Episode: 3063
Title: HPR3063: Pens, pencils, paper and ink - 1
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3063/hpr3063.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 16:06:07

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,063 for Wednesday 29 April 2020. Today's show is entitled Pen,
Pencils, Paper and Ink one inch,
and is part of the series, The Art of Writing. It is hosted by Dave Morris,
and is about 15 minutes long
and carries an explicit flag. The summary is
looking at a few more of my writing implements.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
Support universal access to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org forward slash donate.
Music
Hello everybody. Welcome to Hacker Public Radio. This is Dave Morris.
Now today I've got a show which is, I guess, the second on the same subject.
It's about pens and pencils and stationary type things. I've called it pens, pencil, paper and ink.
It's been four years since I did one on this subject. It was show 1,941,
and it was released in January 2016.
I've been meaning to do this all that time, but I don't know.
It's the case of getting the motivation to do some of these things, but anyway I'm motivated now.
I thought it was worth coming back and talking about this a little bit more
because I've acquired some new pens and pencils and stuff
and been collecting ink and paper and notebooks and stuff in the interim.
And I thought it was useful just to talk about some of these things for those who are interested in the subject.
As I was putting this together I realised there was more information here than
where I could put together into one show.
So I've turned it into three shows which hopefully aren't going to be too long.
It means I can add more shows to the group if I buy more pens or have any more things to share with you.
So what three fountain pens I'm going to talk about today.
The first one is German brand called Lami, L-A-M-Y.
I think I called it Lami when I first came across it, but the German pronunciation is Lami and I'm given to believe.
These are very popular. They're all over the place.
It's a good start pen and the price is quite reasonable.
I decided to get one because a lot of people have been saying that they loved it
and I wanted to give it a shot.
I must say I'm not wild about it.
I don't like the fact that it's got a triangular cross section in the finger grip area
and I don't find it enormously comfortable.
But others find this to be maybe one of the best features.
It means that the pen's always in the right orientation for the nib and that type of thing.
I guess it's what you used to really.
I probably could train myself to get on with this if I used to pen a lot.
The nib on the one I bought is classified as extra fine.
But I really like a fine pen because my writing tends to be fairly small.
And this one feels a little bit coarser than I like.
But again, I'm probably overly fussy in this area
and I've been spoiled by having a range of Japanese pens.
In the Japanese range, the things they define as a fine nib
others would define as extra fine.
This German extra fine is what I would call a medium.
But there's no absolute something that's just a matter of opinion.
This particular pen takes either a cartridge or a converter.
And I bought the converter at the same time that I bought the pen.
And it costs under 20 pounds.
It's a transparent so-called demonstrator pen.
And I bought the converter for around about 5 pounds when I bought it.
I don't know what the prices are now probably a little bit more.
But I've shown a picture of the pen itself.
Yeah, there's a picture of it with its cab off and a close-up of the nib.
Which is quite a nice designer thing.
One of the things about these is you can take the nib off quite easily.
It's the case of grabbing it and pulling.
And you can buy the single nibs, different sizes and so forth.
And you can just pop it back on different ones.
So that's fairly rare in the fountain pen world, actually.
So that's another plus point for this particular pen.
And there are loads and loads of different sorts of safaris in different colors.
Not transparent, solid color and all sorts of things.
It does have a lot going for it.
It just doesn't quite hit the spot as far as I'm concerned.
But I've done an example of the writing.
And to me that looks fairly chunky in terms of the stroke width.
And it also needs the right sort of paper.
This is a classy paper I'm using in my demos of grid, gridded paper.
But I'll talk about paper in another show.
So the second pen, Twisbee.
I mentioned the Twisbee brand in my last show.
And spoke about the one I'd bought called the Eco,
which is a really good value piston filling pen, which I enjoy a lot.
But since then I've acquired another one called a VAC 700.
The VAC 700 is no longer made, which is unfortunate I think.
Though I think some stockers seem to have older stock or something like that.
There is a VAC mini, which has replaced the 700.
The 700 is a big, big pen.
And the mini is a more compact pen.
For the view I get of the range of this stuff,
it comes from Taiwan originally, is filtered by what people stock in the UK.
So there may be quite a range of different designs.
But the two that I see in the various catalogs at the moment,
the 700 is clear acrylic, and that's the only form you can get.
And the mini is either in clear or smokey type acrylic.
The thing about these pens, and the Twisbee VAC, I'll talk about,
is that they have an unusual vacuum filling mechanism.
So the principle of it is that you unscrew a plunger,
which is normally locked in position, unscrew it,
then you pull the plunger out from the end of the pen.
And then you push it forward, and as you push it forward,
it creates a vacuum.
And if the nib is in ink as you're doing this,
then the sudden release of the vacuum causes a good amount of ink to be drawn in.
Problem is, though, it's a big barrel on this particular pen,
and it doesn't fill totally if you do it in an ordinary ink bottle.
So there's a special ink bottle, which you can screw on to the pen,
which lets you fill it almost completely.
So I got one of these, and I have a picture of it later on.
It's called the VAC-20A.
There are various YouTube videos that show things about this,
and I've linked one of them from an American company called the Gulae Pen Company,
showing how you would fill such pen with one of these bottles.
The bottle they use is the earlier version of the one I have called the VAC-20,
which only fitted the VAC-700.
The one I have also fitted the VAC Mini.
I'm going to talk any more about it.
If you're interested, you can go and check it out on the YouTube video.
So there's pictures of the Twisbee with its cap on.
It's got ink in. I inked it up a while ago, actually,
and it's one of the great things about this is it doesn't dry out.
A lot of pens, if you leave them inked and don't use them for a few weeks,
you've come back to them and they've dried up.
Actually, the lami is bad for that.
You really need to flush it out and dry it and put it away if you're not using it.
With the cap off, you can see it's got quite a chunky nib,
and I do a close up of it. It's a fine nib.
It writes wonderfully. I love this pen.
It's one of my real favourites.
It's a picture of the 28 ink bottle, which is a strange looking thing,
but you can actually leave the ink in it, which is what I do.
The handwriting sample shows that it's an extra fine nib.
I forgot about that.
I used an ink from the company Diamine, which is called ASA Blue,
which is a nice colour I reckon.
One of the things about the pen is when you finish writing with it,
when you finish filling it, indeed.
You need to make sure that the plunger,
which by the time you finish this fully in again,
the end should be screwed down.
But when you want to write with it,
you should just slacken off the thread at the end,
because otherwise the plunger is pressed up quite tightly against the end of the barrel,
which doesn't allow ink to flow through to the nib,
which is great, because it means your pen's not likely to leak into the cap,
whatever, as you're carrying it around.
But you do need to remember to take that pressure off to allow ink to flow.
Some people hate that.
You have to fiddle with it.
Personally, I don't know why I really struck with this pen.
I liked it a lot.
My son had it originally, this one, and he didn't like it.
And I showed it to me and I said,
I could really go with it.
He said, well, do you want it?
Because I had to give him some money for it.
Of course, that's what you do, isn't it?
If you wanted to buy one of these new in the UK,
they're around about 75 pounds,
and the ink bottle is under 15.
The VAC Mini is around 60 pounds at the moment,
just having a quick look at some of the sellers.
So these are not overly cheap pens,
but I just really quite like third fountain pen,
then is from a Japanese company called Pilot.
You make some amazing pens,
some of which are astonishingly expensive.
This one's called the Pilot Custom Heritage 92.
So this pen is a piston filler,
and I described the piston filling mechanism in the last show.
It's a movable piston,
which is operated through a twist cap on the end.
My son is very keen on Japan,
and he and his girlfriend went to Japan in 2017 or 2018.
They took a year out to do some travel,
went to New Zealand as well.
I think they started in Japan.
Anyway, around about that time,
they saw this pen and bought it for me as a present.
If you want to buy this in the UK,
it's really quite expensive,
but the prices in Japan are apparently quite a lot lower.
It's an acrylic pen.
It's a demonstrator that, as you can see,
see through its clear.
This one is a blue,
it's got a bluer acrylic.
In the UK, you can only get the clear version of it.
The nib is a very fine one.
I'm not sure what it's made of,
but if you buy it in the UK,
the tip is apparently gold,
but I've no idea what this one is.
The pen has a real high quality feel to it,
to my way of thinking,
it's not overly large,
and it's one where I like to put the cap on the end of the barrel,
posting, they call it.
I've got some pictures,
which show it with the cap on,
with the cap off,
and then a close-up of the nib.
You can see that it's marked as fine,
which in Japanese terms is extra fine
and compared to European pens.
The other picture is that,
my son is a girlfriend,
leather items, quite skillful with their leather-making stuff,
and they've very kindly made me a leather carry-in case
to go with the pen,
so I just thought I would give you a picture of what that turned out.
And there's a bit of a writing sample,
it's using an ink cord
from a company called J'ère-Bère French company,
and the ink is called Bluer Péravanche.
It's probably the crappiest French accent ever,
but I think it means blue periwinkle.
I want to talk about this ink a little bit more
in another show.
If you buy this in the UK,
with a clear acrylic,
with a gold nib,
costs around 175 pounds,
but I don't believe it,
it costs anything like that in Japan.
So, I also have,
because this is meant to be about writing stuff in general.
At Ballpoint pen,
I bought one of these,
you're so back.
I don't have a whole lot of Ballpoint pens,
because on the whole,
I don't find the right to spectacularly well,
and they don't totally suit my handwriting.
I normally prefer fountain pens,
or gel pens, or rollerball pens,
not Ballpoint so much.
I think it's something to do with that,
that ink, strange sticky ink.
Anyway, this one is called the Trica Construction.
Quite pretty looking,
it's a bit of a novelty though.
It's made of metal,
it's quite chunky,
it has a six-sided barrel
with a twist tip
for extending and retracting the Ballpoint,
and the barrel can be as the ruler,
and it's got imperial metric measurements on it.
It's got a spirit level in it,
which you can't really see in my picture.
Not enough light, really.
The end of the pen is fitted with a sort of rubbery pad,
which is not an eraser,
but is think for clicking on touch screens.
And if you take the cab off,
there's a little double-ended screwdriver inside there,
which is quite neat.
It can't have used it a lot though.
It's held in magnetically,
and the magnet is not that good.
So as a pen, there's nothing very special.
It takes a D1 refilt,
which are quite small tubes of ink
with the Ballpoint tip.
And I bought the thing,
and I was quite excited with it when I got it,
and then I sort of got less enthusiastic about it
over the time I've had it.
I just keep it around for writing notes
and that type of thing.
Just quick things that you write down when an idea occurs to you,
if you do that sort of thing.
There's a picture of the pen
and with its cab off showing the screwdriver.
So, in conclusion then,
I've included two of my favourite fountain pens
in this episode,
and one that's not a favourite,
which I'm learning to appreciate more, I hope.
I do use the Troika, as I've said,
to make shopping lists and that type of stuff,
but I don't think I'd recommend it,
unless you really like novelty pens.
It's not cheap.
I can't remember how much it was,
but it was over £20,
and I don't think it's warranted to be honest with you.
So, what I'm going to do is to stop now,
and next show in this group,
I'm going to talk about a few more fountain pens
and a few other related issues.
And there's, I think,
three shows will probably do it, hopefully anyway.
All right then, that's it.
Bye.
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