First/Early Fountain Pen advice
Oct. 31st, 2025 09:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
czedwardsI wrote this for something else, but it’s a decent intro and I’m going to expand on it.
Fountain pens are an excellent option for a lot of people, but they’re not universal for everyone. The way we teach kids to write now comes with some concerns. We start with big, fat crayons and pencils that are hard to sharpen, with semi-hard graphite, on rough paper. Small child hand-eye coordination means that kids tend to press hard when they write, thus why we use hard to break pencils and crayons. But it teaches a grip and a motion that is not conducive to developing comfortable muscle memory habits. We then mostly move the children to ball point pens, which have the advantage of not leaking much, but also need a lot of pressure.
So my first question for a fountain-pen curious person is: do you break mechanical pencil leads? .5s, .7s? Do you do okay with .9s, 1.1s/1.3s, or 2.0mm lead holders? If you don’t know about the latter three, it’s okay to try those first — .9s are mostly vintage twist pencils; 1.1s and 1.3s are mostly carpenter’s mechanicals, and 2.0s are artist and architects’ lead holders (and 2.0 leads come in most hardnesses). But if you find yourself breaking at least the smallest three mechanical pencil leads, you may have an issue with fountain pens, because fountain pens require almost no pressure. And the nibs will bend, splay or break for heavy pressure writers.
There are ways to change your writing habits, but there are intermediate options between heavy pressure and fountain pen pressure, like felt-tip pens, roller balls, and gel pens. I am a big fan of Parker Jotter pens, which can take Monteverde gel/roller ball cartridges instead of ballpoint refills. They’re satisfyingly clicky retractable ballpoints for about $15 and don’t need much pressure, so you can retrain yourself out of that bearing down habit.
Second question: How’s your grip? This also goes back to the way we teach writing in primary school. Do you hold your writing instrument down at the very bottom or up to a third of the way up the pen? How many fingertips are on the instrument? Do you rest your instrument on the side of one finger? Do you get cramps in the muscle between your thumb and palm?
A hard, stiff, low grip is not necessarily great for fountain pens. A hard grip puts a lot of extra pressure on the nib, a stiff one where three or four thumb and fingertips are gripping the instrument creates extra friction in your hand, and many (but not all) fountain pens have a ridge or threads just above the nib, meaning it could make your fingers hurt a lot because you’re pressing hard on something sharp that isn’t intended to be pressed on.
It would be great if we took the time in later childhood, when kids have developed better fine motion control and hand-eye coordination, to correct the ergonomic habits of beginner handwriting, but schools already have a lot on their plates, they’re correcting a ton of problems either created in school (vibe-reading) or in the information environment (disinfo, AI hallucinations, conspiracies) and keyboarding is also a valuable skill.
So ergonomically, it’s really on adults to figure out for themselves if there’s a better way to write. And yes, there is a better way to write, because a hard grip and heavy pressure is bad for your hands, arm and neck, and will eventually cause some repetitive stress injuries. Nobody loves carpal tunnel (except orthopedic hand surgeons in need of a boat).
You really want to try to write from the shoulder-elbow, not from your fingers or wrist. The motive power comes from the shoulder and elbow, while the shaping comes from the fingers-wrist. Think about writing large on a chalk or whiteboard. Your shoulder does most of the work there, not your fingers. It’s similar when writing on paper. Also, writing with chalk requires low pressure (if the chalk is even of barely adequate quality), so you also want to replicate that low pressure on paper. (Chalk squeals are mostly caused by high pressure on poor quality chalk.)
So if you are fountain pen curious, I’d first suggest adjusting your grip, pressure, and motion until you can shade in a 2 inch by 2 inch square with a .5 mechanical pencil without breaking the lead. It’s not your fault that school only gave you the basics of writing, but that’s true of all K-12 education — it’s all the basics, any elaboration we do is as self-directed students.
I will never recommend an expensive pen as a first pen. I got an expensive pen for one of my graduations and the damn thing never worked at all. No matter what I did or how I cleaned it. It was enough before the easy internet that I never knew if there was a place I could send it for warranty service, I couldn’t afford to take it to a pen shop, so it bounced around in the back of my desk until I threw it away in a move, before I had the skills to pull the nib and feed myself. (If I got the pen today, I would have first flossed the tines with a brass sheet, then pulled the nib and feed, but those are advanced skills!)
In fact, I recommend starting with a disposable fountain pen like a Pilot Varsity, an Itoya Blade, or a Zebra Zensation. They have a ton of ink, they last forever, they start (writing after being capped) really easily and instantly, they almost never leak. And they’re usually around $3-4 each, they’re sturdy, and they come in colors! They are disposable, but there is also a not terribly difficult refill process if you absolutely love the nib and the feel. I would rather you decide fountain pens aren’t for you or don’t feel good in your hand after a $4 commitment than to guilt yourself into using something you don’t enjoy. The nice thing about disposables is they can knock around in a desk drawer for years and will still write when you pick it up, and maybe you’ll be in a better place to enjoy it. I have one that is at least 20 years old, that I only refilled a couple years ago.
The next step up are the school pens.
In a big swath of the Not North America parts of the world, primary school students are expected to write with fountain pens, usually Extra Fine nibs or Fine nibs in Asia. This means they have a plethora of cute, fun, pretty, cheap, RELIABLE fountain pens at every price point that a kid could want. Teachers the world over hate messing with their students’ writing instruments, so school pens are the tanks of the writing world. School pens almost universally have steel nibs which will last forever. We don’t really get into or even need gold nibs anymore, because our inks aren’t corrosive anymore! Gold and gold plated nibs existed because early inks were mostly iron-gall bases, which are acidic and will mess up steel nibs. Some people think gold nibs feel softer or bouncier, but in blind tests, steels get just as much love, and it’s mostly an aesthetic choice.
The entry level school pens are the Platinum Preppy, the Pilot Kakuno, the Kaweco Perkeo, the German Pelikan Pina Colada, Ineo, or Pelikano, and about half a dozen Jinhao models. (Jinhao is a Chinese manufacturer that uses classic, out-of-patent designs, as well as some fun designs of their own.)
Platinum Preppy comes in a lot of colors and Extra Fine, Fine and Medium nibs. Fine and Extra Fine are really good pens for cheap paper, which is not always the best for Fountain pens. Kakunos are very pretty, very cute, and of course, sturdy, while Perkeos are designed to encourage the classic, most stable tripod grip of thumb pad, index finger pad and middle joint middle finger. Pelikans are simple workhorses. As of the end of 2025, Preppies run about $7 each, Kakunos are $13-19, Perkeos are $20, and Pelikans are as $14-25. Jinhaos in the US are mostly found on eBay or Amazon, and can be as little as $2 each (when bought in a pack of 12) for the Shark and Swan pens, to about $20.
The middle level school pens are pens that also work great in an office environment, are reliable, and easy to fill, either with good converters or cartridges. Pilot, Platinum, and Pelikan dominate this space, though there’s room for some other makers. This also the realm to start dabbling in vintage and New Old Stock pens, but I don’t recommend older pens until you’re really comfortable with the school pen level.
The one thing I do not recommend for beginners is an aerometric or squeeze filler pen. These have a little rubber bag that fits on the nib body, with a little metal flexible mechanism, that you fill by putting the nib in ink, squeezing the air out of the rubber bag with the metal mechanism, and letting the ink fill the bag. They’re mostly on vintage pens, and they’re hard to clean and can be hard to maintain. You want cartridges or a twist/plunge converter (or both!) to start with, and maybe an eye dropper or piston filler after you’re comfortable with the first two.
It’s also worth knowing that some pen makers and vendors come with baggage. I believe in informed consent, and you should know what you’re okay with, so allow me to refer you to Kari Dru’s excellent Fountain Pen Sins thread: https://bsky.app/profile/karidru.bsky.social/post/3lwvfcotd5k2e
Personally, I am comfortable recommending Sheaffer entry level pens ($25-40), vintage Esterbrook (not the new In Name Only Esterbrook), Platinum, Pilot, and Pelikan, and Sheaffer, Pelikan, Diamine, and Monteverde inks. In addition to Kari’s list, I am reluctant to recommend TWSBI, because they attempted to play patent troll and to strong-arm suppliers over the extremely vintage, very public domain Pelikan Piston fill design they were using. They didn’t want other companies it use it, and threatened vendors with “Pick us or them”. Which is simply unprofessional business conduct and I don’t want to encourage that. But that’s why this is informed consent — what you are willing to tolerate and support should be done with as much knowledge as possible.
I also don’t recommend Lamy pens, because I live at high altitude in a dry climate, and they don’t work up here. They get clotty and spitty. Other people have good luck with them at lower altitude and with more humidity, so I conclude it is my environment, but a lot of the world lives in arid or high altitude climates, or both, so I think people should be warned that Lamy will be frustrating in that environment. But some people love them, just as some people love TWSBI.
Fountain pens ARE good for hand rehab and for preserving function after injury because they don’t take a lot of pressure. They’re solid environmental choices because even cartridges use far less plastic than a standard ball point disposable, and even disposables last longer than disposable ballpoints or rollerballs. They are endlessly variable.
Fountain pens are an excellent option for a lot of people, but they’re not universal for everyone. The way we teach kids to write now comes with some concerns. We start with big, fat crayons and pencils that are hard to sharpen, with semi-hard graphite, on rough paper. Small child hand-eye coordination means that kids tend to press hard when they write, thus why we use hard to break pencils and crayons. But it teaches a grip and a motion that is not conducive to developing comfortable muscle memory habits. We then mostly move the children to ball point pens, which have the advantage of not leaking much, but also need a lot of pressure.
So my first question for a fountain-pen curious person is: do you break mechanical pencil leads? .5s, .7s? Do you do okay with .9s, 1.1s/1.3s, or 2.0mm lead holders? If you don’t know about the latter three, it’s okay to try those first — .9s are mostly vintage twist pencils; 1.1s and 1.3s are mostly carpenter’s mechanicals, and 2.0s are artist and architects’ lead holders (and 2.0 leads come in most hardnesses). But if you find yourself breaking at least the smallest three mechanical pencil leads, you may have an issue with fountain pens, because fountain pens require almost no pressure. And the nibs will bend, splay or break for heavy pressure writers.
There are ways to change your writing habits, but there are intermediate options between heavy pressure and fountain pen pressure, like felt-tip pens, roller balls, and gel pens. I am a big fan of Parker Jotter pens, which can take Monteverde gel/roller ball cartridges instead of ballpoint refills. They’re satisfyingly clicky retractable ballpoints for about $15 and don’t need much pressure, so you can retrain yourself out of that bearing down habit.
Second question: How’s your grip? This also goes back to the way we teach writing in primary school. Do you hold your writing instrument down at the very bottom or up to a third of the way up the pen? How many fingertips are on the instrument? Do you rest your instrument on the side of one finger? Do you get cramps in the muscle between your thumb and palm?
A hard, stiff, low grip is not necessarily great for fountain pens. A hard grip puts a lot of extra pressure on the nib, a stiff one where three or four thumb and fingertips are gripping the instrument creates extra friction in your hand, and many (but not all) fountain pens have a ridge or threads just above the nib, meaning it could make your fingers hurt a lot because you’re pressing hard on something sharp that isn’t intended to be pressed on.
It would be great if we took the time in later childhood, when kids have developed better fine motion control and hand-eye coordination, to correct the ergonomic habits of beginner handwriting, but schools already have a lot on their plates, they’re correcting a ton of problems either created in school (vibe-reading) or in the information environment (disinfo, AI hallucinations, conspiracies) and keyboarding is also a valuable skill.
So ergonomically, it’s really on adults to figure out for themselves if there’s a better way to write. And yes, there is a better way to write, because a hard grip and heavy pressure is bad for your hands, arm and neck, and will eventually cause some repetitive stress injuries. Nobody loves carpal tunnel (except orthopedic hand surgeons in need of a boat).
You really want to try to write from the shoulder-elbow, not from your fingers or wrist. The motive power comes from the shoulder and elbow, while the shaping comes from the fingers-wrist. Think about writing large on a chalk or whiteboard. Your shoulder does most of the work there, not your fingers. It’s similar when writing on paper. Also, writing with chalk requires low pressure (if the chalk is even of barely adequate quality), so you also want to replicate that low pressure on paper. (Chalk squeals are mostly caused by high pressure on poor quality chalk.)
So if you are fountain pen curious, I’d first suggest adjusting your grip, pressure, and motion until you can shade in a 2 inch by 2 inch square with a .5 mechanical pencil without breaking the lead. It’s not your fault that school only gave you the basics of writing, but that’s true of all K-12 education — it’s all the basics, any elaboration we do is as self-directed students.
I will never recommend an expensive pen as a first pen. I got an expensive pen for one of my graduations and the damn thing never worked at all. No matter what I did or how I cleaned it. It was enough before the easy internet that I never knew if there was a place I could send it for warranty service, I couldn’t afford to take it to a pen shop, so it bounced around in the back of my desk until I threw it away in a move, before I had the skills to pull the nib and feed myself. (If I got the pen today, I would have first flossed the tines with a brass sheet, then pulled the nib and feed, but those are advanced skills!)
In fact, I recommend starting with a disposable fountain pen like a Pilot Varsity, an Itoya Blade, or a Zebra Zensation. They have a ton of ink, they last forever, they start (writing after being capped) really easily and instantly, they almost never leak. And they’re usually around $3-4 each, they’re sturdy, and they come in colors! They are disposable, but there is also a not terribly difficult refill process if you absolutely love the nib and the feel. I would rather you decide fountain pens aren’t for you or don’t feel good in your hand after a $4 commitment than to guilt yourself into using something you don’t enjoy. The nice thing about disposables is they can knock around in a desk drawer for years and will still write when you pick it up, and maybe you’ll be in a better place to enjoy it. I have one that is at least 20 years old, that I only refilled a couple years ago.
The next step up are the school pens.
In a big swath of the Not North America parts of the world, primary school students are expected to write with fountain pens, usually Extra Fine nibs or Fine nibs in Asia. This means they have a plethora of cute, fun, pretty, cheap, RELIABLE fountain pens at every price point that a kid could want. Teachers the world over hate messing with their students’ writing instruments, so school pens are the tanks of the writing world. School pens almost universally have steel nibs which will last forever. We don’t really get into or even need gold nibs anymore, because our inks aren’t corrosive anymore! Gold and gold plated nibs existed because early inks were mostly iron-gall bases, which are acidic and will mess up steel nibs. Some people think gold nibs feel softer or bouncier, but in blind tests, steels get just as much love, and it’s mostly an aesthetic choice.
The entry level school pens are the Platinum Preppy, the Pilot Kakuno, the Kaweco Perkeo, the German Pelikan Pina Colada, Ineo, or Pelikano, and about half a dozen Jinhao models. (Jinhao is a Chinese manufacturer that uses classic, out-of-patent designs, as well as some fun designs of their own.)
Platinum Preppy comes in a lot of colors and Extra Fine, Fine and Medium nibs. Fine and Extra Fine are really good pens for cheap paper, which is not always the best for Fountain pens. Kakunos are very pretty, very cute, and of course, sturdy, while Perkeos are designed to encourage the classic, most stable tripod grip of thumb pad, index finger pad and middle joint middle finger. Pelikans are simple workhorses. As of the end of 2025, Preppies run about $7 each, Kakunos are $13-19, Perkeos are $20, and Pelikans are as $14-25. Jinhaos in the US are mostly found on eBay or Amazon, and can be as little as $2 each (when bought in a pack of 12) for the Shark and Swan pens, to about $20.
The middle level school pens are pens that also work great in an office environment, are reliable, and easy to fill, either with good converters or cartridges. Pilot, Platinum, and Pelikan dominate this space, though there’s room for some other makers. This also the realm to start dabbling in vintage and New Old Stock pens, but I don’t recommend older pens until you’re really comfortable with the school pen level.
The one thing I do not recommend for beginners is an aerometric or squeeze filler pen. These have a little rubber bag that fits on the nib body, with a little metal flexible mechanism, that you fill by putting the nib in ink, squeezing the air out of the rubber bag with the metal mechanism, and letting the ink fill the bag. They’re mostly on vintage pens, and they’re hard to clean and can be hard to maintain. You want cartridges or a twist/plunge converter (or both!) to start with, and maybe an eye dropper or piston filler after you’re comfortable with the first two.
It’s also worth knowing that some pen makers and vendors come with baggage. I believe in informed consent, and you should know what you’re okay with, so allow me to refer you to Kari Dru’s excellent Fountain Pen Sins thread: https://bsky.app/profile/karidru.bsky.social/post/3lwvfcotd5k2e
Personally, I am comfortable recommending Sheaffer entry level pens ($25-40), vintage Esterbrook (not the new In Name Only Esterbrook), Platinum, Pilot, and Pelikan, and Sheaffer, Pelikan, Diamine, and Monteverde inks. In addition to Kari’s list, I am reluctant to recommend TWSBI, because they attempted to play patent troll and to strong-arm suppliers over the extremely vintage, very public domain Pelikan Piston fill design they were using. They didn’t want other companies it use it, and threatened vendors with “Pick us or them”. Which is simply unprofessional business conduct and I don’t want to encourage that. But that’s why this is informed consent — what you are willing to tolerate and support should be done with as much knowledge as possible.
I also don’t recommend Lamy pens, because I live at high altitude in a dry climate, and they don’t work up here. They get clotty and spitty. Other people have good luck with them at lower altitude and with more humidity, so I conclude it is my environment, but a lot of the world lives in arid or high altitude climates, or both, so I think people should be warned that Lamy will be frustrating in that environment. But some people love them, just as some people love TWSBI.
Fountain pens ARE good for hand rehab and for preserving function after injury because they don’t take a lot of pressure. They’re solid environmental choices because even cartridges use far less plastic than a standard ball point disposable, and even disposables last longer than disposable ballpoints or rollerballs. They are endlessly variable.
no subject
Date: 2025-11-03 03:11 am (UTC)