Fountains, fountains everywhere, and not a drop of ink
I have two major shopping weaknesses. Well, three if you count electronic junk, but I don’t feel a lot of connection to electronic junk. Sometimes useful toys, but for the most part still toys. No, my virtue and vice gets rolled into two categories: books and pens.
I’ve always bought books faster than I can read them. These days I’m not reading nearly as much as I used to; it’s the end of March and I’ve finished only seven books this year. The list of books I’ve started but not finished is embarrassing. Nine I’m in the middle of, three more I’ve started but not gotten very far in. And I have a list of books I hope to get into longer than I care to admit.
Pens are of course vital to me. I can’t draw without them, and the more I use them the more I know about them. The more I know about them, the better I am at handling them.
Lately I’ve been browsing online for two of my favorite all-purpose pens. Neither is easy to find.
My Rotring 700 has seen better days, but it looks as though I may never see another one. I’ve scoured eBay and not seen even one. Googling ‘Rotring 700’ yields a bunch of links to eBay, plus two of my posts and a couple that others have written. There just aren’t any for sale.
The 700 was the last pen Rotring produced before the company was acquired by Sanford in the Autumn of 1998. Today Rotring continues to make some good pens, but the quality took an initial plunge soon after the sale and there was a definite shift in the marketing focus. The Rotring 700 didn’t survive the aquisition. Which is too bad, as it was head and shoulders better than its more popular sister, the 600. Today my 700 has some dings and dents, but it’s still a great writer and sketcher.
I have finally forgiven Rotring and recently purchased a Rotring Initial fountain pen. It’s a very different pen and I think it may be a better writer than the 700, but not as good a sketcher. I like a bit of heft to my pens, but for writing I look for a little more diameter than I do for drawing. Don’t ask me why.
The Initial lists at a bit more than the 700’s retail price: $95.00 versus the 700’s $80.00 price tag in 1998. So they’re pretty much at equivalent price points. But get this: the Initial is offered as a dual fountain/data tip pen. Someone at Rotring is on my wavelength. I’m one of the few people in the world that fits the intersection of fountain pen and PDA stylus. Each is its own niche market to begin with; the combination of two quite different niches: the modern geek who uses a pen-based computer enough to want an aftermarket stylus and the luddite retro-tech lover who just won’t switch to one of those newfangled «ball-point» pens. If I were a marketing person, I sure wouldn’t bet on being able to tap in to that intersection.
There is quite an advantage to finding a product that hasn’t found its market, which is that vendors drop prices as they get more desperate to unload their merchandise. The silver Initial lists at $95.00 with or without the data tip. Most places sell the Initial fountain pen at around $75.00 and I’ve seen it as low as $55.00. Those same places often sell the Initial with data tip for $10.00-$20.00 less. You know that someone in the marketing department got fired when the item with the extra feature and the higher production cost is selling for much less.
Stylus Central sold me mine for $20.00 and they engraved my initials into the cap at no extra charge. They really must have been desperate to get rid of those, eh? Sorry, I just checked and they aren’t selling the Initial any longer. They frequently have clearance deals on somewhat off-the-beaten-path items. If you’re obsessive about PDA stylii, it’s a good place to check in on from time to time.
For years I’ve kept an eye out for the Parker Vector fountain pen. When I was eighteen I made the leap of spending eight whole dollars on a pensomething I’d never done before! I’d spent perhaps as much as four dollars on the Shaeffer fountain pen I used occasionally in high school, and I’d thought that was an extravagance considering that rollerballs were running around a buck. There it was, beckoning to me from the glass case at the Art Institute’s school bookstore. Maybe the money was burning a hole in my pocket, maybe I had some inner sense that it would be the pen for me, maybe a bit of both, but I bought it, I think with a red plastic barrel, and brought it home.
What a difference! This was a pen that flowed smoothly but still conveyed the feel and the texture of the paper. It didn’t skip and didn’t leak, and that’s a whole lot more than can be said for the Shaeffer that sadly seems to be most people’s introduction to fountain pens these days. In short, I loved it. I gave it to a friend who was similarly impressed with it the first time he tried it and replaced it with a black-barreled model. Then one day as I was browsing through an airport gift shop, I saw something surprising: a stainless steel Parker Vector!
Once again I spent twice as much money as I’d ever spent on a single pen, and I’m so glad I did. It was everything that the plastic-barreled Vectors were, but looked like something you would keep, not like some plastic throwaway item. And it felt great in my hand. Just enough heavier than its plastic sibling. I carried that one with me everywhere I went. It seemed like I had it for a long time, but it couldn’t have been more than three or four years all told. It mysteriously disappeared early in 1993, and I’ve never seen another like it in a store.
I’ve kept my eyes out, looked in pen stores and even asked shopkeepers with reputations for being able to find rare pens to look for me. I’ve periodically checked eBay and actually a few times found them, usually being sold from Great Britain or Australia. Most often I’d see the Vector with a stainless steel barrel with a medium point, which is a deal-breaker for me, even for the pen I held so much affection for. I want a fine point and from most makers I’d really rather have an extra-fine.
On one of my recent eBay scourings, I did see it. Not an extra-fine, but a fine point. I’ve been curious to see how I’d like working with a Vector again. I’ve had a number of higher-end pens since then and I already had the Initial I mentioned above. But it wasn’t too expensive, even with shipping from Australia.
Having used other pens with real heft to them, coming back to the Parker was a little disappointing. Even in stainless steel it’s quite a bit lighter than the other pens I use. I just put it on a food scale and it comes in at 17 grams filled. The Rotring 700 is 28 grams and the Initial 47. For comparison I weighed a Pilot Varsity disposable fountain pen (which is a surprisingly good pen! if you’re looking for a starter fountain pen get a Varsity instead of to those damnable Shaeffers. The only problem is you don’t get the fun and experience of refilling) and it was 9 grams.
The feel of the nib on paper didn’t disappoint at all. The Parker is still a great sketcher and writer, it lays down a clean line with just a bit of flex but enough stiffness that you have to really want to vary your line in order to do so. It’s a low-maintenance, smooth-writing pen and I’d recommend it. If you can find one, that is. It may not satisfy the snobbiest of the pen-collector set, but it’s a real workhorse. It’s durable and good-looking and it lays down a consistent line. It doesn’t require that it live in a special case. You really could keep it in your pocket and use it all day at work.
Do I carry it around and use it every day? No. I most often reach for the Rotring Initial, which I keep filled with green ink. I have been carrying the Vector in my bag, so nothing is stopping me. Since I keep it filled with black ink, I do grab it for things that green ink won’t do for. I don’t sketch in green (perhaps though I should try) and when I draw in the studio I’ll generally use either a crowquill or a rapidograph. Sometimes a brush, but now that’s a subject for an upcoming post.
[EDITI believe the Vector line was replaced by the Parker I.M. (which is sold as the Profile in Great Britain), but to my eye the Parker Jotter fountain in stainless steel is a better match. Perhaps I’ll try to get my hands on these and report back.]
I use a Pilot Varsity for
I use a Pilot Varsity for all my writing. I use a ballpoint for work such as my checkbook, but ballpoints don’t cut it when you want the writing to both look and feel good. I also have a Parker (model unknown) that I like a lot, but every time I go to use it it is dried up. It feels better in my hand and definitely looks better, but a pen just HAS to write. The Varsity ALWAYS writes on the first stroke, no matter how long it sits in my drawer.
You can have worse addictions than pen lust.
Dad
[…] first try was the
[…] first try was the Rotring Initial, mentioned here earlier so I won’t go into too much detail. It’s recommended to anyone that likes a […]
Hi there,
I thought I would
Hi there,
I thought I would let you know (if you haven’t found some already)I have bought both a fine & medium 700 fountain pen, and to my extreme pleasure, a 700 series pencil, all new, all from ebay this year. There are some 700 series on ebay as I type this. You need to go “worldwide” in your ebay search, as all the pens generally come from either Germany, at a reasonable price, or very high prices from US dealers. I paid 27 & 35 euros for new fountain pens, and 35 for the pencil, which I thought was well worthwhile.
I lost a set of 700 pens about 8 years ago, and had given up all hope of ever finding them.
Good luck
wally
Refilling
You can refill a Varsty, very green 🙂
http://goodpens.blogspot.com/2009/02/refilling-your-pilot-varsity-disposible.html