Fountain Pen 101

It's about time to gear up for back-to-school, and I thought it might be helpful to share with you some of the best pens for students in the $50 and under price range. Keeping in mind that value, reliability, and durability are some of the key factors for student pens, here are some that I will gladly recommend. This is the first Fountain Pen 101 video I've made in about a year, so if you haven't seen my others already, definitely check them out here. Pilot Metropolitan, $18.99 Pros: Great value Attractive Durable Very reliable writer Good ink capacity Cons: [...]

When flying with a fountain pen, it's really all about the volume of ink and the orientation of the pen. The pressure changing in the cabin affects the pens, especially during takeoff and landing so during those times you'll definitely not want to be using them! There are a few pieces of advice I can give when flying with pens: If you can, just clean them and keep them empty before flying, it's the only 100% guaranteed way to avoid an ink spill ;) If you fly with your pens inked up, keep them stored with the nib pointed up. [...]

Sampling inks is one of the most enjoyable things about using fountain pens for me, and I know it is for a lot of other pen fans. If you live a 'sampling lifestyle' like I do, then you're sure to be quite familiar with the ink sample vial, in some form or another. These are great little containers for sharing small volumes of ink, but there are some challenges when filling from these with certain types of pens. This video is a continuation of the first Sampling Ink video, and is intended to address just about every possible scenario you [...]

 One of my favorite things about using fountain pens is the ability to try all kinds of different inks. And the best way to do that is with ink samples, which have been an integral part of the Goulet Pen Company from very early on in our business. I'm a serial ink sampler myself, so I wanted to pass along some of the tricks and advice I've learned over the years to make the sampling process as enjoyable and efficient as possible. In this video, I talk about: Cataloging ink writing samples (1:19) Swab storage, showing the official Goulet [...]

 When it comes to choosing a fountain pen ink, it's natural to look to the label that's on the box or the bottle as an indicator for what's inside. But wait! You can't always trust those labels, at least not completely. From my experience of seeing hundreds of bottles of ink with labels on the outside, I can definitely say the colors used for labels are representative at best, and can rarely portray the true color of the ink inside. Ink box colors vary even within themselves, apart from the ink.   The colors on the labels on boxes [...]

 As most fountain pen enthusiasts, and they'll say the most important part of any fountain pen is the nib, as that's what actually touches the paper while you write. As you investigate into different types of fountain pens, you'll find that there are two main distinctions of nibs: gold and stainless steel. The prices of pens can range anywhere from a few dollars to thousands and up...and once you hit a certain threshold around $150-200, gold nibs begin to come standard on most pens, needing a really good reason to still be stainless steel at that price. In this [...]