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Cheap fountain pen shootout

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raybeere:
A few remarks on cheap fountain pens:

Pilot 78G - interesting range of nib widths; the F should really be an XF, while the B is almost an italic; not much ink capacity, though. Excellent quality for the price.

Hero 616 (Chinese, no longer made) Still available, but watch out for the counterfeits. :o Even the genuiine ones are of uneven quality, but the good ones hold a decent amount of ink and write well.

Wing Sung 233 (Chinese, almost vintage, but NOS ones can still be had for as little as $3-$4) These are cheap and a bit flimsy (especially the caps - the clips will break if you look at them) but surprisingly smooth writers with character that hold a decent amount of ink.

(For the timid, I should note that although the Pilot 78G is a cartridge/converter pen, both the Hero 616 and the Wing Sung 233 are both squeeze fillers (poor man's aerometric) which can only use bottled ink.)

sword:
Thanks all, Edvard and rjbull for the 411. Several sites have what I am looking for, or pretty close anyway.

Some of you more exotic thinking types (which in my experience is just about everyone on Donationcoder) might consider making your own pens from quills and bamboo (search that).

-1NR1 (May 22, 2014, 06:51 PM)
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I make lots using Crow wing tip (flight) feathers.

40hz:
I've done my own bamboo and reed pens. They worked amazingly well. I've never tried carving quills.

I also have a very nice collection of dip pens and Speedball nibs that date back to when Speedball was still making decent ones. I really enjoy using dip pens for illustration even if I'm no Dave Acosta or Terry Moore.

Lately I've been doing most of what drawing I can do with Pilot Razorpoint IIs in fine and superfine. They're porous felt so they can mush down or fray slightly if you're heavy-handed or drop one. But they have a clean line, write smoothly, and the ink is nice and dark. At $18-$21 per dozen (depending on where you get them) they won't break the bank either.

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Note: if anybody isn't familiar with Terry Moore, check out some of his work below. The guy is amazing. Interesting plots and characters too. One of the best graphic novelists you'll ever read.

Cheap fountain pen shootout   Cheap fountain pen shootout   Cheap fountain pen shootout   Cheap fountain pen shootout   

 :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup:

app103:
Way back when I was in middle school I had a thing for Pilot disposable fountain pens, much to the dismay of my teachers.  8)



You can't get any cheaper than those, and while they were not intended to be refillable, they can be. (The ones I used as a pre-teen had replaceable cartridges, but was still pretty much "disposable")

There is also a complete review of that pen, on the same site.

Lucky for my teachers that I could only buy them in blue at the store across the street from the school, and not all the different colors they sell on Amazon.  :D

Lately I've been doing most of what drawing I can do with Pilot Razorpoint IIs in fine and superfine. They're porous felt so they can mush down or fray slightly if you're heavy-handed or drop one. But they have a clean line, write smoothly, and the ink is nice and dark. At $18-$21 per dozen (depending on where you get them) they won't break the bank either.
-40hz (May 26, 2014, 10:01 PM)
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Those were a favorite of mine in high school, once I gave up the fountain pens. Not for drawing, but for regular writing.  :D

(always took notes with one of these, though)

40hz:
(always took notes with one of these, though)
-app103 (May 27, 2014, 11:03 PM)
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Aha! Haven't seen one of those pens in years. (My GF loved them. She still buys these.) I bet you were like her - one of those "brainy-girls" with that beau-coup cool and super-artsy notebook they all seemed to have weren't you? ;D

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