Fountain Pen Review: Kaweco Student

I have noticed that most German fountain pen nibs are a bit wider than other nibs.  This is important for me, because I prefer extra fine nibs for my writing at home and at work.  I encounter all sorts of paper at work; sometimes I think that I am writing on paper towel rather than paper, as I watch my ink feather all over the place.  Other times it looks as if I were writing with a brush rather than a pen.  With my handwriting, I need all the help I can get.  Still, I like the German fountain pens, regardless of the nib.

Extra fine......it also helps if you pick the proper ink to go with the pen.  One of my favorites has got to be Noodler's Bad Belted Kingfisher, which I mistakenly referred to above as 'Big Bad Belted Kingfisher.'  Noodler's Ink founder Nathan Tardif has reasons for naming his inks in such a manner;  I recommend you check out his website to see the large selection of fountain pens and inks that he has developed.

So here is the Kaweco Student.  It has a hard acrylic body, with chrome plated brass for the grip.  The cap screws on but doesn't take forever to come off.  In case you forget who made the pen, the folks at Kaweco handily placed it on the clip, on the ring at the base of the cap, and on the tip of the cap.  Even the nib has the 'Kaweco' logo on it.  The nib is stainless steel with an iridium tip.

Here is a close-up of the end of the cap, with the letters KA, WE, CO fitting inside the peace sign symbol.  Pretty cool:

Here is the nib, which I inexpertly cleaned off for this photo shoot.  You can see the peace sign Kaweco logo on the nib here:

The pen takes international cartridges, but you can buy a converter emblazoned with the company name - in case you forget whose pen you are using.  Those black things which show up in the picture are just some spare earplugs for a stethoscope which were lying around on my desk.  

So how does it write?  Great!  I like the feel of this fountain pen.  It feels solid, but not too heavy for my hand.  The nib is smooth, and with the right combination of ink and paper, it produces a nice, thin line.  The nib does flex a bit if you push it, as I demonstrated in the bottom left corner of the first picture above.  This pen is a dependable worker, with no tweaking necessary to get it to write.  I would recommend it to someone looking for a dependable writing instrument.

Purchased from Jet Pens.  Some details for this review were found on this page.

New Stuff in My Blog Header

I added another occupation to my blog description, and a quote from G.K. Chesterton:

"Random Thoughts of a Catholic Husband, Father, Physician, Licensed Commercial Septic System Operator, Driving Instructor, Tractor Mechanic, Gardener, Deliverer of All Foods Carry-out, Amateur Book Reviewer, Neo-Texan, Novice Chicken Rancher, Beekeeper, and Writer of Really, Really Bad Poetry.  I try to live up to Chesterton's observation that 'a thing worth doing is worth doing badly.'"

The 'Bee' Side of Life

When I was a child, there were these discs you could buy called 'records,' which contained music.  They were played on a device called, oddly enough, a record player.  A tiny stylus would run along a groove cut in the vinyl record, and through the miracle of electronics, music would come out of the speakers attached to the record player.  Records looked a lot like the CD's we have nowadays, only they were larger, and were usually black.  Most would spin around the record player at either thirty three or forty five revolutions per minute(RPM).  Full albums were on the 33 RPM records; hit singles would play at 45 RPM.  It is the 45's that serve as the inspiration for the title of this blog.  You would find the hit song on the main or  'A' side of the disc, while some less noteworthy song would be found on the 'B' side.  Now that I am over 50, chances are that I am on past the middle of my life; you might say I am on the 'B' side of my life.  But I continue to grow and change.  This blog entry describes one of those changes.

 

 

 

 

In May, 2014, I picked up two boxes from a farm East of Dallas.  Inside those boxes were approximately 60,000 honeybees, and several frames upon which they had formed honeycomb made of wax.  Most of the comb contained honey, but some were filled with pollen, which is the protein source for honeybees.  More importantly, some of the honeycomb contained tiny eggs, or growing larvae, indicating that there was a queen in the hive, and that there were more bees on the way.  These two boxes were the starter kits for my first two bee hives, and this would be my first experience handling bees.  But this adventure didn't start with me purchasing bees from a beekeeper.  The story begins several years before, when I first got the notion of raising bees for honey on our property. 

But first I had to convince my wife......

....more to come on this and other subjects.