TWSBI ECO-T and TWSBI Swipe Fountain Pens

[terriko]

This is crossposted from Curiousity.ca, my personal maker blog. If you want to link to this post, please use the original link since the formatting there is usually better.

After a few months of using my mystery wood pen and the Pilot Varsity that I picked up when I bought ink for the first pen, I decided I was clearly having enough fun that I should add a few more pens to my collection.

Image Description: A pair of pens and washi tapes sitting on my bullet journal from Kela Designs which is green and features a drawing of a corgi embossed in gold. The clear pen on top is the TWSBI ECO-T and the light blue one on the bottom is the TWSBI Swipe.

So pen number 3 and 4 were a pair of TWSBI pens. I chose the ECO-T specifically because of the triangular grip since I suspected I could use some grip help. Then I saw the estimated shipping date and realized I might not get it before my next trip, so I panic-bought the Swipe from another vendor, justifying it because it has an interesting set of filling mechanisms. I probably should have gotten different nibs on them, but I was really excited about trying the 1.1mm stub nib so I got it on both. I also picked up a Pilot Metropolitan with a 1mm stub at the same time so that’s number 5. (How long before I give up on assigning them numbers?)

Back when I was a teenager with a repetitive strain injury, I’d been told that I should write bigger, try a fountain pen, and adopt a “messy” and more flowing cursive to make things easier on my hands. Yes, my “bad” handwriting was medically recommended! The 1.1 stub sounded like it could well be the perfect nib for my teenage self to force the big writing, and although that initial injury has long healed, I still rely on my hands to do my day job and my hobbies and well, everything. Spending months unable to use your hands correctly really showcases how many things you do with them. (I 100% do not recommend this experience.) I’ve been very cautious about hand over-use and very aware of how my hands feel ever since, and it’s been good for my other hobbies and work ergonomics.

The TWSBI pens and the 1.1 stub nibs turned out to be everything I hoped. It did take a bit of practice to remember to write more in a calligraphy style and watch the direction in which I dragged the pen, but I had taken calligraphy classes as a child so I actually had a lot of experience writing with a wider nib. I did have a few incidents where I forgot to let the page dry a little bit since these pens put out so much more ink than my first two pens, but thankfully there wasn’t too much smearing and spotting before I got into the right habits.

I will say that my handwriting continues to be illegible, but it’s definitely worse with the big nibs in some ways. I wrote a birthday card to my mom with the ECO-T and making it legible was harder than usual but also kind of more satisfying because it felt like calligraphy. Given my history, I’m totally fine with my handwriting being what it is so it doesn’t bother me, but it does point to me maybe choosing a different pen when I’m writing cards and letters or being very intentional about my writing.

What does matter to me is that I write a lot more with this pen. I’ve been writing journals for years and years, but switched to a bullet journal style at the start of 2023 (just a bit shy of 2 years ago) so my journal entries suddenly became more variable sized instead of “mostly fitting into a pre-printed daily/weekly journal slot” and there are more todo lists involved. At the start of 2023 I was typically writing a few sentences, but since I got the fountain pens and especially the TWSBI ECO-T, I find myself writing more. It started because I had to write a bit bigger so I had to take up more space, but since I got these pens in July I can see my entries getting longer and longer as it became easier and more fun to write with them. (And they were already longer in May-June with my first two fountain pens!) We’ll see if that keeps up over the next year, or whether it’s mostly a “new obsession” kind of thing. My interest in journalling tends to wax and wane normally so I’m not going to fret if I start writing less in future.

The filling mechanisms made less of a difference in writing, but I’m still constantly amused by watching the ink dribble over the big spring in the TWSBI Swipe as I flip it over, so it serves a purpose as a fidget. Because the ink tends to get “stuck” on the spring, I find myself tapping it every time I use the pen. So that was a surprising little bonus: I’d expected entertainment once per fill, not once per write!

Both of my orders arrived in time for the flight, and I did try bringing the TWSBI ECO-T on the plane but made a noob mistake about tightening and then forgot to put the pen upright and I wound up with a tiny leak on the way out. I was pretty annoyed with myself since I’d done a bunch of reading before the flight and thought I knew what I was doing! The leak was well contained in a plastic bag so no big deal. Unfortunately, my other mistake was that I’d grabbed a Field Notes notebook for the trip but didn’t try the pen with it, and it turns out I kind of hated them together. Some of it was that I’d gotten a bit of water in the pen when I cleaned it up after the flight, so the ink was more watery and bled through, but some of it was just that the very wide nib and the dark ink left a lot of ghosting and having gotten spoiled with the thick bamboo paper in my usual bullet journal I just felt like I’d made bad choices and wound up using gel pens and pencil on the trip after all that fuss of getting a pen in time so I would actually write on vacation. You can see the difference on my pen testing page below:

Image Description: A variety of pen names and ink names writen on a testing page of my notebook. Of particular note is the “organics studio nitrogen” sample which shows a dark blue ink with pink edges, then hte one below which says “organics studio accidentally diluted?” and shows a much lighter blue ink with less sheen. If you read them all you can get a preview of the other pens I’ll be talking about later in this series.

Oh well. I won’t blame the pen for the leaks (it was fine on the way back), but I think I’d want a smaller nib for the smaller notebook, and probably lighter ink in my travel pen so ghosting wouldn’t bug me so much. If I switch notebooks, though, I might want to consider taking the Swipe and cartridges as an option with less risk of leakage on the plane. I expect I’ll iterate over my travel setup quite a few more times before I’m through. (And as I said in a previous entry, I’m always happy to hear about other people’s travel setups if you want to share a link or a personal recommendation!)

Back home after the trip I made friends with the pen again and all was well. Some of that was helped by the Organics Studio Nitrogen ink I have in the ECO-T to this day, which I thought was going to be a boring blue when I put it in the pen because I was just grabbing samples out of a bag without looking them up. But it has this glorious pink shiny thing going on and I love it. I had a moment of panic when my sample vial ran low and I couldn’t find it in stock anywhere, but it came back in stock and I’ve now got my first full ink bottle in my collection. I think I’m going to have to clear out the drawer with my washi tape & stickers and make some space for inks!

Image Description: A much smaller notebook’s pen testing page, showing my wood pen in Diamine Marine (teal ink), the TWSBI Swipe 1.1stub in Noodler’s Southwest Sunset (orange ink), the Pilot Metropolitan 1.0 stub in Diamine Red Lustre (red ink), the TWSBI ECO-T 1.1. in Organics Studio Nitrogen (blue/pink), the Pilot Varsity (dark purple), the Pilot Kakuno in Jaques Herbin Violette Pensee (light purple), and the TWSBI Eco M in Diamine Apple Glory (green)

I feel almost like I should apologize for not having bigger writing samples to show here, but since I mostly use the pens for journaling I don’t really have anything I want to post pictures of on the internet! I’ve been rotating through lesser-used crafts as part of my fiber goals this year, and while writing wasn’t exactly on my original planned list, I declared this month “writing month” and I’ve been trying to do more unfiltered writing about my day and stuff as well as things like these blog posts. Yes, I chose writing for this month in part because it fit well with my new pen obsession. I used to write a lot as a hobby and part of the Geek Feminism blog, but I fell out of the habit for a bunch of reasons: some of it was good choices in self care, some was fear of harassment, a lot was about having a kid and not getting as much time to sit with a keyboard anymore. It’s been fun to skip the keyboard for part of this month’s goals, but it does mean a lot of writing that I don’t want to share. Maybe I should take up what other people do and copy some poems or a book as part of my pen testing to make these more interesting? Or maybe I should let it go and just focus on the written words I want to share instead of making more work for myself. Since you’re seeing this without extensive pen testing, you know what choice I made.

These two pens very quickly became my favourites, which is maybe not a surprise since their initial competition was “a wooden pen with a nib that could be better” and “a disposable fountain pen” but it was still lovely to have them work out so well. If I’m going to write a longer entry, these are the pens I grab.

Having these two pens that I like so much did raise the question of “what do I actually want my pen collection to look like?” — I could probably buy 1-2 more of these and cover my basic needs for journalling, spend money on cool inks, and be pretty satisfied in theory. But I know me, and I’m going to want to try more things to see if there’s anything I like better. I have a large collection of knitting needles of different types and shapes, and I used to sample some at the local yarn store as well for the same reason. Ergonomics can be deeply personal and I know the knitting setup that works best for endurance for me took a while to build, and I expect the same will be true about writing and fountain pens. Plus, just like knitting, I’m expecting to want different pens for a few different things: see my problems with these pens as travel companions, for example. Since there’s a variety of cheaper pens available, I expect that I’ll keep rotating through different nibs and brands for a while. And I’ll enjoy having some options for doodling even if they don’t all wind up as my regular writing pens. So this could easily have been the end of my pen journey, but I think it’s likely going to be a journey I’m on for quite a while.