Whilst work has been quite busy recently, it has been particularly good to have my stationery hobby as a backdrop for some much needed R & R. This has also been eventful, including some unexpected gifts and a satisfying bit of pen-tinkery. It is time for another round-up.

Frogmore Paper Mill, Hemel Hempstead.

This working paper mill is home to two Fourdrinier paper machines, over a hundred years old. Named after the brothers Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier, the world’s first successful machine for making a continuous reel of paper was operated at the mill in 1803. My wife visited their museum and gift shop and brought me back an A4 sample pad of their various heritage papers that are made there, of various colours, weights and textures, some quite fibrous. It occurred to me that they would make good backgrounds for some pen photography with my lightbox. (See photo of Opus 88 nib and cap further below as an example). I hope to visit there myself in a little while. The shop is open only on weekdays.

Sailor multi-pen.

Another surprise was this lovely Japanese Sailor multi-pen in metal, featuring artwork by Katsushika Hokusai (1760 – 1849), his famous images of Mt Fuji and waves off the coast of Kanagawa, depicted in silver and gold colour against a matt black background. The pen comprises a black and a red ballpoint refill plus a 0.5mm mechanical pencil, each selected by a twist of the barrel. I do love a gadget and operating this one is very enjoyable. The pen ball-point refills are D1. It has a pencil eraser under the finial cone. But what is so touching is the fact that it was an unexpected gift picked out for me at the Tokyo National Museum, by Yoshino, a charming Japanese music student in London, whose parents have been friends of our family for many years. As a Japanese gift, this is as authentic as it gets!

Agenzio Notebook, Paperchase.

I am aware that I have a tendency to buy stationery items for myself as a souvenir of an enjoyable day out. There was my Lamy 2000 fountain pen for example, which will forever remind me of a day trip to Brighton in May 2014. Recently my wife and I spent a happy day in Henley, enjoying a walk along the riverside in the autumn sunshine, a pub lunch at The Angel and then a browse around the shops.

I found a branch of Paperchase, and was drawn to an enticing and colourful display of new notebooks. The slightly odd thing is that I have found their Agenzio notebook paper to be not fountain pen friendly and to have a line width spacing a little narrower than I prefer. Yet despite knowing this I found myself purchasing one, half-eager for a challenge of finding an ink which it would like. Sometimes you can get away with using iron gall or permanent inks. Then, paying for the notebook, the young lady on the till informed me that if you buy two, you get 20% off the total price. So I chose a second one, in a different colour and with plain paper rather than ruled.

It is not all bad. The ruled version gives you 240 pages of very smooth and pleasant Champagne paper, with 33 rows to a page and with a row height of 6.9mm. The book is nicely bound with a stiff card cover, rounded corners, a single ribbon bookmark, an expandable pocket in the back cover, and an elastic closure. The binding is neatly sewn and the book opens flat, without risk of pages popping out. Interestingly, the pages are about 7″ wide by 10″ long, making the book a handy compromise between the usual A5 and A4 sizes:-

The paper is pleasant to write on but (and I knew to expect this) almost every pen and ink combination I have tried so far, results in bleed-through, the line width, whilst roomier than some, is rather restricting for wider nibs. Also the book smells of glue.

Nevertheless I had an enjoyable time testing out the back sheet with my currently inked and then numbering the pages in pencil (yes there were the correct 240 pages). It IS pleasant to write on and with some trial and error you can find a combination of tools to use with it. For example my Sailor Procolor 500 with a fine steel nib and Noodler’s Bulletproof black does not bleed through, and you can even highlight over this if you are careful and do not overdo it.

Update on the Opus 88 fitted with titanium nib.

Readers will recall that I bought a size 6, fine, Jowo-fit nib in titanium with an ebonite feed and housing, at the London Pen Show earlier this month. It is very enjoyable to use. I have had it in my Opus 88 Demonstrator, eye-dropper pen, whose original Broad nib was super smooth, great for laid papers but proved a little bland and lacking feedback. The titanium nib has injected a new lease of life into the pen which I was not using much. It is feedbacky, fine and wet, with just a little bounce but pretty firm, as I like. It never skips or hard-starts. Paired with the large Opus it is a wonderful pen, perhaps a poor-man’s Conid bulkfiller, but a great long-haul writing tool.

The only issue which stood in the way of my total happiness, was that the titanium nib, when seated as deep as it would go into the section, still managed to touch the end of the cap in the final twists of the four-and-a-quarter turns to cap the pen (not for the impatient). I could see the tip of the nib actually writing a little arc of ink on the inside of the clear acrylic cap.

Obviously I did not want to risk damage to the nib but was always a bit worried when capping the pen. I thought that it would be good to drill out the acrylic cap, just by about half a millimetre to get a little more headroom for my new nib. This would be a precision job. Alternatively I thought that it may be possible to grind the inside acrylic of the cap, with a Dremel or similar electric tool (if I had one, which I don’t). But then a breakthrough came unexpectedly late last night when I realised that the cap finial may be removable. There appeared to be screw threads there. I tried to unscrew it. At first it would not budge but when I tried again with some grippy material, it began to move and I was soon able to get it off. Inside the acrylic finial, I could more clearly see and reach the conical recess at the end. It looked to be quite simple to grind this deeper, very minimally, to accommodate a longer nib.

But in the absence of the right tools, I decided to try adding an O ring between the finial and the rest of cap, just to make it sit a little higher. This worked well, although I did not have an O ring of the ideal size but it does the job for now. I removed the pocket clip whilst I was at it, since I do not use it and the O ring alone still gave the necessary added height clearance. So now I can screw the cap on safe in the knowledge that it will not crush my nib.

Throughout the year I have been changing fountain pens each month for my daily journal. In October I used a white, Cross Bailey Light with Noodler’s Bulletproof black. It writes well but I found some flow issues and the pen has needed to have the feed re-charged with the converter, then all is well again. Next month I may switch to the Opus with its titanium and ebonite goodness.

Handbound letter.

This week I received a letter from a good friend in Sweden. To my surprise and delight it was carefully hand-sewn into a card stock cover to make a little booklet. I learned that it was written on Clairfontaine 120gsm paper, with a Sailor Pro Gear Realo with Naginata Togi nib and Rohrer & Klingner Salix iron gall blue black ink. Together with the news that the letter brought of my friend and his family, this was a wonderful and thoughtful piece of mail to receive.

This reminds me that I am a little behind in replying to my correspondence. I will relish an opportunity to sit with a fountain pen of my choice, for an hour or so when the energy and inspiration levels are both favourable.