Fountain pen inks: the good, the bad, and the ugly (2011)

Re:Fountain pen inks: the good, the bad, and the ugly (2011) by bambax on Sunday March 11, 2018 @05:51PM (#16564960)

I love fountain pens! I've been using them all my life and try to have my kids use them too (with some success so far).

But, so called "rocking" (or rocker) blotters are increasingly hard to find, so much so that I decided to design and produce my own. (It's a beautiful sheet of metal with a bent plastic part to hold the blotting paper).

But I wonder if there really is a market for it? Do people still use fountain pens, and of those who do, how many would buy a blotter? Anyone knows where to find that kind of information?

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Re:Fountain pen inks: the good, the bad, and the ugly (2011) by poink on Sunday March 11, 2018 @06:08PM (#16565013)

Fountain pen-related stuff seems to do pretty well on Massdrop.

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Re:Fountain pen inks: the good, the bad, and the ugly (2011) by cyberferret on Sunday March 11, 2018 @06:21PM (#16565052)

Agreed. Massdrop actually re-ignited my fountain pen obsession after years of me trying to pretend I wasn't obsessed about them...

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Re:Fountain pen inks: the good, the bad, and the ugly (2011) by olympus on Monday March 12, 2018 @12:06AM (#16566146)

Massdrop does pretty well in the "stuff I only needed one of but ended up chasing a dragon" categories:

- Everyday carry tools/pocket knives - Mechanical keyboards - Headphones - Pens/pencils

There seems to be a common type of person that wants to have different stuff than the mainstream, and they all start by buying Benchmade knives, Ducky keyboards, Grado headphones, and a Lamy Safari.

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Re:Fountain pen inks: the good, the bad, and the ugly (2011) by hungrynerd on Sunday March 11, 2018 @11:49PM (#16566094)

There's a HUGE market. In fact the Japanese market alone is large enough that Pilot/Sailor/Platinum don't even release all their new pens to the US market.

Try going to the forums - fountainpennetwork.com or fpgeeks.com to get interest in your blotters. I've seen rocking blotters sold by J. Herbin, so they still exist.

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Re:Fountain pen inks: the good, the bad, and the ugly (2011) by bambax on Monday March 12, 2018 @04:21AM (#16566786)

Thanks!

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Re:Fountain pen inks: the good, the bad, and the ugly (2011) by brandmeyer on Sunday March 11, 2018 @06:26PM (#16565066)

This isn't true for all fountain inks, but the ones that I use dry quickly enough that blotting just isn't necessary.

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Re:Fountain pen inks: the good, the bad, and the ugly (2011) by bambax on Sunday March 11, 2018 @06:37PM (#16565114)

It not only depends on the ink but on the paper, and the usage. When writing long documents there's no problem, but when signing contracts (or initialing them) a blotter is very necessary because there's no time for the ink to dry before another paper comes on top of it.

Also, it's a cool object ;-)

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