Smoothening Scratchy Nibs

I reviewed some of the cheap Chinese fountain pens last week where I mentioned that one was rather scratchy. I've been meaning to change the nib and replace the scratchy one with one of my grandfather's old nibs which I presume should be of better quality.

However, a google search this morning led me to these links -

http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-troubleshoot-a-scratchy-nib

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WKo9nx8UdA

So I spent the last half hour trying it out on two pens that I was not completely satisfied with.

The result -  much much better!! I will not be hesitating to use these pens anymore.


So what I did was, I got out one of my emery boards that I use for my nails and a buffer file as well (these are the ones with 4 different levels of roughness.


I started with the smoother side of the emery board, using a figure of eight movement, making circles clockwise and anticlockwise, up and down, and sideways movements. Some amount of emery board matter sticks on the nib tip but it's easy enough to just wipe off with a piece of cloth. After a few minutes of this, making sure that all sides of the nib tip have been rubbed enough, I then proceeded to rub it a bit on the smoothest area of the buffer file for a smooth finish.


Voila! It worked!


Note: I wanted to see if using the actual rough side of the emery board worked as well - yes, it does. No harm came to my nib!

Bilt Matrix Youth Series Student Notebook

For a while now, I have been using the student notebooks (long books) Youth Series, by Bilt Matrix. It dawned on me last night, that I need to review them on this blog.

EXCELLENT is what I will say.

They're available in eight colours and I just realised that I had all eight of them!







 


They come shrink-wrapped in packs of 2 notebooks - 2 shades of pink, green, blue and purple. 







The colours are lovely. I'm sure the stores sell them singly as well, but stationery addict that I am, I had to buy the matching shades.

They are ruled and have 160 pages each. 
The pink books are pink lined, the blue books have blue lines, and so on. It makes writing extra-interesting!

From the time I first bought them, they have gone up in price from Rs.55/= to Rs.70/= each.
However they are certainly worth the price.






The pages are thick enough to use a fountain pen and not have ink showing on the reverse side - this is a big plus point for me since I love using fountain pens. The pages are quite smooth and writing is a pleasure.

These notebooks definitely score a 9.5 on 10.

Sweet Little Chinese Ink Pens

Some months ago, I saw these cute little ink pens in the store that I frequent. I decided that they looked too childish for my use, so I bought one as an 'introduction to ink pens' for my 7 year old daughter.

She enjoyed using it for a while, left it lying around, so I appropriated it back.

I started using it and quite enjoyed the smoothness! Over these few months, I have bought at least 10 of these in different colours - kept some and gifted some.

The cartridge that comes with the pen has ink that fades rapidly, so I'd advice not using it for anything that needs permanence. Otherwise just use another cartridge. (I refill my cartridges with my choice of ink)

These pens don't have any name!

They're smaller than a regular sized ink pen and can only fit one small cartridge. A Lamy cartridge won't fit. 


For the price of Rs.30/= they're a very good bargain.  Try and use the nib before you buy, some of the pens have scratchy nibs and some are as smooth as a Lamy!

JINHAO Chinese Fountain Pens

In recent months, I've seen a lot of look-alike Lamy pens in the markets and stores here in Mumbai.

They are made in China (of course), are called JINHAO and they look just the Lamy pens, esp. from a distance. The pen clip is very different, however. Otherwise, they have the same ink-viewing space, the name JINHAO is embossed on the pen exactly where LAMY is embossed on their own pens.

 
I guess no one can accuse JINHAO of cheating.

And oh yes, they write very well too for a fraction of the price of a LAMY.

More Lamy pens

And in the past 6 months, I've added two more lovely Lamy pens to my little collection....

The green one is a medium nib Lamy Al star and the yellow one is a broad nib Lamy Safari. Both write beautifully.

On Amazon.com, the Lamy Safari is around $20. Here's my Amazon Affiliate link to the Lamy Safari http://amzn.to/1EPx4Td

On Amazon.in, it's around Rs.1800/= Here's my Amazon Affiliate link to the Lamy Safari on Amazon India
Lamy Safari Fountain Pen - Medium Nib

Different Coloured Fountain Pen Inks

Had a little jaunt in the Mumbai Fort area and found this wonderful stationery store called Excellent Stationers at Gunbow Street.

They stock loads of different coloured inks for fountain pens!! They showed me a catalogue of colours, easily over a 100. After my fruitless hunt in my own area, finding this store with all these inks was a taste of heaven.

I bought 2 for now - Turquoise and a Violent. Next visit to the store, shall try some other interesting colours.

The same store had A4 sized golden stickers. I had actually been looking for label sized golden stickers, but hadn't been able to find them. Lots of golden and silver round stickers available, but rectangles, no! So this stationer was selling them for Rs.20/= per sheet, so I bought some.  I can always cut and use, in fact, it'll work better, because now I won't be restricted by size!

And just for good measure, I bought a pack of Staedtler Lumocolor permanent - a pack of 8, since right now, I'm a lot into markers!