Delike New Moon

Finishing my greens: a look at my green ink stash.

~ rupertarzeian ~ 14 Comments

Like many others in this hobby with a passion for fountain pens, I have suffered from Gear Acquisition Syndrome and now find myself with an embarrassing number of pens, unused notebooks and bottles of ink. From time to time I need to remind myself of what I have “in stock.”

When my late Godfather (“Uncle Brian”) died, his wife Mary offered me his almost full bottle of ink. It was Cross Blue. I gladly took it to finish and have been getting through it in the pen that I use at work, a Cross Bailey Light. It is now on its tenth fill, since last December.

Unlike Uncle Brian, I have two drawers full of bottled inks in various colours and will never get through it unless I decide to paint the walls with it. Of course it is nice to have a good selection of different inks to play with and most inks keep well for years. (One exception is registrar’s blue black iron gall ink, which once opened, is best used within 18 months or so, before it starts to lose its darkening ability).

I may at last be reaching the age where my desire not to fill my house with extra possessions, can sometimes outweigh the attraction of the thing itself. As I try to to use and enjoy what I have, it can help to break this down into smaller goals. Green inks are a category of inks that I have relatively few of. I can count my bottles on the fingers of, well, two hands.

The Green Team, from my ink stash

The only one of these that I have finished, and which was for many years my only green ink, was a bottle of Parker Quink. I still have the classic bottle and its cardboard box. Sadly these bottled inks are sold in plastic blister packs now. My bottle has a faded price label and I can still see that it came from WHSmiths.

I did eventually finish this but had had it for so long that I could not part with the bottle.

A modern equivalent, for a good day-to-day green ink might be Waterman’s Harmonious Green. Nowadays, I like to write the date of purchase inside the box lid. Mine bears the date 26 September 2015 and I bought it in the Burlington Arcade, off Piccadilly in London. It is still a good two thirds full. However I am now using it regularly in my Delike New Moon, fude nib pen. It is a good combination for the marbled green acrylic pen. It is an inexpensive ink for an inexpensive pen.

My Delike New Moon, fude nib pen with its current pairing of Waterman Harmonious Green.

I have some more up-market green inks: Montblanc Irish Green and, probably my favourite, Graf von Faber-Castell Moss Green in its attractive heavy bottle.

I have a 30ml plastic bottle of Diamine’s Deep Dark Green, which I bought at the same time as their Deep Dark Blue and Deep Dark Red. I used the Deed Dark Blue by far the most and finished the bottle, often using it in a TWSBI Vac 700 or Diamond 580.

Some less common greens are my Noodler’s Sequoia: a brim-full glass bottle containing 3oz of this green-black ink. Unfortunately, although I was very taken with the colour, I found it all but unusable for a lefty-overwriter as it is so slow-drying and smudges long after I would expect it to be dry.

Seven bottles. That is still a lot of writing.

At the London Pen Show one year, I picked up a cute little bottle of Conway Stewart green ink, made by Diamine. I do not know the name of the colour but think it was of the same series as Conway Stewart Tavy, which is a nice blue black. However I bought it more for the bottle, nice for travelling, than the ink.

Finally, I have a bottle of Krishna Inks Ghat Green, which is an attractive khaki green-gold. I did not use it much at first as I suspected it of causing unsightly and disturbing nib crud on my Montegrappa Fortuna’s steel nib. But I later gave it another chance, in my Sailor Pro-Gear with a 21k gold nib and have had no problems with it at all.

If you want to get through ink faster, using a pen with broad, stub or music nib will help. Or you could use it for drawing. For some years I could not settle to using a green ink as I would soon have the urge to flush it out and refill with a blue. But I now appreciate a green ink from time to time and it is well worth having at least one green-inked pen! I heard it said that there is, or was, a convention in the Royal Navy, of different colour inks being used by different ranks of officer. I have not been able to verify that. I do remember that green was the colour of correspondence from Rolex, if you got a typed letter from them in the 1960’s. It also makes a good colour for amending and editing typed drafts, rather than red.

A green ink can look attractive, particularly on cream coloured paper and paired with the right pen and can make a refreshing change from the usual blues. I don’t know when I will next finish a bottle or whether I will ever own just one bottle but I am at least trying not to buy more.

Hardstarting. Evaporation or gravity?

~ rupertarzeian ~ 10 Comments

Over the last couple of months I have been much enjoying the Delike New Moon fude nib fountain pen. I am on my second, after giving the first one away.

The fine fude nib on the Delike New Moon.

The main reason why I enjoy this inexpensive pen so much, comes down to writing pleasure from the nib and the way it compliments my handwriting. The fine fude stainless steel nib, (with its upturned tip), writes very smoothly and provides some subtle line width variation in my usual style (whether underwriting or overwriting). Also it has the versatility of providing several different line widths when required, simply by changing the way I hold the pen.

Looking back over the pages of my notebooks for the past few weeks, where I often write a few lines of nonsense just for the pleasure of putting pen to paper from any of the dozen or so currently inked pens in the pen cups, I noticed that the Delike had produced a more interesting line: my handwriting seemed to look more attractive from this pen, than from many others.

My writing looking neater and more legible than usual.

Nothing is ever perfect. Recently I noticed that my Delike had taken to hardstarting: not writing immediately when I picked up the pen after an interval of a few hours. I keep my currently inked pens upright in pen cups and write something with most of them fairly frequently. But I started to notice that if the Delike was left overnight in the pen cup, it might hesitate to start the next day. The nib would be dry. I might get a word or two out of it, but some letters would be incomplete (skipping) and then the nib would run dry completely. I would hold the pen nib down and give it a few shakes. After a few bouts of shaking, ink would flow, dark and wet again, and the nib would feel super-smooth and lubricated. I would be cooking on gas and all would be forgiven and forgotten.

This was not due to ink starvation, which is sometimes caused by surface tension causing ink to remain at the back end of the cartridge or converter, when it should flow to the nib. The Delike’s converter includes a little coil of metal as an ink agitator which slides up and down to combat that.

At first I thought that the problem was one of ink evaporation. This can occur when the cap does not create an airtight seal around the nib. Some pens are brilliant at avoiding this, such as some Platinums with their slip and seal sprung inner caps, or the Esterbrook Estie which also has a sprung inner cap. My Aurora 88 and Aurora Optima both have ebonite feeds which, together with well designed caps, mean hard starts do not happen.

To see if your cap is airtight, a crude test is to place your mouth over the rim and try to blow: if air escapes it is not airtight. If your cheeks puff out and nothing happens, then it is. The Delike cap passed this test.

This led me to think that the hardstarting may not be due to ink evaporation but instead have another cause, that the ink drained away from the nib and/or feed overnight, back into the cartridge or converter. This would simply be due to gravity, whilst the pen is left upright in the pen cup. If that is the cause, then an easy solution is not to stand the pen in a pen cup but leave it horizontal.

This week I have been testing my theory on the Delike. Does this work? It is early days but I am cautiously optimistic that the problem may have been solved. I have not been very (or at all) scientific in my method. I have only one Delike New Moon pen, not a whole bunch of them to put into two groups, to leave some horizontal while another, control group stays upright. I also try only one ink at a time. Temperatures may make a big difference if evaporation is at play. However, I shall continue to monitor how this goes.

As for inks tried, I am on my seventh, having inked my first New Moon with Pilot Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo, Pelikan Edelstein Smoky Quartz, Montlanc Toffee Brown, and Parker Quink Blue Black: my second New Moon has had Waterman Serenity Blue, Robert Oster Aqua and currently Montlanc William Shakespeare Velvet Red. A fill with the gorgeous Velvet Red is a luxury usually only afforded to my Montblanc Classique and so I hope that the pen behaves itself. So far so good.

With Montblanc William Shakespeare Velvet Red, on Semikolon journal paper.

Inky Pursuits, April 2022 round-up.

~ rupertarzeian ~ 8 Comments

Here it has been an extraordinary week for new arrivals. I have just totted up that, of about 13 fountain pens acquired so far this year, six arrived in the last week.

I have been feeling very satisfied with my pen accumulation and had resolved to try not to buy more pens this year, (or inks or note books for that matter). Indeed it is very nice to be able to reduce the number sometimes. Four of the pens that I bought early this year, have been gifted to others, which gives joy to both parties.

But in case this sounds boastful, the pens that I gave away were all modestly-priced (but in my opinion, very presentable) pens, namely two Online Campus Fluffy Cat editions, one Cross Bailey Light (of which I am a big fan) and one Delike New Moon, the latter being a spontaneous give-away for which I immediately bought myself a replacement.

Compare this then, with my good penfriend and penefactor in Australia, who sent me an unexpected package containing three vintage Montblanc pens and a Waterman, knowing that I had been feeling under pressure at work lately.

Some of these pens will be given their own early thoughts reviews in due course, but for now here is a look at the recently incoming!

Speedball 1.1mm calligraphy pen.

This was a spontaneous purchase, which came about whilst browsing in a large art supplies store called Great Art, Kingsland Road, in London’s trendy Shoreditch. Speedball is a new name to me but an American brand established in 1899. I saw some of their dip pens hanging up on the shelves, and then found their Calligraphy pen sets, available in either 1.1, 1.5 or 1.9mm stubs. I have a hard time resisting a cheap calligraphy pen, as this purchase shows. Also it was reduced from £11.99 to £8.99. I chose the 1.1, thinking it would be good for letter writing. It came with two standard cartridges, of black ink. I couldn’t wait to try it out and even popped a cartridge in whilst waiting for the train home.

A Speedball, calligraphy pen with 1.1mm stub.

Ink soon started to flow, and the nib looked to be well set up, and ground to a comfortable writing angle, and with corners that were not too sharp. The pen is rather plasticky, with two gaping holes as ink windows in the barrel. The section is of plastic, and has four “ribs” to aid grip. One annoyance was that with one of the supplied cartridges installed, the section would no longer screw back fully into the barrel but left a tiny gap. It transpired that the cartridge nozzle was just slightly longer than usual. I ditched the cartridge and popped in a cartridge of Graf von Faber-Castell Cobalt Blue, and suddenly all was well and the section screwed in all the way.

Also the name of a cocktail of drugs, I was horrified to learn on Googling.

Delike New Moon, fude nib pen.

This pen has been a revelation, a surprise discovery of the year so far. Having given mine away I ordered a replacement and more photos of this can be seen in my previous post.

Majohn P135, fude nib pen.

Whilst ordering the replacement Delike New Moon on Amazon, I came across this interesting pen. It had a fude nib, (similar to the Delike New Moon’s nib) but was in a blue barrel with a shiny metal end piece, and a hefty metal cap, deeply engraved with some shapes. The design was very suggestive of the Montblanc 146 “the Little Prince” edition which features references to the well loved book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Let’s say the P135 is a “homage” to that.

Majohn P135 fountain pen.

The pen is more weighty than the Delike New Moon. I have not used it very much yet (mainly because the Delike New Moon is so good). It is just a little on the short side unposted, whilst posting the metal cap makes it back heavy. The nib tines were not completely level and there was a slight prominence on one side with a sharp leading inside edge to the tipping which caused it to feel scratchy in cross-strokes. It can probably be improved easily by a little smoothing on the micromesh pads.

Another homage pen.

Montblanc 34.

And now here is a proper Montblanc! This was in a wondrous package, which arrived out of the blue from my friend in Melbourne, who knows of my new-found liking for oblique nibs. This one has a juicy oblique double broad in 14k gold, and is a piston filler, with a screw cap and a blue plastic ink window. It may date from the 1960’s and yet seems to be in great condition. I have inked it with Pelikan 4001 Konigsblau and it promises to be a great letter writer.

Montblanc 34, piston filler with an OBB nib.

Montblanc Carrera.

As well as the Montblanc 34, I was given a Montblanc Carrera fountain pen, with a matching ball point and a new Montblanc refill! This model was unknown to me but I am told they were “cheap” school pens, at the time, with stainless steel nibs but which are now sought after on ebay. It has a brushed steel barrel, a metal cap which has a smart gun-metal finish, a distinctive pocket clip with holes in it (as I imagine an accelerator pedal on a feisty Italian sports car) and the Montblanc white star emblem on the finial. This one is a cartridge converter pen. I have popped in a cartridge of a dark orange in from Paperchase. It writes well for me, in my lefty-overwriter mode although you need to find and keep it at the best angle, or sweet spot for smooth writing.

Montblanc Carrera with steel OB nib.

The matching ball pen is very nice to have and is unusual for Montblanc in having a clicky action rather than twist action. I have never owned a Montblanc ball pen before. The metal grip section is slippy and also tapers towards the tip, whilst the top part of the pen is of black plastic. The blue refill writes super smoothly and needs barely any pressure. Again, it has the Montblanc emblem on the push button, which is very cool.

With matching ball pen.

Waterman Hemisphere, Havana brown.

Finally, I was given this Hemisphere, which my friend tells me is a pre-2010 model and slightly wider than the current Hemisphere models. The mottled brown lacquered barrel and gold coloured trim look very elegant and vintagey. It has a steel nib, a medium which writes very well. Early impressions are very favourable and I can see myself enjoying this one too. I plan to ink it up with some Waterman Absolute Brown.

Waterman Hemisphere.

And so, my pen cups runneth over. I feel extremely fortunate. Many of these pens would be enough for anyone and would last a lifetime, but having them all to pick from, is an abundance of riches.

A good mail day! 🙂