What’s What 3/1/24
Basic status update, brief comment on current pen news.
Inked Right Now
Pilot Custom 845 with Iroshizuku Tsutsuji
Parker 61 with Callifolio Heure Dorée
Sheaffer Valiant Tuckaway with Sheaffer Purple
Aurora Ipsilon with Anderillium Shoebill Stork
Gone from last week: Pilot Decimo.
Three new combinations today as the month turns over.
Tsutsuji replaces Ku-jaku in the 845, brightening things up in the process.
I initially put Heure Dorée in a Parker VP but didn’t like how it flowed with that pen’s broad italic. The 61 has a smoother, wetter stub that does well with this ink’s shading quality.
Sheaffer Purple has produced the best performance yet from the Tuckaway. It’s a clean, precise writer. Additionally, it has recharged my wish to find a nice Lifetime Balance lever filler to top off my Sheaffer group.
Still enjoying Anderillium grey in the Ipsilon with Custom Nib Studio’s Journaler grind. Been a lot of fun to use for copying down passages from Emerson’s journals.
Working On
Swatches and sunlight.
I found that some inks I haven’t used or checked in a long time had not fared well. DC Supershow Blue lost a lot of volume to evaporation and what was left didn’t look good for use in a pen, so I swatched with a dip pen and poured the rest down the drain. Midnight Emerald didn’t look or smell good in the bottle so that went out too. I had a similar experience with another Franklin-Christoph ink bottle (Honeycomb) in the past year or two. 3 Oysters Cobalt also looked off. It was very clingy on the end of the glass pen I use for swatching, with bubbles that wouldn’t dissipate, and didn’t seem worth keeping.
Thinking About
The Lamy news of late is either unsurprising or a bolt out of the blue.
Dark Lilac’s (non)resurrection laid out another example of how companies are often not aware of themselves in the same way as their customers, and that any one part of the customer base tends to overestimate its place in the larger scheme. File those as unsurprising.
The announcement that Mitsubishi Pencil bought Lamy lock, stock, and barrel seemed to catch everyone out. That both companies have long-standing family ownership gives a better feeling off the bat than if a holding company or VC firm were involved. We’ll see what comes of it.