Suppose you are an ambidextrous writer, who loves the look and feel of fountain pens. Choosing your pen, ink, and paper is not a trivial thing. I will share some of my own experiences.
Tradeoffs
The main reason to use a fountain pen is a totally customizable writing experience. If you do not write much and all you want is to leave a permanent mark on paper, you should use a ballpoint. Since you are reading this article, I assume you want more. Fountain pens need to be used A LOT, otherwise cleaned and stored.
The first question we ask: how will this pen be used? Do you want to write on any kind of paper, or do you want very unique text on a special paper? Are you highlighting and practicing calligraphy or writing the dense text? Which hand and which grip are you more comfortable with? Can you afford to wait for the ink to dry?
Nib, ink, and paper should be matched to provide an optimal writing experience.
In quest of the perfect ink
Generally, there are two kinds of inks. Dry and wet.
The “dry” inks or inks that dry fast provide very vibrant colors with very little overhead. They can be used on any paper. You can use them to write fast. You will probably be using a fine nib. The colors may be very fine
The “wet” inks or inks that dry slowly often come with some special effects. Otherwise, you should probably use the “dry” inks. There are several special effects to consider. Sheening is changing of the color as you write and the color dries. It looks like magic and makes you wonder and want to write more. Shading is a change of the saturation of the color, a more permanent effect. Water-resistance is another effect: the pigments are suspended in the water. And if you use these inks, you probably want a medium or broad nib.
The “dip” inks should be actually used with calligraphy sets. They can often clog fountain pens, and are very viscous or contain metallic particles. These inks allow shimmering, photoluminescence, hidden UV-light messages. Artists and craftsmen are likely to use calligraphy sets, but not the rest of us…
Paper trail
Another reason to use a fountain pen is a great tactile feeling when writing. This time the quest often starts with a smooth paper.
Usually, we use paper more suited for ballpoint pens. If we doodle, we probably use the copy machine paper. For more systematic notes we will be using school notebooks. The paper will be rough to grip the oily inks of the ballpens. Even gel pens will occasionally smudge and be seen through the page, so we are likely to use only one side of each page.
For fountain pens, we prefer to use premium paper with a silky smooth surface. This paper has very little feathering or diffusion of the ink through the paper. Occasionally this means longer drying times, and quite often the page will be slightly transparent (if thin). The main issue with this paper is smudging, especially using ambidextrous writing.
With caligraphy pens, the best solution is often an oblique nib holder where the angle of the nob can vary. Asian languages often use brushes or bent (fude) nibs which allow one’s handle to hover above the page. This is not working with European languages.
The perfect grip
We learn how to hold a pen in our hands in elementary schools. At the beginning of the 20th century, everybody was using fountain pens, and teachers spent a lot of time actually teaching calligraphy. Today calligraphy is a hobby. So we hold the pen differently.
Some use a slanted grip and hold the pen on its side. Others use a direct grip and hold the pen above the hand. Since I was taught in USSR, I use the “dynamic tripod” or “correct” way to hold a pen. This is the more ergonomic way, but it is also very language-specific. I cannot really use it with my left hand, where I prefer a dynamic quadrupod hold.
I also keep my right hand very slanted and my left hand direct. Why? With a long grip, my right-hand rests ergonomically and lags significantly after the pen. The left hand with a colored pen can slide under the right hand if needed, and also does not smudge. By the time the right-hand gets there, the ink is dry. Is this the most natural grip? Hell, no. But it works. If you are struggling with left-hand grip try dedicated devices. The hand should go just under the line with a hand near the grip.
Dedicated nibs by Pilot
What is my favorite nib? Let us start with Pilot. Pilot is a very innovative company with some special nibs. Especially for the 912 pen, which I love…
FA is the flexible tip. If you want something cheaper try Nozzler Ahab. The tip is flexible, which allows beautiful calligraphy, however it needs a lot of control. I write slowly with it and cannot generate anything useful when the pen is in the left hand.
PO or posting tip is a special down-bent extra fine tip. It is specifically build to reduce feathering on regular paper. A regular extra-fine tip occasionally scratches or makes holes in regular paper. PO does not. It is actually fine-tuned for direct grip.
WA or waverly tip is a very special slightly up-bent or fude nib. It is built specifically to allow every writer to use every angle. It is an ambidexterous nib. They are roughly medium nibs, good for both hands and say orange ink.
Dedicated nibs by Lamy
Do other companies help ambidexterous writers? Yes, and usually with gold nibs. Let us take Lami. Lami nibs are not fully round like Jowo nibs but slightly grind into a stub to allow for beautiful line variation. This causes several issues.
Let us start with languages and uses where you want the horizontal line to be wide and the vertical line to be narrow. For example, this is good if you write in Hebrew or use the same pen for highlighting and actual writing. It is like an inverted stub nib, good for both hands. It is marked as A or Architect nib.
Next, we have a fully round ball nib to facilitate writing with both hands. It is named MK, and is a medium nib. In fact, eventually, Lamy started to grind all its medium nibs this way.
Once we step up to gold nibs, Lamy offers both right and left oblique nib. An oblique nib is a nib grinded with a slant, to allow for slanted hold to produce the same variations as a direct grip with a regular nib. Say OM grip is very well suited for my slanted right-hand grip. It definitely will not work with my direct left-hand grip. Fortunately, there is no need, as I can use a pen with an architect nib in my left hand.
Stopping feathering
We want our texts to be smooth. The easiest way to stop feathering is to use dry ink with extra-fine nib. Only that will work for right-hand writers and it will suit only some purposes, like fine annotation of printed text.
For the second hand, we need something different. Once again we can consider a gel pen, like Pilot G2 red bold point (1mm)… That will work just fine.
However, if we want a fountain pen for yet more colors, we need something custom: architect grind, Waverly or just one big ball like Jowo #6. And possibly a good paper to go with that, as we will be writing medium or broad with lots of ink.
The Russian way
When the first space missions were launched, Fisher developed a highly pressurized refill with almost rubbery ink. The development cost millions. Russian cosmonauts used pencils. Small graphite particles soiled the ship a bit and possibly made a negligible imprint in the cosmonaut’s lungs. So what? This also works.
We can use a fine 0.5 or 0.7 mechanical pencil in one hand and a colorful 3.2 or 5.6 lead holder in another. That will work fine. Maybe we will need a sharpener or an eraser, maybe even two of each as graphite and color erasers are different. So what? No feathering, no smudging, elegant, and fully customizable writing experience guaranteed.
Is the Russian way less impressive? Possibly, but it is not less effective. Stenography used to be written in fountain pens, but now it is usually written with mechanical pencils or with stenotype keyboards. And those guys need speed and reliability.