[–] [S] 2 points 2 months ago

None. I got one when I initially force primed the feed (by dripping too much ink into the section), and you can still see the residue on the nib, but nothing since then. My guess is that they engage their cap too far onto the section, pushing air out of the seal cup (which is mounted on a spring, so hard to tell when it's good). You'll notice that on my pictures, I don't engage the cap deep enough to cover the three spring ears (little steel wire that sticks out of the blue plastic). My guess is that is why I don't experience that.

  • source
  • parent
  • context
  • Majohn B32 (lemmy.world)
     

    Capped Uncapped

    The Moon man/Majohn B32 is not an original design, but a replica of a 1970's German pen that had a 925‰ Silver body and cap (Montblanc 1266). The B32 is a steel body and cap, plastic (likely acrylic) section, piston pen, that set me back 33,21€ (including everything). It is what I consider a middle size (ø11,5mm - L137mm), middle weight pen (26,6g - 17,6g full of ink, with and without the cap respectively). Its cap is both friction fit and clipped, a bit of an odd system that I don't fully understand. The ink tank is rather small for my taste: I have not done a proper measurement of its capacity, but I can say it's smaller than a Waterman cartridge by quite a bit, I would estimate it to be around 1,0±0,2mL based purely on feel. The feed at least, is designed properly for a piston filler: no nostalgic fins, but a smooth surface on the back of the nib, that allows as clean a feel as a piston pen can offer, and incidentally, also low ink waste, which can't really be attributed to Majohn.

    Nib details Feed back Feed and nib Tipping

    The section is easy to take apart, and allows for a proper cleaning, so there is no need to stick to safe inks. And on the topic of the section, mine got pretty awfully scratched right away (it was pristine out of the box, so I did all the damage myself, but not from egregious treatment on my part), it is a part that worries me to a point that I contacted the seller to know if they can source spare parts, and as of right now, no, and due to the steel spring inside the cap, it will get worse and worse. The piston filler is rather typical: it works but it makes the task of getting a 100% fill with it impossible. I just refill mine by inserting a needle tipped squeeze bottle into it because it avoids a lot of what I hate about piston pens (the need for a deep enough ink container, and for cleaning the dipped parts) and it allows for a 100% fill in one go.

    The nib is very smooth, rather broad for size (equivalent to a steel Waterman F), rather wet, I would say 6/10, but I have not tried inks that shift color with wetness so this is only an estimate. The grind on mine offers no line variation, but I don't know if mine is the norm or an edge case as it has very little tipping material, and pictures that I have seen so far seem to show that all nibs have that little. It is rather good at erasing paper texture, but it is also good at conveying paper smoothness. It takes a surprisingly long time to dry out uncapped. The nib has a slight springiness to it, albeit a useless one. The pen feels average in size and weight, thinner than it looks even, it is well balanced, but it has the slightest bit of top weight, barely noticeable. It can be posted, but can't realistically be used like that due to the balance.

    I have put three full converters through it, and am now on the forth fill (1x 10% v/v concentration Ostrich 555, 1x Waterman Encre noire (old formulation Waterman black), 2x J. Herbin Perle noire), so I have used it a bit now, and I am surprised by how normal it feels. I can't quite put it into words what would make a pen normal, nor why this one wouldn't be. Though what I can say is that Chinese pens feel Chinese, they lack this sort of natural feeling when writing that most of my European pens have and that some of my Japanese pens have. I am talking about that feeling that everything comes together: weight, balance, shape, size, tightness of the parts, overall rigidity, smoothness and feedback in all directions, but also something unquantifyable that makes me trust the pen; all of that to form a whole greater than the sum of the parts. This one, this B32, it is the first Chinese pen I have used that has that feeling, despite numerous of the Chinese pens I own being very good pens. It is a pen that gets out of the way and lets your write. Again, that is what pens are supposed to do, and usual they do it just fine. I suppose that what I'm saying is that it feels rather European. Make of this what you will.

    Overall, this is a very pleasant pen to use, it has interesting aesthetics, even if Majohn can't exactly be praised for that either; it offers more colors than the original, yet only offers one nib size for the assembled pen (both F and EF size are available as spare part, in silver or gold finish). It is on the expensive side, even if I got mine for 33€, current typical price seem to be 44-50€ now. I am a little ambivalent about whether or not I would recommend it, I tend to stay away from piston pens as they are less practical than cartridge pens, though this one is designed properly, and this one is pretty expensive for what it is. I supposed if you love the looks like I do, it's a good pen, but one that has an uncertain lifespan due to the steel on plastic interaction on the section.

    Cap clip Cap details Cap details back

    Writing samples compared to Waterman steel F nibs of very similar size: Writing samples

    [–] [S] 3 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    I did indeed forget about the steel springs inside the cap, but the cap itself is plastic, at least on mine. And it never feels cold to the touch. There are also flow and stretch marks from the molding and ejection process respectively, so it's rather unequivocal. The paint is pretty well done so it does look metallic, I have to give it to Jinhao: they do make wonderful paints (the 85 is also magnificent in metallic blue and gold).

    Which one did you take in the picture, the "Limited" edition or the normal one? That's really curious they would have different materials, but nothing crazy for Jinhao.

  • source
  • parent
  • context
  •  

    Posted

    The is the Jinhao 59 with an EF nib, in the "wine red limited edition", all included (shipping, duties, etc.), it cost me 8,19€ to get it. It is fully made of plastic, except for the trim ring, clip and section plug that are made of steel. The whole pen weighs 17,2g with a full converter, it is ever so slightly top heavy, likely due to the clip. It is 118mm long closed, 148mm posted, roughly 13mm in diameter and the section is around 11,5mm where I hold it. The converter sits deeper than in the Elite 95S, closer to a Sailor 21, the mouth is ø3,4. It is not particularly small compared to non pocket pens, but given the fact that I don't care for the pocket aspect, I can't speak for its usefulness as such.

    Capped Converter depth In pieces

    Size comparison with (left to right) the Hero 1079, Waterman Expert and Jinhao 20

    Compared to Hero 1079 and Waterman Expert Compared to Jinhao 20

    The nib feels the same as the ones in the Jinhao 10 and 20, it's just physically larger: it is rather smooth, especially for its size, well tuned, 3-4/10 wetness (great ink efficiency), but the feed is great at keeping up with fast paced writing and even sketching, doesn't have any directional variation, it is not sensitive to paper texture. It writes slightly thinner than a Pilot F, or Jinhao hooded nib from the 911 and 85. Unfortunately, the nib is not an inlaid one, the section is just cut to look like the Elite 95S' inlaid one, and it looks like it was originally designed for a different nib, but as if plans changed somewhere along the way, especially on the feed side.

    Writing sample

    The feed seems captive inside the section as the section plug seems glued, so I would recommend sticking to safe inks to increase the pen's lifespan, as well as regular flushes. After a little over 4 weeks of use (and roughly 5,5 converters worth of ink) the section and blind cap have developed microscratches from the friction fit cap sliding on and off, nothing obvious, but something to keep in mind for longevity.

    Overall, it is a perfectly serviceable pen, it works perfectly fine out of the box, has no glaring issues (at least with the black colorways), and still looks pretty good under normal lighting. My issues is that Jinhao has better pens for the price (like the 88 or 95), both in terms of quality and durability. Still not a bad purchase.

    [–] [S] 2 points 3 months ago

    It's a good thing you are making it work.

    You could get yourself a few needle tipped squeeze bottles to both fill pens and do ink dilution. All of my inks are in those and it makes like so much easier. I also use them when traveling, air travel is not a problem for them (I still carry them in nested zip locked bags and rolled in paper towels, just in case). I use 10mL, 30mL and 50mL depending on the ink, and I haven't had inky fingers from a fill in eons.

    Needle tipped squeeze bottle

  • source
  • parent
  • context
  • [–] [S] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I hesitated to tag you, but I opted for the addition of the second part of the title instead.

    Although Nitrogen may not be a complete write off, you could try diluting it with distilled water, not directly in the bottle it comes in, but in something else in case you mess up and dilute too much. From what I have read, I would start at 60/40 ink/water. But start as small as is practical for you, not even enough to fill up your eco, and then use it as a dip pen to see how much sheen you still get. Though it seems pretty far from the Sea of Okinawa, Nitrogen seems like a very light Cyan that is super saturated, so diluting it might change the underlying hue to something you won't like.

  • source
  • parent
  • context
  •  

    Since I recommended this ink to someone who was unhappy with Nitrogen from Organics studio, I thought I would try to showcase it properly which is rather difficult for a sheening ink.

    This is Ostrich's Sea of Okinawa from their sheen line, it presents as a bright blue with red sheen. They are available in 18mL plastic bottles, or 30mL glass bottles. The glass bottles are a lot more expensive per unit of volume (so I stick to the smaller plastic ones).

    Package and bottle

    The Sea of Okinawa is a very well behaved sheen, and depending on the pen and paper it can even be rather subdued: broad wet nibs show it as a bright blue, as it does from this Picasso 902 M. But in this Pilot Custom 74 F, it shows darker, with no shading and a rather flat sheen. This ink is very well behaved on a lot of papers and barely impacts ink flow in the pens I have tried it in. It is a bit of a nib creeper.

    Sample

    This ink can show tremendous shading and sheen on the right paper and in the right pen, and in that respect, it is rather picky, as it favors broader nibs to show shading and variation in sheen. The Waterman Exception even shows a haloing effect with this ink and its rather broad M nib, that I have not seen with anything [and I stand corrected on that]. It behaves well enough to be used as a daily, in work/professional setting, no problem, as basic copy paper will not show outlandish sheen.

    (Oxford Essentials, 90g/m² Optik paper)

    Sample

    On this Oxford "Optik paper+", the Picasso 902 M shows some interesting effects, some very light haloing, though not as much as the Waterman Exception M.

    (Oxford Essentials notebook, 80g/m² Optik paper+)

    Sample

    Nib creep on Pilot Custom 74 F

    Nib creep

    Mild haloing on 80g/m² Optik paper+ from a Picasso 902 M

    Haloing Haloing

    Sheen from a drop of ink on 90g/m² Optik paper, ink name written with steel nib dip pen Sheen

    On some papers (Clairefontaine's velum papers for instance), it shows a bright red metallic sheen, on some others (like the Optik paper and the Optik paper+) it shows a little more subtle, but I have not seen it feather or bleed though any of the paper I use, including the super cheap Action notebook (still with decent 80g/m² paper). White paper obviously makes the sheen more noticeable, but it does work well with a broad variety of papers nonetheless, it will just be less noticeable. I have also used this ink in a Picasso 916 with a SEF nib that's thinner than Pilot's EF steel nibs, and it caused zero issues in terms of flow, and still showed sheen.

    I apologize for not showing the ink in the Waterman Exception after bringing it up, but I just filled it with some Emeraude de Chivor and I love this ink way too much to waste even a drop of it. If anyone is really curious I can add a sample at a later date, but it's really hard to capture haloing.

    Edit: I forgot to mention that Ostrich also has a more saturated version of it (that I have not tried) called Aegian sea. But after my experience with their Glen of the sea, an insanely complexe extremely dark purple that looks black, feathers pink and sheens bright metallic green on anything, including toilet paper, I have been reluctant to try it. Because the Glen of the sea has an extremely hard time flowing in a fountain pen, it crusts up everywhere, smudges (pink) even when dry. Diluting it doesn't really help much, it shows less sheen, but not more color and doesn't even improve the flow.

    [–] [S] 2 points 3 months ago

    I actually made a mistake, I don't have an IM, it is a Premier, I always make that mistake, but I have only had that pen for something like... 15 years. I guess that explains why we don't have the same experience. My apologies for the confusion.

  • source
  • parent
  • context
  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    Test tubes are really worth it is you want to mix inks often AND want to use them to fill a piston pen (or vac, sac, etc), but if your jars work, they work, plus they can stand up straight on their own.

    Well, Herbin is, as far as I am aware, the company that has been making ink the longest (228 years so far), so they have quite a bit of experience. Prior to that they were already trading in pigments and making colored seal waxes, so even then, they didn't start from scratch. Depending where you shop, they can also be super cheap, if you buy the plastic 100mL bottles of their normal inks (not shimmers or special editions), they can be had at around 13-14€ depending on the color, so still cheap AND very cheap per unit of volume. Though not all their inks exist in that format (Bleu calanques for instance isn't made in 100mL).

    As long as you mix inks, and not dyes, and dye based inks only, even making 1L at a time shouldn't be a big deal. I mean... it might get cumbersome or tiresome if you go overboard eventually. For separation, it can happen that you'd get some color shift once inside the pen, after resting for a while (like a day or longer) one of the inks you used shows up first when you start writing, then it turns into the proper mixed color, but there is no way to tell whether it will happen until you try, though keeping to a single brand usually prevents this. And even shaking the pen wouldn't prevent that because it happens in the feed for the most part.

    But if we're talking about mixing ink from dyes (or even worse, pigments), then this is when the stirrer comes in handy, because dealing with mixing pastes to water is rather time consuming, and doing it by hand wouldn't yield good results, because not only do you risk having clumps of dye floating in there, but you wouldn't be able to have a predictable hue if you haven't mixed in all the dye.

    I have had somewhat bad separation when trying to make a pigment based warm, dark brown. I used a red, a brown and a black, and it acted really odd: the center of a stroke had a streak of pure black, the edges had the red come out and sometimes even feather out alone, then the rest was proper brown. Shaking the pen before writing limited the effects, but depending on the paper, the black streak or the red feathering would still always come out. That batch made me give up mixing pigment myself, it's too annoying to deal with as a DYIer.

    Human eye color sensitivity is only relevant to plan out your mixes, or understand what will or has happen, nothing further.

  • source
  • parent
  • context
  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago* (2 children)

    A fellow Jacques Herbin aficionado?

    Now before I forget, for the future, I would recommend investigating test tubes: you can plug them to keep the ink from spilling or evaporating, shake them to mix, and use them to fill up your pens, keep them upright. They have two major drawbacks though: still can't finish ink from them, and they don't protect from light. Also, for this kind of fill, I find it easier to pull the feed out and fill from the section than mess with the piston.

    Now, when you want to mix inks, you need to remember one important aspect of the human eye: it is twice as sensitive to green as it is to blue (give or take), and when you think about that, you can understand how blue our planet truly is, or how grey plants might actually be.

    Also, mixing inks should be fine if you use inks from a same brand, because that's basically what inks are: a mix. But it's a good idea (so one I disregard of course) to not mix dye based with pigment based, because that's when things go a little unstable, separate, or have odd reactions. Don't get me wrong, you can get shifting hue from mixing two dye based inks from a single brand, but it's nothing a good shake can't fix, usually.

    If you really want to start mixing inks, you should check out magnetic stirrers. And no, I'm genuinely not trying to be an enabler.

    I don't find your green and blue result to be that surprising: you mixed a green that's pretty yellow, with a very dark blue that sheens red, so when you think about it, it sort of checks out.

    What I find, maybe not funny per se, but intersting, is that I'm fairly confident we could find the resulting mixes in Herbin's lineup. It's hard to say for sure, but I think your purple might be their Poussière de lune, your orange could match their Rouille d'encre, your resulting light black seems close to their Gris galet, although your green... Lierre sauvage maybe?

    Also, you don't have to fill up your pen, you can also use it as a dip pen (provided it's empty and clean).

    And I'm with you on the distinctions: I have a bunch of black inks, but some of them are black, and some of them are... slightly darker black.

    Edit: typo

  • source
  • [–] [S] 2 points 3 months ago

    Usually, between 6 and 8, but when that question arose last year, I had 14. I try not to go too crazy to avoid spending too much time on cleaning. Right now, I have 9:

    • Waterman Expert with J. Herbin Perle noire (my mainstay dye based black ink with Waterman's black)
    • Waterman Exception with J. Herbin 1670 Emeraude de Chivor (yes, I daily this ink)
    • Waterman Allure with J. Herbin Bleu des profondeurs
    • Pimio 916 EF (the red and gold one, fifth one, top row, first picture) with Noodler's ink X-Feather black, diluted to 50% with distilled water
    • HongDian 517D EF with Jinhao's 5001 black, diluted to 60% (same for all the pens using this ink)
    • Jinhao 85 EF (the right blue and gold from the first picture, bottom row) with the same batch of diluted Jinhao black
    • Pilot Explorer M with the Jinhao black
    • Wing Sung 601A (which is not pictured) with Ostrich 555 diluted to 50%
    • Pilot Custom 74 F with Ostrich sheen Sea of Okinawa diluted to 80% (tiny bit less sheen, but way brighter on the page)

    But I also have two drawers full of ink bottles and a big storage container that barely closes, with more inks and various converters and needle tipped bottles I use to refill cartridges and converters; last time I counted, probably in 2021 or thereabout, I had above different 30 inks in stock, and that was before I tried Chinese inks, and I bought quite a few of them. The Jinhao ones are pretty good across the board, except their brown that is kind of pink in the pens I tried it with, and Ostrich has crazy good stuff too, their sheen series in particular is amazing, because they're not just cheap, but they're usable, except the Glen of the sea, but this one is insane.

    If you want to talk inks, I'll be right there with you, even if I write mostly with black inks.

    Also, even if it seems like a bit of a large collection, it's not an expensive one, most of the good pens in my collection are single digit prices (at least in euros), while the most disappointing to me have been the expensive ones (mostly the Parker, Platinum and Pilot, as if the letter P was a bad omen).

    Regarding your comment about number of inks compared to number of pens, please don't take this as enticement to go buy more pens, but I think you could be depriving yourself of one aspect a diverse collection of pen can bestow upon you: how different one ink can look in different pens and how unpredictable that can be.

    For instance, the Ostrich sheen Sea of Okinawa, it's a bright blue with red sheen, nothing crazy, and it's an actually good daily ink in my opinion, but I digress: in my Exception (rather broad for size medium nib and a very wet one), one could expect it to show more sheen and show darker than with something like the Custom 74 in F I have it in right now, but no, the result is the opposite of what I would have thought. It shows darker in the Pilot than the Waterman, and and the sheen is rather flat and uniform. It also shows very little shading. And that's why I diluted it, to force it to show brighter in the thinner Pilot. The Waterman even shows some haloing, that has never shown in any other pen I have tried the ink in, most likely because it's the broadest non stub nib I have.

    So you'd think a broader nib should make it look brighter and sheen more, even if it's a wetter one, at least I did, but I was wrong: I tried it in the Picasso (or Pimio, whichever name you prefer) 902 with the M nib, which happens to be close to the Waterman M. The shade of blue is rather close, a bit darker despite not being as wet, but the sheen isn't, it's flatter and shows less variation than.

    And one that has been "crazier" is the Jinhao blue-black/black-blue/dark blue/deep blue (depending on whether you check the bottle, the box, official literature, in English or Chinese). This is an ink that I think was meant to mimic the Parker Quink blue black, but the color looks vastly different in different pens. In a Jinhao 35 EF for instance, it looks identical to the Quink. But in a Hero 1079 superfine, it looks like a warmer blue, not quite teal, more gray, almost like it gained an aged yellowish hue. In a Pimio 902 M, it looks like a darker, deeper blue, none of that grayish blue you'd expect from a blue-black. And that happens across the board on all paper types I have used them on.

    So, what I'm trying to say is, I guess I care about inks too?

  • source
  • parent
  • context
  •  

    This is less of a check out my collection and more of a is there anything you would like to know more about, a state of the collection of pens I have accumulated over the more than three decades I have been using fountain pens. I don't have anything particularly special, so most of them are known, but there are a few interesting, less known ones.

    I started using them not out of my own volition, but because it was mandatory in first grade. Then, when it wasn't anymore, I still stuck with them, because other pens didn't feel quite as nice, not as smooth, required much more pressure to write, and certainly didn't have the array of colors available to fountain pens. So while I didn't originally choose to use fountain pens, I absolutely chose to stick with them. I do occasionally use ballpoints (BIC cristal and M10) and various gel pens, when I have to, but this is very much occasional.

    This is not all the pens I have ever had, I have broken, lost, sold and given away quite a few tens of them, this is only what I have today, minus a Wing Sung 601A which is in my lab right now, but I am not going to go get it because of the heat.. and it is not worth talking about too (not a particularly good pen).

    I'll present the pens as:

    [Brand] [Model name] [Nib size/style/cut] - [name of the colorway],

    as expressed by the manufacturer or in the sales pages, in English (usually machine translated for Chinese brands), as available.

    Top row, left to right:

    • Pimio / Picasso 933 Avignon M - unknown
    • Pimio / Picasso 902 Gentleman series M - Agathe red
    • Pimio / Picasso 902 Gentleman series M - Black gold cap
    • Pimio / Picasso 906 Athens Dynasty M - Blakc and gold
    • Pimio / Picasso 916 Malaga EF - Red
    • Pimio / Picasso 916 Malaga F - Muri gray
    • Pimio / Picasso 916 Malaga SEF - Dawn red
    • HongDian C1 Explorer F - Red
    • HongDian 517D EF - Matte black and silver
    • Jinhao 35 EF - Black
    • Jinhao 911 EF - Black and gold
    • Jinhao 20 EF - "C" (no further naming found for this color)
    • Pilot kaküno EF - Gray
    • Pilot Custom 74 F (14k) - unkown

    Bottom row:

    • Jinhao 100 Naginata & F nibs - Snowflake
    • Jinhao 100 M - Black
    • Jinhao 100 EF - Tofu
    • Jinhao 95 F - Black and gold
    • Jinhao 95 M - Red
    • Jinhao 85 EF/0,38mm (hooded nib) - DYI colorway (barrel painted with the same paint as my motorcycle)
    • Jinhao 85 F (open nib) - Black
    • Jinhao 85 EF (hooded) - Blue
    • Jinhao 85 EF (hooded) - Blue (same colorway, different batches, lighter is older by several years, difference not due to shifting color)
    • Jinhao 75 F/0,5mm - Black red
    • Jinhao 88 F - Red
    • Jinhao 88 EF - Blue
    • Hero 849 EF - Green (it's actually teal and rose gold)
    • Pilot explorer M - Red

    Top row:

    • Platinum #3776 Music nib (14k) - Black (the feed has turned into dust, and no replacement parts are available as Platinum refuses to sell parts for repairs, and I am not paying for the shipping to Japan for a pen that costed my 11800¥)
    • Parker Sonnet F (18k) and Cursive (18k) - Chiseled silver (or sterling silver I don't remember)
    • Parker IM Premier F (18k) - Black and gold trim
    • Parker Duofold International F (18k) - Green tortoise shell and Rhodium (IIRC) trim
    • Pilot 78G+ M - Green
    • Pilot 78G+ F - Black
    • Pilot kaküno F - Soft blue
    • Hero 1079 Ultrafine/0,38mm - Black
    • Hero 1079 Ultrafine/0,38mm - Yellow
    • Hero P108 0,38mm (hooded) - Matte black
    • Hero 616 F - Burgundy
    • Hero 616 F - Yellow (yeah, I know)

    Bottom row

    • Unknown pen with generic nib and feed - (actual) Sandal wood
    • Unknown pen with generic nib and feed - (actual) Rosewood
    • Kaco Mellow EF - Red
    • Kaco Retro EF/0,38mm (hooded) - Black
    • No idea what this one is, same generic nib and feed as the wood pens
    • "Vintage Hero pen" no further details (hooded nib)
    • "Vintage Hero pen" no further details (hooded nib)
    • Stonego unknown model with "KURM" branding on nib
    • Stonego unkown model with "HUASHILAI" branded nib
    • Unknown brand and model with generic "Iridium point" nib
    • Lambitou 2053 Artistic pen - unknown
    • Hero 616 F/0,5mm - Red

    Left to right:

    • Waterman Allure F - Chrome
    • Waterman Kultur F - unknown
    • Waterman Philéas M - Black and gold trim (smoothest steel nib I have ever used)
    • Waterman Hémisphère M - unknown
    • Waterman Charleston M (18k) and OF (18k) - Ivory

    Left to right:

    • Waterman Exception "slim" M - Black and gold trim
    • Waterman Expert II F - Black and gold trim
    • Waterman Apostrophe M - Black and gold trim
    • Waterman Apostrophe M - Black and gold trim
    • Waterman Apostrophe M - Black and gold trim

    Feel free to ask whatever questions come to mind. Do note that I don't necessarily know everything about some of them, I can't even remember how I got some of them.

    Edit: Misidentified the Parker Premier for an IM (don't know why I mistake these two all the time)

    view more: next ›