dip pens

Who plays with dip pens and what is a good way to get started
equpment wise?

matthew
ohio

MatthewK wrote:

Who plays with dip pens and what is a good way to get started
equpment wise?

I use dip pens for most of my personal correspondence. They're great. If
you just want to get started, you can find any number of styles and
types ranging from soft to firm and fine to broad. Most dip pens are
remarkably cheap, too.

I know that places sell bags of assorted nibs, and you can then get a
holder for those nibs and just switch and mix until you find something
that you like.

Do you have a specific style of handwriting that you use? If your style
ranges to a more expressive Spencerian or Roundhand, you might look at
some flexible or truly flexible nibs. If you have a strong, more modern
Edwardian or Italic type hand, you might look at stronger, firmer nibs
that are more broad.

As for ink, well, you can find just about anything that you want out
there for dip pens, and dip pens can take all sorts of ink, so go crazy
there. My favorite for letter writing right now is Encre Authentique
which holds up really well in weather and international mail systems.
--
Aaron Hsu | Jabber:
``Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to
live at the expense of everybody else.'' - Frederic Bastiat

In ,
Aaron Hsu wrote:

If
you just want to get started, you can find any number of styles and
types ranging from soft to firm and fine to broad.

By any chance, do you know whether nibs come in more than one standard size?
I recently pulled the nib from an Osmiroid "easy-change" FP section to
adjust it (they slide right in and out), and discovered that it's
essentially a dip-pen nib. Same type of thin, hardened, springy steel
(gold-plated), same sheared slit, same type of tail... and the same lack of
a pellet. However, the curve is a little smaller in diameter than an
Esterbrook and a Speedball that I had handy to compare it to.

It seems like the Osmiroid could be a nice "reservoir" holder for dip pens.

Brian
--

Brian Ketterling wrote:

In ,
Aaron Hsu wrote:

If
you just want to get started, you can find any number of styles and
types ranging from soft to firm and fine to broad.

By any chance, do you know whether nibs come in more than one standard size?

If you are talking about fountain pen nibs, then yes, they do come in
different sizes. The nature of the barrels and the assemblies
necessitates this to some degree, or at least, it does on the pens I
use.

On the other hand, there seems to be a pretty standard neck size for dip
pens. I can't confirm this, though.

--
Aaron Hsu | Jabber:
``Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to
live at the expense of everybody else.'' - Frederic Bastiat

In ,
Aaron Hsu wrote:

If you are talking about fountain pen nibs, then yes, they do come in
different sizes.

Yes, they do .

On the other hand, there seems to be a pretty standard neck size for dip
pens. I can't confirm this, though.

_That's_ what I was talking about. Osmiroid might have adopted dip pen
construction for custom-sized nibs, but it seems more likely to me that
along with material and technique, they would have used an already existing
dip pen *size*, as well. It would have saved on tooling, if nothing else.

Thanks, in any case -- maybe I'll run across some of my hypothetical
"smaller size" nibs sometime.

Brian
--

On 2008-05-27, Aaron Hsu wrote:
MatthewK wrote:

Who plays with dip pens and what is a good way to get started
equpment wise?

I use dip pens for most of my personal correspondence.

This will probably be my use as well as to spice up practice.

I know that places sell bags of assorted nibs, and you can then get a
holder for those nibs and just switch and mix until you find something
that you like.


It seems like $15 a pendemonium would do me well here.


As for ink, well, you can find just about anything that you want out
there for dip pens, and dip pens can take all sorts of ink, so go crazy
there. My favorite for letter writing right now is Encre Authentique
which holds up really well in weather and international mail systems.

Thanks, as far as inks go I've been using diamine registrar's
ink to address envelopes. So far, so good.


matthew

p.s. as far as I can tell, I'll just be purchasing dip
pens/ink. I can get a good setup/color asortment for 4 bottles
of fp ink...that will help me get my color fix

On Fri, 06 Jun 2008 05:11:23 +0000, MatthewK
wrote:

p.s. as far as I can tell, I'll just be purchasing dip
pens/ink. I can get a good setup/color asortment for 4 bottles
of fp ink...that will help me get my color fix

Matthew, I'm not an expert on dip pens, but lemme remind you of two
things I think I've already told you.

One, I think dip pens that have a reservoir is the way to go because

1. the ones that don't, you're dipping every other word
2. the ones that don't, I get blobs all over the place, maybe because
i'm dipping so much, or so often.

There are kinds other than speedball that have reservoirs, but I don't
know what they are.

The second thing is, I can use fountain pen ink in my fountain pens.
The door to a bunch more stuff is open if you use dip pens--namely,
permanent, bright colors, and these inks--some of them at least--are a
lot cheaper than fountain pen ink.

I heard so much about Jackson stubs on FPN I had to have one and I got
one and wrote two or three lines with it and chunked it in some
drawer.

"The Drunken Lord" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 06 Jun 2008 05:11:23 +0000, MatthewK

Matthew, I'm not an expert on dip pens, but lemme remind you of two
things I think I've already told you.

One, I think dip pens that have a reservoir is the way to go because

1. the ones that don't, you're dipping every other word
2. the ones that don't, I get blobs all over the place, maybe because
i'm dipping so much, or so often.

There are kinds other than speedball that have reservoirs, but I don't
know what they are.

The second thing is, I can use fountain pen ink in my fountain pens.
The door to a bunch more stuff is open if you use dip pens--namely,
permanent, bright colors, and these inks--some of them at least--are a
lot cheaper than fountain pen ink.

I heard so much about Jackson stubs on FPN I had to have one and I got
one and wrote two or three lines with it and chunked it in some
drawer.

I tried a dip pen several years ago and stuck it in a drawer thinking
there's a technique I need to learn before it'll be enjoyable for me. I
still haven't looked into it. Is there a technique for using dip pens? All I
did was dip the nib into the ink at varying depths, sometimes touching the
point to the bottle to get rid of the excess.

Maybe what I need is a reservoir pen.


--
~~Bluesea~~
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Please take out the trash before sending a direct reply.

On Fri, 6 Jun 2008 16:03:29 -0500, "Bluesea"
wrote:

I tried a dip pen several years ago and stuck it in a drawer thinking
there's a technique I need to learn before it'll be enjoyable for me. I
still haven't looked into it. Is there a technique for using dip pens? All I
did was dip the nib into the ink at varying depths, sometimes touching the
point to the bottle to get rid of the excess.

Maybe what I need is a reservoir pen.

Those ****nuts on FPN don't use speedball nibs. They go for those
Esterbrooks. And some of the FPN'ers write pretty well with them.

But I'd never use a dip pen if I couldn't have one with a
reservoir--too much dipping. I got some C-4 and C-5 nibs recently,
some new ones, and they were pretty sharp, maybe a little too
sharp--or maybe I was just using cheap paper they kept getting hung up
on.

Speedball is also not the only kind that has reservoirs, but I think
it's the only kind currently made.

In ,
Bluesea wrote:

I tried a dip pen several years ago and stuck it in a drawer thinking
there's a technique I need to learn before it'll be enjoyable for me...

Maybe what I need is a reservoir pen.

A while back, in a jumble of dip pens I bought on eBay (containing the
Esterbrook "Dip-Less" I wanted), I found several holders with FP-style HR
feeds, and a little ink space in the handles behind the feeds. Something
like that might work for you -- I wonder whether anyone makes them anymore.
(Am I describing a "reservoir pen", BTW?)

Brian
--