Do people still use fountain pens?

[din]

Just curious (as always lol)

Do people (students in particular) still use fountain pens ?

I remember using them long back, like 18 or 20 yrs back when I was in school. It was fun and it was on the 'go green' concept. And we used to borrow ink from friends. Like they will put 4-5 drops from their pen to the desk, and we will take it into our pens lol. First lessons of sharing may be !

I know the practical difficulties, but still checking if there are any using those fountain pens nowadays. Other than the costly ones (Parker etc). Hero was one good option. It is still available ?

[MasterMinds]

I have stopped using them like 4-5 years back! .nd now i am 18
it was fun using them! But it is difficult to use them!

[Aspire]

Yes, In our school students from 4th to 6th use Fountain Pens because our school made it compulsary as it makes handwriting good.

I used Fountain Pen way back in around 2002 and hated it as it leaked all over my notebook

I use Reynolds Trimax now, its quite good

[MetalheadGautham]

I still do even though I am an engineering student. When I need a good handwriting and at the same time need to write fast, fountain pens (I use Hero pens) are the best. Normally I use Pilot or cello pinpoint but for writing records I prefer a Hero.

[krishnandu.sarkar]

Nope....!!

But used in skul cls4-6 as it was compulsory.

[pimpom]

I haven't used fountain pens for a long time. Sometimes I wish I had one handy, but I keep forgetting to buy one. In certain applications, such as when making small notations in technical work, they make a more uniform mark. But the ink sometimes spreads on porous paper.

I'm old enough to remember when ballpoints were just starting to become widespread. In those days, ballpoints were not accepted for writing important documents because the ink often came out uneven and sometimes came out in globs that take a long time to dry and smudge easily. Some of the cheaper ones still do that.

OTOH, fountain pens, especially cheap ones, were messy. Have you ever carried a fountain pen on a plane? The ink is initially at normal atmospheric pressure, and when the pressure drops at high altitude, it squeezes out the ink and often stains shirt fronts.

had used fountain pen long ago........
they are tough to handle........

[Ethan_Hunt]

I haven't wrote much in a long time now. Typing has become too mundane now. I used to be addicted to writing with Fountain pens. I used it to write until my final Bcom exams, which must have been in 2006. Since then I haven't touched them.

I always had a special affection towards them when opting to write. They were much more fluid compared to the regular ball point pens. Also it was a habit inculcated since our school days which carried on till college. Now if I have to write, I have to use ball point pens.

[Liverpool_fan]

I used to use them till class 8, but I never found them smooth and they leaked all over. But it felt good to use them.
Now I use Ball Point pens only.

[ico]

Yes!!!!!!!

[Anorion]

Yeah we were forced to use them at school too. Used to gimme ink stains all over, and yeah, remember squeezing out small pools of ink on those plastic covered notebooks so that someone who had run out could suck it up. But bad paper used to get stuck in the nibs and spoil them. Don't use fountain pens anymore, come to that, don't use much of pens anymore at all.

[MetalheadGautham]

Originally Posted by Anorion

Yeah we were forced to use them at school too. Used to gimme ink stains all over, and yeah, remember squeezing out small pools of ink on those plastic covered notebooks so that someone who had run out could suck it up. But bad paper used to get stuck in the nibs and spoil them. Don't use fountain pens anymore, come to that, don't use much of pens anymore at all.

Hey, doing that saved my butt a few years back.

As for paper, fountain pens were the reason I used to spend a lot on books. Always wanted the best quality paper. But I never got ink Stains thanks to my faithful Hero 329, 332, 333, 343 pens.

[din]

Hero pen - The good old days ! There is a shop called 'Pen House' in Cochin. Exclusive shop for pen and pen-servicing ! Will check with them this weekend to find if they have Hero or other good brands.

[pimpom]

Did you guys know this? Long ago, pens with filling mechanisms were not easily available, especially to common folks in poorer countries like India. Ink was stored directly in the bottom part of the pen.

One advantage of that was that it could hold a large amount of ink, but it was messy. Ink had to be poured in from the bottle or transferred from bottle to pen with an eyedropper. This is how the eyedropper icon came to be used for colour pick tool in computer painting programs. The thread fitting the nib section to the ink container was often not completely airtight, leaking ink while writing and badly smudged fingers.

[din]

Oh yes, but not that long ago Like just 20yrs back it seems lol

I remember it, pouring ink direct from small bottle (Chelpark/Camel?) to the pen. Then the eye dropper and then the eye-dropper-attached Hero pen

Thanks for enlightening, I never know the other part, I mean why the eye dropper icon appeared for color picker.

[Anorion]

Yeah, used pens where you had to use an ink dropper to fill in the ink, but didn't know that pens with those squeezable cartridges (is that what you call em?) were hard to get around here.

[phreak0ut]

Oh yes!! Used throughout my college days I still love 'em!

[hellknight]

I still do.. started using those pens again in the 4th sem of engg..

[pimpom]

One more thing I remember about fountain pens: As young kids, sometimes we somehow got the nib greasy and the ink wouldn't flow. One remedy was to burn off the grease by holding the tip over an open flame for a brief moment. Sometimes we were not quick enough and also partly melted the plastic ink channel, distorting it and causing improper ink flow.

[swordfish]

i need one.. my hand writing is worst.. i even cant read my own writing tomorrow

[MetalheadGautham]

My (current) hero pens collection. The black one is a Hero 329 while the rest are Hero 332 models.



329 costs Rs. 40 or 45 in the market today, while 332 (recommend for all) costs Rs. 25 in market.

I also had a 343 which I gave to my sister, 2 more 343s which I lost, a 333 which belonged to my grandfather (who used it in college) but I lost, and several more random models.

[Psychosocial]

I still love them... I buy Hero pens... great ones as MetalHeadGautham said.

[NucleusKore]

Instead of Hero try Parker Vector fountain pen. It's much more smooth. Parker Vector does not come with a filler, so I used to fill the cartridges with a syringe and reuse them :-P

[phreak0ut]

@MHG-What's the difference between those models?? I've used a Hero pen for a long time, but never found out the difference.

@Nucleus-Parker pens are known for it's smoothness...... and thick lines while writing. Never took a liking for it

[max_demon]

i LOVE to write with fountain pen , i liked it but nowdays just useing dot/ball pens (temperory ones)

[Cool G5]

I last used once 5-6 years ago. Now I'm mostly on Cello Sapphire. Been using it for around 2 years now, it has become my prime & numero uno pen. Have 3 of them.

[rsk11584]

PART - I got closed long time back... hence could not post my reply there ;(

http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/comm...tain-pens.html

Right from childhood i had craze for ink pens as opposed to other peoples views I used to love ink pens and knew the nack of modifying nib to make thick dark lines just bend it a little towards forward carefully and adjust the gap between the nib. In school we had ink pens compulsary and i had many pens which i cherished most i loved were local pens having amazing designs and the transparent body pens or colored transparent body pens (with chamki design) so you can see the ink level, i didnt like Hero pens because they came with ink dropper attached and used to hold very less ink, so frequent refilling required, preferred to use the normal ink pen which holds ink in its body..

Now after 10 std i literally stopped using ink pens, started using ball pens, gel pens etc,and this computer is worst, it makes handwriting really bad ;( because you use computer only and rarely use pens for anything apart from signing , so further handwriting is spoiled


now im working in accounts and write cheques, sign documents etc, and i am very bad in maintaining ball pens and in office anyone comes takes pen and forgets to give it in this way i must have lost about 100 s of pens, and in officethey dont even give a decent good gel pen continuous supply to write , govt office stores person always gives the 5 rs ball pen cello, which is not good for writing cheques, signing . so i personally used reynolds gifted by my uncle, but its cartridge was costly so yesterday only went to market and bought camlin ink pen (which has transparent part to view ink level) my fav ,, with ink bottle so that my handwriting sign is good and its also cheap and best

[asingh]

What a bump.

Yea, I still use a fountain pen. Love 'em.

[rsk11584]

Thanks for opening the closed thread, guess old threads should not be closed, dont know when someone might bump into them and reply

[Sam]

last used 5-6yrs ago.