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Thank you for that. I’m not a maestro, though, just a regular person. :) And that’s the takeaway here: anyone can do this with a little knowledge and by going slowly and carefully.

Yes it is!

This one is a Fine

Don’t get too excited :) I don’t post much, but I’m glad you enjoy what I’ve made.

It’s called an accent. Why do you put negativity out into the world? Stop that.

@@pensinfocus Accents r lovely! We all have ours! Just takes time for listeners to adjust their ears to tune in 100%! Just like nib adjustments! Takes patience!

I didn’t notice any smell.

It’s probably the paper in the Moleskine. I’ve not had luck with it whenever I’ve tried. I’ve had better luck with the Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks, which are widely available in the US at retail.

I mention the Leuchtturm only because it’s so commonly available. If you’re willing to look online, the sky’s the limit in terms of notebooks. I have a video just about paper if you want to watch that to see my favorites.

I have that pen and ink. Moleskine is woeful. Rhodia, Midori easy to find but lots of paper works well

I didn’t mention it in this video. I have a F in the Amber pen shown here. For the Clear 823 I stepped up to a M.

@@pensinfocus ok, thank you. I have the exact pen coming any day now. I hope your F writes well, I hear they can be hit and miss as far as their smoothness and ink supply. Almost every review I've watched of this pen the reviewers deliberated between the M and F nibs, with about 80% of reviewers owning both. Do you have any thoughts regarding the nib sizes of these pens?

​@@lighturpl3 The F is a bit too thin for my tastes these days; the thin line doesn't give enough space for the ink's character to show and that playfulness is a big part of what I enjoy about the hobby today. But if you just want to write with the least amount of fuss, then F is actually a very good choice since it will write longer on a fill and you have the option to write smaller and still be legible if you're using a small notebook. When I'm doing long-form writing in a notebook, this particular 823 with the F nib is my work horse.

@@TheRonHockman hey, appreciate the response. This actually gives me some confidence that the pen will be quite well-suited for me, since my normal writing is quite small and I am looking for that daily workhorse. I hear you on the ink-shading issue with smaller nibs. In some of my favorite colors the ink appears to be several shades brighter when written with my fine nibs. And so, I've been using inks like Platinum Carbon Black in my fine nibs because it is most legible and also provides extra lubricity to some nibs which would otherwise be a little scratchy with a color ink. Less fun, but the writing experience is really good.

Hope you enjoy it!

Yes - it’s possible if you’re willing to potentially make a mess. Not something I personally recommend.

I've never had that problem. But I've been using fountain pens for decades now. I think with practice, most people can master this.

​@@pensinfocus I've never had that problem. But I've been using fountain pens for decades now. I think with practice, most people can master this.

A TWSBI Swipe in the color called “Salmon”

No more than any other pen. You may want to have the nib looked at. If you’re near DC, the DC Fountain Pen Supershow is in a few weeks and there will be people there who could tune it and make it write to your liking.

@@pensinfocusthat’s what I was afraid of hearing especially since I just sent it out via mail and just got it back. Thank you for getting back to me.

@@AreaCode4hoe8 Is your PCU the largest pen you have by a significant margin? It's a big pen, and that may be causing you to hold it an a way that isn't what the tuner expected; different angle, slightly rotated, etc. Also, sometimes the nibmeister just gets it wrong. I had to send a Pelikan back to a very respected place because the way the Architect's Point - which is very sensitive to angle - was set up I had to hold the pen uncomfortably shallow. I contacted them and told them the angle I hold the pen (which was a totally reasonable number) and they fixed the problem free of charge.

@@TheRonHockman yes it’s my biggest pen and it’s not necessarily the resting angle but the “pivot” angle from the nib (not sure if you understand) sometimes just lifting the pen to right the next word throws me off. I’ll just have to get it tuned in person since you made some good points about how one holds it plays a role didn’t even consider the nibmeister Hand size difference would play a role.

Thank you very much!

You look at the gap between tines. If it’s too large, you lower the highest one. If it’s too tight, you raise the lower. If it’s about right, then the choice is yours ( or you might need to tweak both to get alignment while maintaining the gap) When most people do figure eights, they keep the pen steady relative to the plane of the paper, so they’re only abrading a single point. This can create a flat spot on the tipping. Depending on the severity, the flat spot will make the pen more sensitive to position when writing.

@@pensinfocus Thank you, sir. That's very helpful.

Thank you! The pen I’m using is a Turned Wood Oblique Pen Holder from John Neal Books. The nib is a Zebra G Titanium.

Yes

I’ll try and remember… but I’ve never sold any of my pens and if I were to start, I don’t think that pen would be one of the ones I’d sell.

@@pensinfocus I had to try! 😀

For the cartridge example I pulled out the Platinum Century 3776

@@pensinfocus oh, got you! I’m not well versed on expensive fountain pens, hope to be, one day

No worries. I did a bad job making my point. What I was trying to say was that instead of buying a traveling ink well in order to completely fill your vacuum filler, just bring more than one pen or use a pen that takes cartridges. I cut it out of the script, but I originally had an anecdote about how I’ve only once been concerned about running out of one pen’s worth of ink. I was going on a cruise and expected to do quite a bit of writing. I took multiple pens and that was that. I also use a technique from Neil Gaiman where I alternate ink colors between writing sessions so that it’s easy to tell how much I wrote during any given session.

@@pensinfocus Don’t you worry a bit, thank you for the video! Wow, that tip about changing inks it’s very good, thank you :)

I quote the price from reputable dealers mainly as a point of comparison.

@@pensinfocus The grey market has reputable dealers too, but I take your point on comparison.

​@@davyj5216 what is the grey market?

My regret is passing on the Bauhaus blue Lamy 2000.

⁠@@pensinfocus well, I’ve managed to find a Nebulous Plume and it’s on its way, so I truly hope you get the Bauhaus Lamy you want. 🤞🏻🙏🏻

It’s a Girologio 48 Pen Case. I have two: the brown one I purchased from Goulet Pens and the black one I got at the DC pen show a few years ago.

You could always try a sample. Though from a “color” perspective there’s not a lot to inspect: it’s just a super dark black. I don’t treat it differently than I treat any other pigmented ink - I don’t use distilled water, I just use my regular tap water, but YMMV.

Glad it was helpful!

Sure thing.

Can’t go wrong with a gold or silver. I personally like the cool ink (that is to say: blue, green, etc) and warm gold, so if I could only have one powder, it would be a nice medium gold.

Wonderful comment. Another way to tell the two apart besides the color - assuming that like me you can’t read Japanese - is that one type has an oval in the bottom left, the other a square. I prefer the oval: sarasara

@@pensinfocus I hadn't even noticed that before. That's actually a nice touch, because the smooth oval and pointy square in turn also refer to the properties of the paper: the word "sarasara" in Japanese means smooth or slick and the word "shikkari" means firm or steady. I also prefer the sarasara, both for the shorter drying times and the writing feeling. I also find the sizing around the edges of pretty much all Japanese paper much more consistent. Clairefontaine and Rhodia seem to use a type of sizing that degrades as the paper ages, and then you get bleeding and feathering if you write all the way to the edge of the paper.

There are no rules here :) How much sugar goes into a cup of tea? Though I’d suggest starting small with only a single ml to see how well everything goes and eyeball the ratio from there.

It’s a TWSBI Swipe. I’m glad you liked it!

If you go slow and use fine grits then there's very little danger of doing irreparable damage. I've done tuning and polishing for every pen I own that didn't come from a nibmeister: everything from $4 shark pens to $1000+ Montblancs. I've yet to have a nib that wasn't improved by a little TLC out of the box - to my tastes, at least.

Thank you! Comments like these are super motivating. I’m working on a video on cursive italics and how to grind your own, but in order to get my point across I’m learning Blender so I have some animations to go with the video.

@@pensinfocus Blender is so difficult. I switched to Plasticity for 3D modeling. But Plasticity doesn't have animation tool. By the way, what magnification tool do you use? And at about what magnification power? Your instruction is very clear and precise. Appreciate it a lot.

Hah. Yes, Blender has been a challenge. If I don't have a breakthrough here in the next week or so I'm just going to shoot the video without the animations. I show my microscope in my very first video. It's a stereo microscope from Amscope with a magnification between 10x and 40x. I originally used the camera that came with it, but that camera was really not very good and the software was atrocious. At some point I switched to using one of my Nikon mirrorless cameras attached via an adapter.

@@pensinfocus Thanks very much for your quick and helpful reply.

What do you mean? That I’m pushing too hard? I don’t believe that I am. I do pointed-pen calligraphy, so I have quite a bit of awareness and practice with applying different pressure with the pen.

What you do with your pen is none of my business, but I do want to let you know that the people who made those big pens didn't make them for that purpose. @@pensinfocus

I think you misunderstood me. I don't use the PCU for pointed-pen calligraphy. I use a dip pen in an oblique holder, or one of my dedicated calligraphy fountain pens that either hold dip nibs or have had their nibs specifically modified for the extreme flex necessary for pointed pen calligraphy. My point was that, trust me, I'm not pushing too hard.