Someone up there was asking about thin writing paper with a sorta guidelines that you slip underneath your surface.In my youth, I recall they were always from Basildon Bond, so I googled and B Bond Airmail writing pads are available from Amazon at a very fair price. Check out their home site also.Lovely paper.(Sorry-can’t do links).

Enjoy.
Suez in SAfrica

Reverse Barometer, how’s the hand?

I too am dismayed that I missed a TRex pen thread, being a calligrapher and a stone cold Rotring 1.5 nib calligraphy pen junkie.

It started years ago, as a kid, when I was given an Osmiroid calligraphy pen set as a birthday present. Since then, it’s been all downhill.

Now believe me, I’ve never been a Mont Blanc snob or a Pelikan queen. They seemed too expensive a habit for me to get next to on a college student budget. But then Sheaffer came out with a calligraphy fountain pen and we were in business!! However, the tell-tale signs of leaked cartridge ink was giving away my cover and I was soon shamed into hand-hiding because of those unsightly ink marks on my knuckles!

Maturing into adulthood, I graduated to my career-defining moment of accepting a Parker calligraphy set into my life. I had found redemption. My staff had even given it a nickname: “Big Blue”, as it was the pen I used to sign contracts for our department.

The moment I lost Big Blue, my career life spiralled out of control. I quit my $80k job and found meaningful life with freelancing and that’s when Rotring came into my life. I had found a steady relationship!

Now Rotring and I are partnered, joined at the first knuckle of my middle finger, never to leave me again.

It takes maturity to find one’s true pen soul mate, but once established, you know you’re meant to be together and all anxieties about dating other pens or being put out again into the pen market cease. You’re home.

There is no worse way to start the day than with JoeLIE. My contempt for them man is equal to that of punaise and will be as long lasting.

Oh, can I puhleeeese join the party? I haven’t yet found a scale to measure my own contempt – do I qualify? ;)

I’d say go for the Sheaffer Admiral as a starter pen. They’re fifty years old, but if you get one that’s been restored or well-maintained, they’ll write for another fifty. They’re from the period where ballpoints were still expensive and often messy, and the FP was still the workhorse of the office: you get the Sheaffer Admiral and the lovely (if finicky) Snorkel and the Parker 51 and the cheap-as-chips Esterbrooks, that really aren’t bad if you have a good (9000-series) nib. They may not be as pretty as the 1930s celluloids, but they represent a period of American manufacture where mass-production and precision engineering combined gloriously.

Otherwise, look to continental Europe for modern kit, where FPs are still used in school: a good Geha or low-end Pelikan is likely to be better-made than many chunky executive glitz pens (yes, I own a Mont Blanc 146 as well). The Pelikano school pens are very not bad. And TRex has reminded me that I ought to stick a few spare Kultur demonstrators on eBay.

My own favourite pens are older: a Pelikan 100N; a lovely Eversharp Skyline from the mid-1940s; a couple of lovely Sheaffers; a 1920s Waterman #25, a gorgeous Moore Safety Pen with the flexiest nib that I can only really use as a dip pen. In other news, George W. Bush uses a Sharpie.

Thanks!

I have a couple of waterman Phileas pens. I bought them for my wife to use red and green ink for Christmas cards. I have a number of other pens and my favorite is a Pelican that I bought on sale. It is so lignt and smooth. My most interesting pen is the Pilot disappearing nib. The nib retracts like a ball point and it has a nice feel. I think it was around $100. I can’t wait to try your recommendations. My cheapest is an A&W SizzlesStix. It is a $1.99 plastic cartridge pen that still works great after a decade. I have not seen them since I bought a couple at the drugstore years ago. The cap cracked on the second one.