Fountain Pens for Summer Travel

[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.

I’m on a trip!

My travel stationary: a Travelers Notebook monthly undated calendar with a plastic zippered pocket thing attached for holding stickers, two fountain pens and a writing board that matches the calendar. On the right is a red pencil case that opens flat which is currently holding a vial of ink, a zippered plastic bag with a paper towel and pipette in it, a pair of thin washi tapes, and a mechanical pencil (pikachu themed)

I don’t travel as much as I used to, so I think this is the first time I’ve brought a vacuum filling pen on a plane. I picked up a Nahvalur Original Plus last year when I was collecting a bunch of different fountain pens mostly to see what would stick.

This is a nice pen. I really love that the sparkles in the black parts are rainbow iridescent, which definitely sparks joy when I use it even though it’s not easy to photograph. I got a stub nib in it because I love the way it forces me to write with a bit more care to get something a bit more elegant. The wider nib might not have been the best choice for travel but I rarely get much time to write on my journeys nowadays so I’m not concerned about using a full tank of ink or too much paper, and I’ve shifted to using a pencil with my calendar so this is just for journal entries. So I guess the only downside for me personally is that I can’t use it as easily with cheaper pocket notebooks, I guess? It didn’t seem like enough reason to choose a smaller nib. The stub in this pen feels a bit less forgiving than some of the others in my collection when it comes to writing at different angles and starting on an up-stroke, but I can train myself on that.

A close up of my Nahvalur Original Plus fountain pen in the “Lovina Graphite” colour which has a clear ink resevoir and black cap/ends that have rainbow sparkles in them.

No leaks on the plane, as expected. I’ll see how I feel about it after more trips, but so far I think it’s what I was hoping for as far as a travel option.

That said, it’s not really a favourite pen for regular use because it holds too much ink! I’ve been rotating my pens and inks monthly and this pen will last a lot longer than that, so once I put something in it I have to kind of work around that in my colour planning or handle the longer process of cleaning it. Good thing the vacuum mechanism is fun, but I have come to accept that this pen is probably not the best fit for me. Still, it is convenient for travel and I’m not sad to have bought it. This time it’s filled with Pilot Iroshizuku Yama-budo which is at least an ink I love to use so it won’t be too bad to make a dent in it before I get tired of it and clean out the pen.

Since I normally switch between 2-4 colours in a month mostly to keep me engaged and also to make it easier to see where the days switch in my journal, I decided to bring a second pen. This trip’s choice was a Kaweco Sport with a medium nib, because it’s small, has a very small converter, and it’s very easy to clean, so I could bring it with a sample vial of ink and clean it out before flying home. Easy peasy! I didn’t love this pen at first because it didn’t sit well in my previous pen case, but it’s been good in this new one and the tiny converter has worked out really well for my usage patterns of late where I’m writing in my journal a bit less (on account of writing more fiction, mostly). This time I brought another Pilot Iroshizuku ink to go with it, Ama Iro. I wanted something without sheen or shimmer to make life easy.

The Kaweco Sport has become among my favourite pens to clean because the converter is so easy, and sometimes my kid will even clean it for me if he’s bored and on the hunt for something. It’s not a screw, so it’s very quick to push it in and out. This is the older style of converter and it’s slightly easier to clean than the folding one but they’re both fairly easy you just have to be a bit more careful with the folding version. I’m actually tempted to get a shiny blue Liliput or one of the AL sport pens because I love shiny colourful aluminum, but I’m trying to cut back on spending while I’m unemployed so it likely won’t be soon unless I happen to catch a nice sale.

On the stationary front, I didn’t bring my current A5 journal because I assumed (correctly) that I’d get very little time to write on this trip and might as well use the blank pages at the back of my calendar since I’ll be switching it out in September and didn’t really need all of them for ink testing. (I use the calendar for tracking a few things and decided I wanted to bring it on this trip, though I don’t always.) I don’t *love* the slimmer format for journal writing when I’m at home and don’t have size constraints, but it’s nice for travel and I really love the zipper pouch attachment I bought so I can carry stickers around and actually *see* them.

And the pen case is the same one I’ve been using for a while now to keep my pens contained in my knitting bag. I definitely could have just thrown the pens in a zippered plastic bag in the bottom of the A5 pouch I use for everything, but I know the kaweco sport has gotten scratched up a bit from me carrying it so it’s nice to have it contained better in a case. And I really like this one!

Overall, it’s all worked quite well for tracking and journal writing this trip! Now if only I had a bit more time to write…