If you are in the market for an entry-level to mid-range fountain pen then Twsbi is a great option. The company has a number of strong offerings in the sub-$100 range, including very competitive pricing bands, like $20-30, where big players like Pilot might seem like the obvious option.
Read on to learn about the best Twsbi pen for you.
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.
Tru Red (often written as TRU RED) is a stationery brand that you might have seen come up recently. They company makes surprisingly nice products, but sales are largely limited to Staples stores.
Who is Tru Red? What products do the make? Is this a pen brand worth paying attention to?
One of the main reasons to get a Fisher Space Pen is the company’s lifetime guarantee of its pen. This is an impressive offering given just how long these pens tend to stick around.
Still, we had questions. For instance, what is the warranty and does it cover? If a Space Pen was to break, what should you do?
Continue reading “Fisher Space Pen Broke? How To Use The Lifetime Guarantee”
Fountain pens can be filled with a number of different mechanisms. These not only fill the pen, but go a long way in placing it within the pen world and then determining its size, price, and other qualities. While no filling mechanism is the best, there are reasons to by one or another each time you get a new pen.
Continue reading “Fountain Pen Filling Systems: Pros and Cons”
Planning on visiting Portland, Oregon in the coming days? Think you’ll have a few minutes to step away from the city’s incredible food, coffee, and nature to do a little pen and paper shopping? If so, here are the best stationery shops in the city.
Continue reading “The Best Stationery Shops in Portland, Oregon”
Fountain pens are great, but the cleaning is, to put it lightly, a chore. Maintaining and caring for fountain pens takes time, and even if you don’t baby your pens their water-based ink still runs out more quickly than a ballpoint or rollerball. Want to change ink color? That requires a cleaning too.
So cleaning comes with the territory, but what’s the right way to do it?
LIY or “Live In You” is an under-the-radar pen company, but they make a few interesting products. Maybe you’ve stumbled upon them on Ebay or in discussions about Chinese fountain pens, but you probably didn’t make a purchase without knowing a bit more about the brand. This article should help!
Ever been handed a Tul pen or found one at the office and asked yourself, what kind of pen is this? It happened to me and other people have had the same question. So, what’s the deal with Tul pens?
The Parker 51 is one of the most famous pens of all time. Even today, over 50 years after this fountain pen first went on sale, the pen is sought after by collectors and mint models can go for hundreds of dollars. The Parker 21 looks almost exactly like the Parker 51, but sells for a fraction of the amount.
What’s the difference between these two vintage fountain pens?
Continue reading “Parker 51 vs. Parker 21: What’s The Difference?”
The Rotring Newton is often confused with the older, more desirable Rotring 600. Both are great pens and they are remarkably alike, but they are distinctly different models and while the Newton echoes the design of the 600 it is not a Rotring 600. Sorry to say it, but there is no “Rotring Newton 600,” that’s just something people write in auctions.
Does any of this matter though? Are we just splitting hairs? Or is there a real difference between the Rotring 600 and the Newton pens. Let’s find out.
Converting a fountain pen to an eyedropper is a quick and fun job… so long as you choose the right pen! It’s quick to do, quite cheap, and you can often double, or even triple, your pen’s ink capacity.
Continue reading “Best Fountain Pens for Eyedropper Conversion (And How To Do It)”
Lamy makes a few different fountain pen converters and it’s not always clear which one you should buy. Lamy doesn’t offer much guidance on this, but don’t worry, it’s easy to figure out which one you need.
Continue reading “Which Lamy Fountain Pen Converter Do I Want?”
Few people would argue that one of the main draws to fountain pens is the amazing variety of inks on offer. This selection can quickly go from an allure to a curse when the paradox of choice sets in and you are presented with literally hundreds of shades of blue, all of which are relatively affordable and easy to access.
If you don’t quit fountain pens right at that moment you are presented with an interesting dilemma: how can I test inks? Taking things to their logical conclusion, we here at Unsharpen further asked, “How can we test fountain pens inks cheaply, efficiently, and accurately?”
Here’s what we’ve found…
One popular question we get with people who are interested in pen mechanics is: Do any rollerballs use fountain pen ink? The answer is yes, but fewer than you’d expect. Here are a list of some of the top rollerballs that can be filled with fountain pen ink.
Continue reading “Rollerball Pens That Use Fountain Pen Ink”