Daily Archives: January 20, 2025

“My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.” ~ Graham Greene

To start off, I have to thank @skyercorp and wife for the thoughtful Xmas gift of disposable fountain pens.

Unfortunately, they were crap. I thought it might just be a one off from the pack, so tried a different one. Still crap.

I am a pen snob. I don’t totally judge someone by the pen they are using, but it probably is a bigger judging factor than most people. So I think that I’ll do a post of my history with pens and pencils and my current collection. We’ll see how long a post it is; maybe I’ll do separate posts…

So these are the pens that I received and it’s not that they were a China brand that I didn’t like them. I’m not THAT snobby. I do have several Chinese knockoffs that I use and like. But the nib on these pens was just bad; very scratchy. And like I said before, I tried a different one and it was the same.

And I appreciated the thoughtfulness of them (thank you #skyercorp). Disposable ones that I can use and loose at work. But loosing pens at work has not stop me from brining in some of my expensive pens, loosing them, and getting all of the scientists in the lab to help me look for it, just to find it in my lab coat that I put in the hamper.

So I returned them and got this Jinhao 9056 Tiger Embossed Fountain Pen Bent Nib instead. It is a little thicker than I prefer, but tiger, duh. One thing that I didn’t do is read the description of this pen and that it has a bent nib.

Bent nibs are also called “fude” (pronounced foo-deh) nibs. “Fude” means ‘bent’ in Japanese. These are specialized nibs bent at the tip to give it a curved or rounded surface area. This extra surface area allows fountain pen users to write with more varied line widths depending on the angle of the pen on paper.

So when the pen came and I looked at it, I was like WTF!? Almost got pliers to try to straighten the nib out. Good thing I reread the description. The pen is nice, but is more for calligraphy than the writing that I do at work. Mainly because I have to be conscious of what ink I’m using and how I’m holding the pen. After a few pages of bleed through, think it will be a journal/sketch pen instead of a work pen.