Inks, two pens, and a great gathering!

[lunadelcorvo]

Today I had the privilege of spending a few hours with a terrific (and gratifyingly large) group of fellow pen enthusiasts, courtesy of Kentucky Pen Collectors. While there I was gifted with a Noodler’s Flex Piston Filler pen, had one of my beloved Viscontis retooled, and got a couple pens-ful of new inks, which I have naturally fallen in love with!

So on to the reviews: I can’t thank Julie enough for thinking of me and bringing along the Noodler’s! She said she had had an awful time with it, and figured I might be able to do something with it (considering my love of flexy nibs). Well, right off, the nib looked like it was seated in a bit too far? So I took out the nib, cleaned it all a bit (not that it needed it, Julie takes great care of her pens!) and reseated the nib a good way further out. From my reading, it seems that you can control the amount of flex based on how you seat the nib; something I will have to experiment with later on. I did get it writing, and my first impression is… meh. I have a few scans below, and id does give a nice line variation. (In these scans, more so than my vintage Waterman, which is in part due to the poor quality paper, and the ink in said Waterman, which tends to be a lot wetter than that in the Noodler’s.) However, it writes a bit rough. That may smooth out over time and use, but I’m not sure it will have the chance, given that the flex it offers takes a bit of effort. At least I have no fear of springing the nib, but I can’t see myself using this comfortably for any length of time. I may see if I can smooth it a bit, and fiddle with the nib placement, and see if I can get a smoother, easier flex out of it.



Here’s a detail shot:



And for contrast:

In a brighter note, I had the nib on my Visconti VanGogh retooled, courtesy of Pendleton Brown, the well-known nib-meister of ‘Pendleton Point’ fame! It was such a pleasure to meet Pendleton, and he gave a wonderful talk & demo of his retooling process. We all learned quite a bit, and Pendleton himself is a fantastic fellow to talk to. Right before my very eyes, my rather dull Visconti steel medium was transformed into a Pendleton ‘Butter-line Elegant Stub! I’m in love with this pen all over again! Sadly, I don’t have any ‘before’ images, but really, you’re not missing much. Here’s the sexy ‘after’ scan:



And a detail:

Needless to say, I am very pleased! In addition, Pendleton, along with several other folks, were kind enough to have a few inks up for sampling. I got a sample of Noodler’s Blue Ghost UV ink, which I will review as soon as I figure out how to photograph it! But my Soyuz Soviet pen was allowed to sip a fill of my first Pilot Iroshizuko, in Yama Budo, or Wild Grapes. Here’s a scan:

Overall, I really love this ink. I haven’t used it enough yet to confirm it’s good behavior, but everyone I talk to raves about the quality and performance of this ink. I will say that I like the color way more than I expected to! It’s a purple/fuchsia/pink/burgundy/red-ish. Yeah, it’s kind of hard to pin down, which may be what I like about it. I know it’s not too red, not too pink (a big one for me; I simply don’t do pink), and it’s not too purple. It’s bright without being washed out, and saturated without being too dark. It’s a purple that doesn’t scream purple, and I like that about it. It has some subtle shading, and when it gets on really heavy, it does an interesting color shift, showing a deep, blood-red tone that is nowhere to be seen in lighter strokes…. Here’s a close-up:

Overall, I dub the day a fantastic success! Thanks again to all who helped organize this event, and I’m really looking forward to getting together again in July!