The phrase “student fountain pen” doesn’t get thrown around as much as it once did, but there still exists a whole class of fountain pens known as “student” pens.
What is a student pen? What makes one good? What are the best student fountain pens today, at a time when much fewer people are actually learning to write using a fountain pen.
The Sheaffer School is a vintage fountain pen made in the late 1960s and early 1970s (our best guess). It’s a form of affordable student pen meant for use people who needed a simple, reliable pen for everyday use. This pen is regularly available on forums and used pen marketplaces for reasonable prices.
For decades most of Sheaffer’s pens have used the company’s “Classic” cartridge. This is a proprietary ink cartridge that will fit many, but not all Sheaffer fountain pens.
Sheaffer, a division of A.T. Cross and a long-standing pen company, sells a number of standard ink colors in its “Classic Ink Cartridges.” These are good, everyday inks that are sold in Sheaffer’s proprietary cartridge.
The Sheaffer Balance is a fountain pen that was first produced in the 1928 but is commonly associated with the 1930s. It’s of the Parker Duofold vintage, but with a streamlined design that was quite extraordinary at the time. The Balance set a new standard for fountain pens at the time and is said to have kicked off a streamlined design craze with tapered ends and more of a torpedo shape the a cylindrical one.