did you give the special lady of the class a little more than the rest?

Parker Howell ah, memories.

My elementary school in the 1960s was built around 1905, and the student desks still had shallow holes to hold the ink bottles (which of course were no longer used).

instablaster...

I still use some fountain pens like a dip pen (no cartridge fits).

I have a lot of antique and vintage writing equipment in my collection. What you see in this video is a small sample of it. One day I'll make more videos.

Mabie, todd.

Been into FPs since I was a kid. Will never stop loving them :)

Ask whatever you want. Always happy to answer if I can.

People like to claim that FPs dated all the way back to the 1600s, but if it doesn't work like a FP, is it REALLY a fountain pen?? They really only started getting practical in the 1880s, 1890s.

I did have one. Sadly, I lost it. I have another one now, though.

The vast majority of lever-filler pens have parts which are just friction-fit. The nib slides on top of the feed, the nib and feed slide into the section, the section slides into the barrel. Granted, they are extremely tight fits. To remove the section from the barrel, grip the section and barrel in opposing fingers and *GENTLY* rock back and forth with slight twisting motion. The section will slowly walk itself out, milimeter by milimeter. Then once you've got enough of it out, you can pull or twist it out *CAREFULLY* to get into the barrel. Provided the pen hasn't been glued shut (which shouldn't be done ANYWAY!!), this is all you should have to do. If it's proving stubborn, you can HEAT the section using HOT WATER *(no dry heat, and ABSOLUTELY no naked flames!!)*, and this may help to loosen things up a bit. But whatever you do, don't RUSH it. These are very old pens, and they need patience to be repaired properly.

Thanks for the reply :) I do wonder if the pen if the pen is celluloid and would burst into flames if it got near an naked flame! Obviously I don't want to find out!

Most likely yes, celluloid. And I have set a pen on fire once (it was broken, don't worry) to see what would happen. It wasn't pretty.

I can imagine! By the way, thanks for this video and your blog posts about fountain pens. Because of them I now use a Parker fountain pen for writing notes during lectures. (The Conway-stewart was a fairly recent impulse buy)

Impulse buys can be the best buys :)

Air-pressure. The pens when capped, had to be air-tight (or as near to airtight as possible) to prevent the pen from drying out. But when you uncapped the pen, the vacuum caused by the pen leaving the cap and the air rushing in, could create a suction effect which would suck ink out of the pen. The holes drilled into the pen-caps was to provide airflow, to stop this from happening.

FP ink is water-based. That it would last 60-odd years in a pen without drying out, the pen would have to be sealed in plastic. I don't see how that works...

@@shahancheong9792 It was sealed in an air tight metal box. The pen was wrapped in wax paper. It is a true story. Thank you for the quick response. I am starting my FP collection too. It is seeming to be an addictive hobby. It is a healthier addictive hobby than my smoking hobby though! Thanks for your time.

Maybe it is a sign from the fountain pen gods.

Nib-size numbers, so that the right feed goes with the right nib.

That's very difficult to answer. Modern brands include Visconti, Parker, Waterman, Pilot, Montblanc, etc. Most younger folks like Lamy, although I've never actually tried it. I tend to stick to classics and vintage pens.

Thanks for the answer. I am looking to buy a nice fountain pen. But I am worried about leaking the it in the flights.

If you take good care its really unlikely the fountain pen will leak on the flight.

Good care means?

@Samiyuru Make sure your fountain pen is not completely full of Ink. If it is make sure to remove 1/4 to 1/2 the ink so when the pressure changes in your flight there is room for the ink to expand and then there will be enough room in the ink sac or ink chamber and it will not leak out. This is much easier to do when filling your pen form bottled ink rather than ink cartridges.

Yep. I've done that with a few cheap pens. Rip out the guts, fill it with ink and seal it with grease. Works extremely well :)

The Waterman COMPANY was one of the first, yes. But Waterman himself was not the person who actually invented the fountain pen. He invented the three-channel feed, which made the fountain pen possible.

@@shahancheong9792 Im blown away! Im a Parker fan I thought they were (may because I was positiveley Manipulated into thinking so Because I Discovered a Parker 25 flighter) A piece of history I have; so I thought. I now have a different perspective for waterman now.

Hard-rubber/ebonite is a REALLY old-fashioned manufacturing material these days. I'm not aware of any company that still makes pens out of that stuff, mostly because the colour-instability. If you leave an ebonite-ANYTHING in the sun, it fades faster than blinking.

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/a5edgMiL3ZPSqWg.html

I make mine out of bamboo cane and/or monkeybone … 🥸

pilot/namiki do on their higher end range

Not really. Air pressure is more important. All the gravity in the world won't help it if the pen can't breathe.

The first FPs came out in the 1880s and 1890s. The technology was REALLY crude back then but they did work. That said, they were expensive, so I think only professionals who did a lot of writing, would've bothered to buy them.

@@shahancheong9792 you don't answer my question.

@@burg0tv446 I just did. Read it again.

@@shahancheong9792 I'm not asking who. I'm talking about what fountain pen did people first used.

@@burg0tv446 Oh, well your first comment said "what people", not what pens, so... The first fountain pens were eyedropper pens, usually back in the 1880s - 1900s. The first pens with actual inbuilt filling mechanisms didn't show up until about 1902, 1905.