The Majesty of the Italic Nib

I imagine this was a reasonably cheap pen, because
of the simplicity of its design, but the value of the basement-found
pen is ridiculous!

To the best of my knowledge, this Sheaffer fountain pen is just a generic pen. There is nothing special about the body of the pen or the clip or the weight balance or even the nib.  Basically, this pen is about as normal as can be.  The one difference that this pen has from any of the other pens that I own is that it has an italic nib. The difference that the nib makes in my writing is unbelievable.

What makes this pen write so differently is that instead of coming
to a point, the nib is wide and flat. Genius.

Having been in love with fountain pens for a while now, I'd become fairly comfortable with how I was using mine. Schoolwork was getting done and inks were fun to play with, but I'd never really looked too much into calligraphy, mostly because it was more time consuming and for the most part impractical for my uses. Among the fountain pens that I found in my basement however, was an italic nibbed pen, and I can't believe how much fun it has been!

It isn't that my handwriting is lacking too much, or isn't "pretty" but as far as calligraphic styled writing goes, the italic nib makes a world of difference. After trying a couple times with my Noodler's Nib Creaper Flex Pen, but getting very few results for calligraphy, I tried using this pen and found that this type of nib simply forces you to write "prettier". By widening the lines of the downstrokes and narrowing pretty much all horizontal strokes, your handwriting can very easily look pretty.

Noodler's Axmatoba on plain notebook paper.

The nib isn't scratchy and writes reasonably wet, but I've only used it as a dip pen because I don't think I could ever pick just ONE color to use in this pen. I believe this pen would easily convert to an eyedropper because the barrel just seems to screw on.  If I could find some ink that I absolutely loved (Black Swan in Australian Roses most likely) then I would probably just leave it inked all the time and enjoy the absolutely huge ink reservoir at my disposal.

Writing with this pen has been so much fun. I strongly recommend that anyone who has not tried writing with an italic nib to do so. Even if you're not interested in calligraphy, I'm sure you'll find it just different enough to be fun.

Ink Review: Noodler's Ахматова (Russia Series)

Feeding the addiction...

I'm a fan of bright colors and even though they might be harder to use for in the office environment, I have no qualms using it for letters and notes.  The most use I get for bright colors is class notes and my language journal, so I had no problems justifying the purchase of this ink.  I was also interested in the ultraviolet qualities that this ink would exhibit, so I figured I would try it for that reason as well.

Overall impressions with this ink are somewhat lackluster unfortunately. This ink dries EXTREMELY fast on the nib, for example, if I don't write for a minute or so. Overnight, this ink gets so dry that the only pen type that is practical for this pen is a piston filler, because you can wet the nib with a twist of the back of the pen.  I believe that the ink can be made wetter by adding water, but I don't know how it would affect the way it writes. The green part of the ink washes off from skin, but under a blacklight, it'll show up for a few washes of your hands.  Another claim is that this ink is in the eternal line, so you can expect good things from it. I will be testing the properties of this ink very soon and I will be sure to let you know.

This stuff can be hard to wash off skin! Put some on before clubbing!

 Pictures can't really do this ink any justice, but I tried to do my best. This ink is best described as a spring green that turns a fantastic glow-in-the-dark green under a blacklight. The green looks silhouetted by silver when used on copy paper, but on Moleskine paper, the entire letter glows.  I was surprised most of all by the fact that there was no bleeding on Moleskine paper at all! Perhaps this is the experience others have had with these inks?

I'm now very interested in trying some of the other UV capable inks in the Russia series, and even Noodler's Blue Ghost as well. There isn't much practicality in the latter, but that doesn't mean that it won't be fun!

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