Have a mechanical pencil (also known as an automatic pencil) whose lead won’t come out? There is a good chance that your pencil is jammed! This can be annoying, but it’s usually easy to fix. This guide will help clear that jam and get get your pencil back in working order.
Continue reading “Pencil Lead Won’t Come Out? How to Fix a Jammed Mechanical Pencil”
In theory fountain pen cartridges should be easy — you insert one into your pen and you start writing. In practice, they are rather confusing. Some only work on one brand of pen, some work on lots of pens, but they all look alike. The are not labeled well and the downside of messing up an cartridge installation can be a broken pen (bad) or a leaky cartridge (usually worse).
This guide should help with some of your common fountain pen cartridge questions as well help you visually identify which cartridge is which.
Have you heard of Cello Pens? If you aren’t based in India, there is a good chance that the company is entirely new to you, but it’s a big outfit and its worth having on your radar.
One of the more common questions people have about pens is, “Who invented the ballpoint?” We honestly can’t say why this gets asked so often but it most certainly does, so let’s dive into it.
Continue reading “Who Invented The Ballpoint Pen? Origins Of A Modern Writing Instrument”
Neil deGrasse Tyson is a well-known fountain pen collector and user. What pens does he use? Are the pens astronomy inspired, like the Visconti Starry Night, as you might guess of the director of the Hayden Planetarium? Or does this world-famous astrophysicist and author use the same pens as you or I?
Continue reading “What Fountain Pens Does Neil deGrasse Tyson Use?”
New York City is a dream for shoppers of all kinds, but it really isn’t a stationery town. Compared to the cities of Europe or even some smaller college towns New York City’s stationery shops are few and far between, and dedicated pen shops are even rarer. What’s worse is that many of the longstanding places, like Pearl Paint’s iconic Canal Street location, have been closing.
Things aren’t all bad though, NYC still has some of the nation’s top stationery destinations.
Continue reading “The Best Stationery Shops in New York City”
If you have been exploring the world of affordable pens in the past few years there is a good chance that you’ve landed on Linc pens. While the company is not a household name in the United States, they have been growing and becoming more of a presence.
So, who is Linc and what’s the deal with their pens? Continue reading “What’s The Deal with Linc Pens?”
Have a Lamy pen but confused about the refill you need to fit it? It’s very easy to know which refill you need because Lamy makes so few refills!
Even so, Lamy doesn’t exactly do a good job of explaining what you need, and it’s certainly not written anywhere on the pen. In fact, most people don’t even know the name of their pen! This guide is designed to solve all your Lamy refill problems.
Continue reading “Lamy Rollerball and Ballpoint Refill Finder”
In case you didn’t know it, one of the best features of Lamy fountain pens (aside from the Lamy 2000) is that they use a modular nib system. That’s right — you can pull the nib off your Lamy Al-Star and put it on your Safari. Or you can take the gold nib from your Scala and put it on your Vista.
Swapping your Lamy nib is an incredibly easy process once you get the hang of it. Here are a few ways to change those nibs…
The Uni-ball Signo 207 and 307 are similarly named pens that are often sold alongside one another. As you can gather from the name, the 307 is the newer pen, but is it a better buy than the longstanding 207? Let’s find out.
Continue reading “Uni-ball 207 vs Uni-ball 307 Gel Pen Comparison”
Pilot basically makes a number of versions of the same pen. This all wouldn’t be worth deciphering if the pen wasn’t so good, but it is so let’s start to dig into the Pilot Precise and Hi-Tecpoint series. The pens have been around since 1984, so they are well established and remain popular to this day.
When you start to dig into pens just a little bit you’ll see that they are separated ink a few major varieties based on the type of ink they use. These categories are blurry and ultimately not very well defined, but it’s helpful to know the basics about them so you have some idea of what you are buying. This guide will run through the major types of inks in order to help you get a better understanding of the major types of pens, how they write, why you might prefer one over the others, and the best uses for each.
Don’t miss our Pen Refills Guide so you can learn about the types of refills these inks go into.
Are you trying to choose between the Fisher AG7 and CH4 space pens? They look so much alike, but there are some differences in shape and price that makes then quite different when in use. So how do you choose? This article will help you tell the difference between these two pens and to find that one that’s right for you.
Continue reading “Fisher AG7 vs CH4 Space Pen: What’s the Difference?”
Pen refills adhere to ISO standard 12757 and the later revision ISO 12757-1:2017. This isn’t something that’s mandatory — custom and proprietary refills certainly aren’t illegal — but for practical purposes if you are making a certain refill type, it makes sense that yours is the same dimensions as that of all the other makers.
The standard has two main components: one for general use and one for “documentary use,” basically a stricter standard. This latter application is ISO 12757-2, and it would cover the legibility of letters as well as writing for archival documents.
Did you ever notice that your drafting pencils have different color text printed on them? You might not know this, but those colors aren’t randomly assigned. The color-coding applies to mechanical pencils, but also to drafting pens, like the Rotring Isograph/Rapidograph, and was popularly seen on professional tools but not so much on consumer-focused items.