that.

I remain hopeful that kbin.social is successful, but there's writing on the wall that demands attention.

Drusas , 2 months ago

I'm on kbin, so Ernest coming back sure would be a huge boost.

dumpsterlid , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

I always wipe the hand section of the barrel on the back of my hand before using a fountain pen, if a small amount of ink got out into the cap I find that in a pinch oddly the best place to wipe it off where it won’t get on something else is the back of my hand.

Blunt nosed syringes are super useful, get some!

A Wing Sung 698 fits Pilot nibs perfectly from a metropolitan or other similar price range pilot fountain pen. Get the italic stub nib on a Pilot pen and then get a Wing Sung 698, swap the nibs and you have a brilliant but affordable piston filler.

Get some cheap pens, fuck the nibs up, mess around with figuring out how to re-align the tines. Once you learn the skill fountain pens are way less frustrating especially when ordering online without the ability to try them. One great way to “gently hammer” a nib back into shape is to get a thick book with lots of pages that you don’t care about. Take the nib off the pen and slip it in between the pages up to where the bend or crease is. Now you can adjust how many pages to cover the nib with so when you make a hit with a hammer or mallet you can adjust how acutely focused the force is. This is important because if a bend is very sharp you might want to only cover the nib with a small amount of pages to focus the hammer hit on the precise spot of the bend, but if the bend is broad and smoothly distributed you can bury the nib with a lot of pages and make sure that even a firm hammer hit doesn’t focus a bunch of force on bending the nib along a crease and make a new problem. It goes without saying, don’t do this with an expensive nib unless you are confident, but you can repair quite ridiculous nib bends with this method if you are careful.

Get a jewel magnify glass, learn what it looks like up close in terms of tine alignment when a fountain pens feels perfect for you.

Gold fountain pen nibs are special because they are jewelry, they aren’t softer or superior to a well designed steel nib. This holds true for flex nibs and they were plenty of flexible steel nib fountain pens in the past. Look at FPR’s Himalaya flex-iest steel nib for the best modern example.

moosemoosemoose OP , 2 months ago

For people thinking about this 100% do not do this in the original bottle. Some inks have known to react with each other to form sludge and such. Non-absorbant surface is definitely the way to go.

I've been told De Atramentis Document Ink was designed to be safely mixed with each other. It might be something you would be interested in if you like mixing ink!

dual_sport_dork , 3 months ago

I imagine very few people reading this actually ever had to do so, at least as depicted. I, however, have. Because I'm exactly that type of asshole deliberately anachronistic nerd.

All throughout my school career, I used a Sheaffer Targa from the late 1970's. I still have it. Here it is.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/cc4e3a78-d798-4da1-85c0-0da63c743de4.jpeg

Mine was not the fanciest entry in the Targa series -- by far -- but even in its basic stainless steel trim it's a head turner thanks to its very striking and distinctive nib design.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/eb8e68de-129f-4644-bed0-21ab59b54abd.jpeg

I can hear the screeching from the pen collectors from here. Yes, I committed sacrilege by grinding my antique pen's point into an oblique nib but, yes, I also have an unmolested original nib in its as-manufactured configuration. Still in its factory packaging, sealed, unused!

I like a good oblique nib, helped moreso because using this pen for all my assignments absolutely annoyed the shit out of most of my teachers. (And if an oblique is not available, I will make do with a plain italic nib instead.)

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9e5544f4-523c-4952-a12f-ab6b42ff7e93.jpeg

Because of that, to this very day, my basic handwriting looks like this. It looks absolutely ridiculous if you put a ball point or pencil in my hand, but let me have one of my fountain pens and I can crank out these serifed italics as fast as most people can scribble a regular printed hand. Now there's a less-than-marketable skill.

I await with interest what all the armchair graphologists will now tell me what's wrong with me.

MudMan , 3 months ago

What nobody is saying is that if you go into a test with a near-empty ink cartridge your hipsterism has outpaced your skill.

Refill that stuff going in or bring a second pen, you pleb.