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It seems silly but reccomend the perfect pen.
Mim
dead.Registered User regular
dead.Registered User regular
I wanted to do this before school starts back up again. I have a fetish, a pen fetish. I could stand in a Rite-Aid, CVS, Staples, Office Max, or any other place selling pens, for hours on end trying to decide upon the perfect pen. It seems strange to explain it, but I rarely lend out pens to people in class when they ask for one and if I do lend them one I give them the crap ones because I need the best of the best for my notes.
I recently went pen shopping and found they no longer made the Pilot P-500 .5mm series anymore (my favorite in middle school) and while I currently use Pilot G-2 retractable (The box says extra fine but it says .7 on the pen..not acceptable) and have tried the Uni-Ball Signo (the pen constantly skips when I'm writing which is annoying) I am looking for something better.
I am looking for:
- A pen that doesn't skip while writing
- I prefer gel ink
- .05mm or smaller (I have tiny handwriting and whilst doodling during class I like to draw details)
- Possibly an assortment of colors
- No excess of ink (as in, when I'm writing I do not want certain letters to become blobs on the paper)
- Not seriously expensive (Dr. Grip is fine but damn is it expensive)
- Doesn't smear when highlighted or when hand brushes against the paper
I know this is a tall order for a pen, but I have had a pen that met up to all but one of the requirements. Unfortunately, I used it while in Japan and I no longer live there. So I'd like something I can have easy access to that I don't have to wait weeks for it to come in the mail.
TL;DR- Dammit, I need a kick ass pen, stat.
I recently went pen shopping and found they no longer made the Pilot P-500 .5mm series anymore (my favorite in middle school) and while I currently use Pilot G-2 retractable (The box says extra fine but it says .7 on the pen..not acceptable) and have tried the Uni-Ball Signo (the pen constantly skips when I'm writing which is annoying) I am looking for something better.
I am looking for:
- A pen that doesn't skip while writing
- I prefer gel ink
- .05mm or smaller (I have tiny handwriting and whilst doodling during class I like to draw details)
- Possibly an assortment of colors
- No excess of ink (as in, when I'm writing I do not want certain letters to become blobs on the paper)
- Not seriously expensive (Dr. Grip is fine but damn is it expensive)
- Doesn't smear when highlighted or when hand brushes against the paper
I know this is a tall order for a pen, but I have had a pen that met up to all but one of the requirements. Unfortunately, I used it while in Japan and I no longer live there. So I'd like something I can have easy access to that I don't have to wait weeks for it to come in the mail.
TL;DR- Dammit, I need a kick ass pen, stat.
BlueSky: thequeenofchaos Steam: mimspanks (add me then tell me who you are! Ask for my IG)
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Just noticed, the box says 0.3 mm but it's a lie. It's more like 0.5.
I've heard that you can basically make your own Montblanc pen for cheap. You buy the refills for a Montblanc(considered to be the best pen ever), and then put it in your own pen casing, which in the example I saw on Lifehacker, required a small amount of scraping or drilling to get the refill to fit in an attractive casing.
Uniballs are pretty good.
I was reading about these Montblanc pens in the comment section of this article : http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/10/16/the_gel_dilemma.html
You can put them in a G-2 casing. Do they sell Montblanc pen refills in stores or do you order them online? And are they .5mm?
I've used the Uni-Ball Signo and I'm sure I've used the Vision and both of them skip so much on me that I just wanted to chuck them at someone's head.
Notebook paper and post-its, that's all. Well and job applications. Which triple sucks because then I have skippy handwriting all over my application. My Borders Express application looked a bit like a two year old wrote it in the references sections.
It only skips for me if I write at a certain angle. Try writing with it a little bit closer to 90 degrees.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Save-%24200-in-2-minutes-and-have-the-worlds-best-wr/
Two refills for $12.
Although, one of the comments on this guide says that without a cap, there may be a problem and the rollerball refill may dry out.
Actually, here.
I bought the G-2s thinking they were .5 because on the box it said X-Fine. But looking at the clip on the pen it says Pilot G-2 07. So unless they mean the year of the pen in which it was made, I'm not sure I'll know how to find a .5 G-2. Would it be X-X-Fine?
The pictures on amazon have an 05 on the clip. It's tough to tell but you can, especially if you look at ones that are labeled as 07. In fact, I've got an 07 in my pocket right now and I can tell it's different. If you have any bookstores are maybe something a bit more specialized you should be able to find them in singles and see if you can tell the difference. The bookstores up at my school all have like, 5 different G2 colors, refills of each, etc. If you can find the 05 it seems like the best bet.
I'm interested in the .38 G-2 that I saw online. But if the .5 is the best I can find, then I'll deal. I just wish there were pen stores in the US like there are in Japan. Even visiting Chinatown where some stores carry Japanese items don't have pen stores. Pen stores are my favorite next to Book stores.
Yeah, I've used Uni-Ball Rollers for years. They're my favorite pens. Nice clean lines on the small-point ones.
Website: http://uniball-na.com/main.taf?p=2,3,4
Warframe: TheBaconDwarf
I second using Uni-balls. The first thing that came to my mind when I saw your thread topic was... UNI-BALL.
Try it!
but they're listening to every word I say
Pilot also sells the G1 and G3 which are capped pens that take the same size refills as the G2, i believe. I'm gonna try this out tommorrow. This thread is relevant to my interests.
Do update on this! It's a weird thing but I am very protective of my pens, markers, post-its, erasers, basically anything school supply related. I love going school supply shopping. To make note of how serious I am of this PEN ADVENTURE OF EPIC PROPORTIONS(TM) and how careful I am of lending them out, I one time let this girl in my Japanese class (in high school) borrow some markers I had bought and loved from a Japanese pen shop. She fucking pushed down HARD on my marker heads and my friend noted that as I was watching her my eye twitched. I ended up yelling "NO" to the next person who asked to borrow my pen in fear of them being damaged.
I ruin my social life for my pens. Any body else have pen stories?
And what kind of uni-ball, anything beyond Signo and Vision, please. I'll try re-working my Signo again and doing some lines and shit on printer paper, but I swear all four of the skip.
Actually it relates to the problem I have with most gel pens and uni-balls. I spin my pen pretty constantly if I'm holding one. It is, among other things, a bit of a debater in-thing. Anyway, spin a pen too much and then try to write with it and it blobs and you get ink all over your hands. no good.
The big question I have to ask you is the following:
Do you prefer to press firmly on the paper, or do you press gently as you push the paper across?
This plays an unexpectedly important role in what kind of pen is more useful for you. Even with cheap pens this point becomes extremely important.
For instance, I push down very firmly on the paper as I write, and as such I've found that Papermates are extremely reliable for me (never skip ink, always applies boldly etc...) to the point where a cheap 10 cent papermate is more desirable to me than a 5 dollar pen of another brand, whereas Bics tend to explode during intensive use (the ball bearing literally jostles out of place and the ink goes everywhere). Fountain pens are useless because ink blots get tossed everywhere.
My wife, however, is a "light pusher". As a result, she has trouble even getting ink to come out of Papermates, but Bic pens flow smoothly and decisively. She can also use fountain pens as a result, which I cannot.
These are just examples using cheap pens (which are the kinds I know best
I just hate the skipping and the crap gel pens. I saw the writer of that article I linked to used a .4mm but I have no idea where to find those...a trip downtown might be in order...
I guess with the pen ink I suppose. With cheap roller ball pens I guess I writer a lot smoother and lighter than with gel pens. Now is there is a difference between gel roller ball pens and other pens? Or are they all one and the same?
And I forget who asked, but I haven't tried a fountain pen yet. How good are they?
I use a Schaeffer Javelin, with a custom-ground fine point italic nib. It is as smooth as silk on any paper from translucently thin waxy receipts to textured heavy bond envelopes. The line it produces is clear and neat and varies pleasingly with the angle of the pen, which makes even the most mundane writing look *cool*. I have ink for it that is waterproof, UV resistant, and archival quality: the paper I write on will rot away before that ink fades to illegibility, and I laugh at spilled water.
Just try a fountain pen. Hold one. Write the first line of Jabberwocky. If it doesn't bring a smile to your face, you have no soul. (Or maybe fountain pens just aren't for you).
Well Mim, if it helps... if you write smoother with a cheap ball-point pen, why bother with the gel pens?
I think it all depends on your style. This is just my experience as a "hard pressing" pen user, but I find the big difference in pen types is the amount of ink that flows from them while writing. The continuum seems like this to me.
Lowest Flow ...................................... Highest Flow
Ball-Point
> Gel Pens
> Fountain Pens
Being a hard-presser, it's pretty much impossible for me to get controllable amounts of ink out of gel pens and fountain pens, to the point where the text written with them is nearly illegible. But that's just my experience (as a person who presses so hard that he breaks wimpy bic pens
If this helps, the continuum above might help guide you to where you'd be most comfortable in terms of the type of pen you ought to use. Personally, I think if you're getting good results from ball point pens there's no reason to switch it up... but that admittedly comes from extensive personal bias due to my inability to use more flowing pens successfully.
But don't lend them to anyone, ever.
These were the pens I used in Japan which I believe are similar to the ones you posted s_86, only I can't tell from the site's description.
I have also looked around Chinatown (Philadelphia) like a mad woman but I can only find jewelry shops and restaurants and cell phone carries. One art supply store I went to only had paper for some odd reason.
VT, I use gel because...well...its the ink. The ink is just so dark and sexy that if I see someone using a a pen with dark, sexy ink coming out of it so smoothly on paper I simply can't stop myself from asking "What kind of pen is that?" and then I go on about the make and the pen nib and then its "Can I try it for a sec?" to see if it works for me and then by the time I'm done with my inspection the person is looking at me like I'm some weirdo. I'm not, I just love pens.
I'm going to both Staples downtown today and any other pen store I can find to see if I can find the .5mm or the .38mm G-2 gel pens and see how those work out (they have them on their website so I'm hoping they have them in stores). I'm hoping I'm not reduced to ordering offline...I see they carry the p-500 series online but not in stores. Bupkiss!
See, I've used those before, but I find they don't glide as well as I'd want them too. But those are very nice pens and they do allow you to slow down with your writing, at least for me.
And trust me, I only lend crap ball point pens to people. They don't touch the rest of my collection.
Those UniBall 0.5 gel pens are hard to beat for a cheapie. It's a pity you don't want to get one nice expensive pen, because Waterman make some particularly fine pens.
but they're listening to every word I say
I found these 4 years ago and have not looked back. Definitely worth a try.