I believe that we all have addictions. Trying to navigate this vale of tears without a healthy dose of irrational cravings is an impossibility. The key is to chose your addictions.
Good luck.
At any rate, one of my addictions is Fountain Pens. I have no idea why: a childhood memory? The pure gadgetry of the thing? The nerdiness? The relationship to writing? I don’t know why. I only know that I don’t fight it.
Much.
In the spectrum of Pen Collectors I am what is referred to as a USER. I don’t care about how expensive a pen is, I simply want to write with it. I don’t care about rarity, or perfect condition, or if someone in time past had their name engraved on their pen (I think this is cool, actually). My favorite thing is to find some beat up old antique caked with dried ink and desk drawer dust at Canton or some other flea market – then disassemble, clean, repair, replace, rebuild, and then, actually write with the thing.
Enter the Varsity.
Modern fountain pens do not, as a general rule, stand up to vintage writing instruments. There are exceptions.
One interesting specimen is the Pilot Varsity. The Pilot company is a Japanese manufacturer and purveyor of fine pens that can cost thousands of dollars. (their Vanishing Point model is very popular, their expensive shit is sold under the sub-brand Namiki).
The Varsity is one of their low-end models, very low-end. It is disposable. You can find them in office supply stores or some bookstores for around three bucks each.
They even come in packs of seven different colors for about two dollars each.
The crazy thing is, they are great writers. A wet medium line, a surprisingly smooth nib, very reliable, rarely leak. If you want to give writing with a fountain pen a try, this is a great way to do it.
I like the Varsity so much, I decided it was too good to be disposable. When my blue model went dry, I decided to re-fill it.
My favorite color is a bluish-green and I decided to go there, with a slant on the green side. I chose two compatible inks: Private Reserve Spearmint and American Blue. I assembled all my tools: pen, ink, pliers, and an irrigation syringe.
Pen, ink, syringe, pliers.
I grabbed the nib with the pliers and pulled it out – it gave away with a nice firm click. The nib is the metal part of a fountain pen. It sits up against a ribbed plastic bit called a collector. This is what holds a dab of ink up next to the nib so it can go onto the paper quickly. A fountain pen is accurately described as a “Controlled Leak” – the collector is what controls that leak. In the Varsity the steel nib and black plastic collector came out of the clear body in one piece.
Easy. Much better than the method this guy uses.
I washed everything out and put some diluted green and blue ink (mostly green) into the syringe.
Pen, nib and collector removed, cleaned out, ready for new ink.
I was a simple process to squirt the ink back into the body of the Varsity and then push the nib and collector back in. A good shove and it clicked back as it was before.
And now it writes again. I saved myself three dollars (minus the cost of the ink) but that’s not the point.
The Varsity refilled with a sample of the ink color. My handwriting is terrible, it always has been.
Now that I think about it… I don’t actually know what the point is. Points are overrated, I guess. Aren’t they?
A junkie fix for my fountain pen addiction. Not too bad as addictions go.
