Fountain Pen Review: Noodler's Ink Ahab Pen

Before I talk about the Noodler's Ink fountain pen known as the Ahab, I want to give a shout out to a couple of companies which I discovered recently:  The Goulet Pen Company, and Noodler's Ink.

The Goulet Pen Company is run by a young couple; I believe they are both recent graduates from Virginia Tech.  Brian and Rachel Goulet are small business owners, and their product and passion are pens.  Anyone can sell pens; these folks have made a name for themselves by not only selling fountain pens, inks, and writing material.  They have also produced a large number of videos on the practical aspects of writing with fountain pens.  I have found them to be informative videos which also showcase their many products.  It is nice to be able to watch a video of the pen you want to buy before you put down money for it.

Here is one of the first videos produced by the Goulet Pen Company.  Here Brian Goulet explains why he is starting this video channel:

This video is two years old; in the interim, their company has expanded, his family has grown, and he has lost a bit of weight.  They are living the life of the small business owner; I wish them continued success.


On to Noodler's Ink.  Noodler's Ink makes a huge line of inks which come in a variety of colors.  In addition, the inks have different characteristics which you can research on the website.  The first ink I ever selected from Noodler's was one which dried fast; I tend to write in haste, and smudging could result if the ink is wet for a while on the page.  The ink I bought was called Bernanke Blue, after Ben Bernanke, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve.  As the label says, one needs a quick-drying ink when one is printing so much money.....

Oh look!  It even has his picture on the side of it:

I like this ink.  It dries quickly, and it is a beautiful blue.  I can use it at work because all medical records are scanned into the electronic chart in a uniform black color.  While I was at it, I bought one of the Noodler's fountain pens.  This one is called the Ahab, and it is very reasonably priced.  It came with this drawing, which shows Captain Ahab from Melville's book Moby Dick holding a harpoon.  It is hard to see with the pen in the way, but this Captain Ahab has a fountain pen rather than a wooden leg for his missing leg.

By the way, years ago I wrote a review for a book which described the incident that apparently inspired Herman Melville's book, Moby Dick.  The book is titled, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, by Nathaniel Philbrick.  My review can be found here.

The Ahab is a large fountain pen.  It is one of the largest in my collection, and has the potential to hold a lot of ink.  There is a simple piston mechanism for drawing up ink shown in the picture below.  Note that the nib is missing; at this moment it is on another pen.  More on that subject later.

     

The nib is present in this picture.  It is what is called a flexible nib, meaning that the width of the line can be modified by adjusting the amount of pressure applied to paper while writing.  It writes a fine line when pressure is minimal; that is my preference.  The nib looks good in stainless steel, and has been working well for more than a year.

Here is another view of the nib.  The color of this pen is blue, but it is translucent so one can see the amount of ink still in the pen.  Some pens are made of clear material so the mechanism can be seen; these types of pens are generally known as 'demonstrator' pens.

Here one can see the variable thickness of lines.  I am pressing more than usual at this point.

When I flipped the paper over I could see where the ink had bled through; this is more a characteristic of the paper than the ink.  That knife included in the picture is a little tractor.  I had to keep that from my youngest children who wanted to play with it.....

One of the first times I used the pen was writing something while lying in bed.  I fell asleep, and woke to find this ink stain on the bed cover.  Oops.  Thankfully it washed out.

So what do I like and dislike about this pen?  First off, I like how it writes.  It makes a fine line for those who prefer that.  It feels good in my hand, but I prefer pens that are a little thinner.  Occasionally the ink won't run, but I can get it to flow by just pressing the nib on paper to make the tines of the nib separate a little bit.  I can watch the ink start to flow, filling the gap between the tines, and then I am good to go.

My biggest reservation about this pen is actually one of the things I like about it.  This is not a 'beginner's' fountain pen.  This pen sometimes requires a bit of tweaking, and Nathan Tardiff, the owner of Noodler's Ink, even encourages people to fiddle around with this pen.  As noted in one of the pictures above, I have taken the nib off this pen and placed it in another pen to see if it works (it does).  Nathan even has videos on his website where he shows how to modify his pens even further.  

On another occasion, I dropped my Ahab pen off my desk.  It landed right on the nib, bending it.  At first I thought how I would replace the nib, but then I decided to just bend it back into shape.  That sufficed, and I have not had any problem with it since.

If you like to take apart pens and experiment with them, the Noodler's Ahab pen is for you.

Here is a writing sample from more than a year ago; note that a good pen does not automatically make for good penmanship:

Here are three reviews for the Ahab.  First is the one from the Goulet Pen Company:

Next is one from this doctoral student from the Netherlands.  He has a lot of good reviews:

And last, the review of the pen by its designer, Nathan Tardiff:

Another Reason to Write with a Fountain Pen

Instead of filling your pen with ink, you could fill it with your favorite beverage. Let me know how it works out.

The 'Two-Dollar Pistol' of Fountain Pens

First let me show you what a two dollar pistol is:




 I first heard about one of these pistols in a short story by Kurt Vonnegut. The main character was declared 'hotter than a two dollar pistol' by an admirer.  During the Second World War, these pistols apparently cost about $2.00 to manufacture, and with the lack of any sort of comfort amenities like grips or insulation I could see how this pistol could get really hot in a hurry.  I can only imagine how painful shooting one of these would be.  Recoil in a smaller caliber/smaller size pistol can be bad; I am sure the recoil from a .45 cal. bullet must be even worse.

There is a fountain pen I have which applies the same principles of economy, expendability and practicality that are found in the Liberator Pistol.  It the Petit1 mini fountain pen, made by Pilot.  It is really cheap and yet writes extremely well, and cost me only $3.80.  It has a fine nib and comes with one ink cartridge.  It is a proprietary ink cartridge, so one must either buy refills or - this is what I did - fill it up with your own ink.  Some folks on YouTube show ways to use the body of the pen as the ink reservoir, but I don't recommend that.

Here is a picture of it:

It has a stainless steel nib, and the ink travels from the reservoir through a small channel filled with a strand of absorbent material that looks like felt.  I know this from watching a video review of this pen; whenever I take things apart they never come back together properly.  I limited myself to adding new ink to the pen.

Here it is next to a quarter to give you some perspective of size.  I don't have big hands; at least not long fingers.  So I can comfortably write without putting the cap on the end of the pen.  By the way, putting the cap on the end of the pen when one writes is known as 'posting' for some reason.  This pen cap actually sits very securely when it is posted, so someone with a larger hand could manage it.

Here it is with the cap off.  I did notice that there was some condensation on the inside of the cap.  Perhaps this is present with every pen and I only can see it because the cap is clear.  It doesn't interfere with the working of the pen.  Of course, whenever I drop a fountain pen, ink ends up in the cap, and usually makes a mess on my fingers, but I don't mind......

Here you can see a sample of my bad handwriting.  The fine nib makes for what I would consider fine writing; this is important when I am writing on medical records.  The ink in it is Noodlers Ink Bernanke Blue.  I bought the pen from JetPens.com.

In summary, this is a nice little pen for writing anywhere.  It is versatile and portable, and writes well for a while even when upside down (occasionally I write things holding the chart up against the wall, and it still works).  The ink flow is smooth with some scratching, but I have never had it burp out a blob of ink on the paper.  The other nice thing is that I would not cry too much if I lost it or stepped on it.

Write Garbage!  Illustration by Jules Feiffer

Fountain Pen Review: Eine Andere Deutsche Füller

"Another German Fountain Pen"

Well here we go again.  I thought I would throw out this brief review of another German fountain pen for two reasons.  One is for completeness; I want to review all of the fountain pens I have just to share my opinion.  The other is to prove a point to myself: that I shall get a lot more hits on the blog by people looking for fountain pens.

This second reason was confirmed by the 'Sitemeter' widget I have on the blog.  After I published my review of the Pelikan fountain pen, the number of visits to the page went through the roof.  For me, 'through the roof' means more than 40 visits per day. 

Perhaps, someone could help me with the title of this blog post.  Füller is feminine, so I would expect the article Eine - with the 'e' on the end - to indicate that.  But then what does one do with each adjective to describe the subject?  In this case, I figured I would tag an 'e' onto each adjective as well.  I would like to improve my German, especially because several of the Noisykids have expressed an interest in learning it.

Today's pen comes to us from Rotring.

 Rotring literally means 'red ring,' which is immediately apparent as you look at the pen below.  For reasons that are beyond my comprehension, Rotring apparently does not ship to the United States anymore.  It is probably President George W. Bush's fault.  Regardless, this has really cranked up the price for these pens on sites such as eBay.  They are worth it, though.  They are solid pens that have a nice heft to them, and they write nicely.  I am using 'they' correctly here, because along with the fountain pen, I have a geek pen and a ballpoint pen made by Rotring, and they all are a pleasure to use.  A geek pen is one of those pens with multiple ink colors, pencil, and a PDA stylus.  Nowadays I just use the ink sections in the geek pen, and I haven't seen the ballpoint pen in a long time.  I suspect it is gone for good.

Back to the fountain pen.  It has the characteristic red ring, and a hexagonal-shaped body.  The cap fits well on the pen, but I have had to adjust it in the past to make it tighter.  One day I dropped it, and the cap refused to stay on for a while afterward.  My pen has a medium nib, and uses a convertor to slurp up ink.  I don't recall if there were any cartridges for this pen, but I don't care any more. 

The grip area is smooth and rounded, and feels really nice when signing legal documents or non-triplicate medical records.  Some of the inks I have used in it tend to make it spotty, and require me to swing the pen around like a maniac to get it to write sometimes.  I have found the Parker 'Quink' ink works best with this pen and allows me to maintain some dignity at the workplace.

Problems with this pen, as I mentioned before, are that the cap can slip off occasionally.  For an anesthesiologist, it doesn't matter if my scrubs get a big blotch of ink on them.  Heck, most scrub pants are used as a notepad in a pinch, so ink stains are no big deal.  If you have to wear a nice shirt or jacket all day, though, you may want to keep this in mind.

I am sure the folks at the Fountain Pen Hospital could fix the cap better than I could.

The other problems is the pen is kind of an orphan here in the States, so spare parts and repairs may be pricey.  On the other hand, one might recoup the price of the pen if you sold it to a collector some day.

While not my favorite pen, the Rotring fountain pen is a great pen with a great feel and smooth writing with my favorite ink.

Fountain Pen Review: Eine Deutsche Füller

Tonight we consider a German fountain pen, or in German, Füller, made by the Pelikan company.  It is a neat little pen I bought at the Fountain Pen Hospital in New York.  It is called a 'Demostrator' because one can see the inner workings of the pen from the outside.

Behold, the gold-plated fine point nib.  That is my favorite type of nib for a fountain pen. 

It is hard to see the innards
of this pen when I use this primitive iPhone camera, so I stood it up so one can see the ink in the chamber.  The tail end of the pen spins to pull ink into the chamber.

One of my favorite parts of this pen is the cap, complete with the 'Pelikan' logo.  I like it because the pelican is a symbol for Christ.  In folklore, the pelican will take flesh from her own breast to feed her young.  In like manner, Christ gave up His life for our salvation.

It is good to have little reminders of how much God loves us - even those on the end of a German pen.

To recap:  The Pro's of this pen are the fine point, easy filling, and good feel in the hand.  The only real Con is the screw on cap which takes a moment to remove before writing and can get misplaced.

Like all fountain pens, it rarely makes a good enough impression for duplicates like doctor order sheets or anesthetic records, so I carry around a ball point pen as well.  It adds to the 'Geek' image I strive to achieve.

Last Minute Christmas Gift Idea

For those of you who are still looking for that special gift which appears thoughtful but is really just an act of desperation, I offer this suggestion: the fountain pen.

I have been fond of fountain pens ever since I had to use them as a child in Switzerland. At that time, we used pens which had some sort of sponge in them. When we ran out of ink, we would have to ask permission from the teacher to refill the pen at the inkwell set into the top of his desk. I can't recall the words we would use to make this request, but in Swiss-German it sounded as if we were clearing our throats noisily. We would then remove the nib and dunk the sponge-like thing into the ink for a few seconds.

I recall one day I was chewing thoughtfully on my pen (I was in third grade at the time), when I had a funny taste in my mouth. It turns out the pen was cracked, and I had been sucking ink into my mouth. My entire mouth was black for a while after that. It tasted disgusting, and I was the source of great amusement for the class that day.

Fountain pens also tend to splatter ink and smudge ink on the paper, and get ink on places one couldn't imagine, but I still like them. In the book The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster, there is a character called 'The Senses Taker' who records the details of peoples' lives before taking their senses. He uses a fountain pen, and he looks like this:


That is what I look like after refilling my fountain pen. Illustration by Jules Feiffer.

During my intern year, at hospital in Detroit, I received a $25 gift card from the administration. It was for an upscale department store in Detroit. Rather than buying something for my wife, I searched for something which was less than $25 for a long time, and finally found the one thing in the whole store which I could get for free: a Cross fountain pen.

That was when I started using fountain pens again. Since then, I have expanded my collection, but I still have a Cross pen. I don't have the original pen I bought in 1991 because Cross Pen Company had(maybe still has) a lifetime guarantee for their pens. They will either fix or replace the pen if you send it to them. I have sent the pen in twice, and each time it was replaced by a new pen. On one occasion, they informed me that the pen I had was no longer in stock, so they sent along a suitable replacement.

Here are a few pictures of the pen I have now:




This pen has a medium nib which looks as if it were plated with gold and takes either cartridges or converter( a device which draws ink in from a bottle ). The cap does not screw on, but fits nicely. On occasion, I have had to encourage the ink to start flowing, especially if the pen has not been used for a day or two. I think that is why God gave me a tongue.

This pen looks great, feels great in my hand, and writes very well. The down side for me is that it sometimes needs to be kick started to get the ink to flow, and that I worry about losing the lid. It is not my favorite fountain pen, but it is my first. I shall write about my favorite some other time.

Here is where I buy pens online.