Last year, Jinhao launched its new pen, the Dadao 9019, and it quickly gained traction in the pen community. Many have compared it to the X159 from the same brand. It’s about the same size and both have #8 nibs, but there are also some notable differences. While the X159 is strongly inspired by the Montblanc Meisterstück 149, the Dadao 9019 rather resembles some of the high-end Namiki pens. It annoys me a bit that Jinhao has chosen a design that is so…
Happy New Year to all our readers! I usually take some time during the holidays, and the first couple of weeks of the new year, to evaluate the year that has passed, and set some goals for the coming year. A lot of those goals are correlated to this blog, and my pen hobby, so I thought I would write a little about it in this first post of the year. Last summer I made a plan for all the posts…
Sigh… This was the year I failed National Novel Writing Month. I’ve been participating for twelve years, and won every year, right up until this year. Despite that, this year’s NaNoWriMo was actually a pretty good experience. At least much better than the previous two years, where it felt like nothing was working, even though I was able to finish. This year’s NaNoWriMo started quite well. I had an idea that I thought had potential and that I enjoyed writing. And after a whole month…
In the spring of 2018, I inherited a pair of Pan pens, and started looking for information about this Norwegian fountain pen brand. At first it was difficult to find any reliable information, but as I managed to uncover little hints here and there, those hints could be used to dig deeper. I have written about Pan and Eberhard Bredesen Oppi several times in the past, and the most recent example up until now is an article in Norwegian from May 2020. Since…
Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to write a full blog post this week. With NaNoWriMo and a number of other commitments, it has been difficult to make time. I am also working on a big article that I will publish on the last weekend in November, i.e. in two weeks. It’s a post with updated information about Den Norske Fyllepennfabrikk (The Norwegian Fountain Pen Factory), which made the Pan pens, and it’s likely to be the longest article I’ve written here on…
Earlier this autumn, I wrote a blog post where I tried to get to the bottom of why I always prefer to write with modern fountain pens, and not vintage pens. As soon as I had published the post, an idea began to form: maybe part of the problem was that I hadn’t given the vintage pens a good enough chance? Were the points I listed in the August post actually based on empirical evidence, or just an outlet for my own prejudice against…
This article was originally published in Norwegian at Pennen er mektigere on May 2, 2021. When you search in old Norwegian newspaper archives for the name “Milton Reynolds”, you find a lot of articles that mention two specific events in particular. One happened in 1947, when he flew around the world with his plane “The Reynolds Bombshell” in 78 hours and 55 minutes, thereby setting a new record for circumnavigating the world. The other case that was widely reported in Norwegian newspapers…
A couple of weekends ago I decided to fix up a couple of Parker pens I’ve had lying around for a long time: a Vacumatic and a 51. These are two legendary pen models, which, together with the Duofold, takes much of the credit for Parker in its time becomming the world’s largest and most-selling fountain pen brand. Vacumatic and 51 have very different filling mechanisms, and different considerations that must be taken when repairing them. They are also quite different from most other…
For the past two years, I’ve had sub-optimal NaNoWriMo experiences. In both 2021 and 2022, I had a lot of other things to do before, and partly during NaNoWriMo, I wasn’t motivated, I didn’t have time to prepare well enough, and I didn’t have any good ideas for what to write about. This year, I am determined not to have a third NaNoWriMo in a row that turns out like this. For those who don’t know what NaNoWriMo is: it stands for…
Us fountain pen enthusiasts have a small tendency to look down on ballpoint pens, but personally, I’ve found that both pen types have their uses. The fountain pen isn’t always the best tool, and in some situations the ballpoint pen is just better. In any case, there’s no reason to pit the two against each other. On the contrary, they actually complement each other quite well. When the ballpoint pen came on the market after the war, it was quickly able to replace the…