What is your favorite pen brand?

[apytele@sh.itjust.works]

Papermate inkjoy. The other nurses keep trying to steal my last one that I stole from my last workplace just before it started going downhill and stopped buying the nice pens.

[cysioland@lemmygrad.ml]

Waterman

[nusm@yall.theatl.social]

I’m dead serious about my pens. Some want expensive tennis shoes, some will get by with cheap ones. Some want the nicest, fanciest, sportiest cars, some just want basic transportation. Some want a mansion, others just need a roof over their heads. It’s all in what you put emphasis on. For me it’s pens, something I use all day every day during work. My wife will use whatever plastic pen with a broken clip that she finds on the floor, but I want something a little nicer that feels good in the hand.

And while you think $100 is a lot, it’s really not in the machined pen community. Fellhoelter pens can go for hundreds or even a thousand. The best thing that happened to me was for my wife to go with me to a pen show (yes, they have pen shows). Fountain pen prices can be insane, and she saw some for $20,000 and $25,000. It made my $100-$200 machined pens not look so bad! She’s still not happy about me spending money on pens, but after the pen show she knows that it could be SO much worse!

There’s a good sized market for metal machined pens that take standard refills like Parker-style or Pilot G2. If you use one once, you’ll either get it or think it’s stupid. If you get it, the rabbit hole can be deeeeeeeep.

[papertowels@lemmy.one]

If you want to ball on a budget, you can get a steel f701 pen from zebra for $10, slap a fisher space pen refill in it, and call it a day. It's what I use.

[papertowels@lemmy.one]

You can chuck a fisher space pen refill in the f701 if you want to spice it up

[papertowels@lemmy.one]

I commented this elsewhere, but I figured it deserves it's own top level comment.

You can take an affordable stainless steel zebra f701 and swap out the ink with a fisher space pen refill for a solid, utilitarian pen for less than 15 bucks.

[papertowels@lemmy.one]

I'm not familiar with the pilot refill, what about that swap do you enjoy?

[crabandbroom@lemmy.ml]

I have a Plaisir Platinum fountain pen that's awesome. It was pretty cheap as far as pens go but it writes really nicely and has a good solid feel to it.

For day-to-day disposable pens I like the Zebra Sarasa ones, or the Pilot P500 for drawing. I bought a big box of the P500s to keep in reserve in case they ever stop making them lol.

[hallettj@leminal.space]

Pilot Hi-Tec-C is a gel pen with refills that happen to fit in the Space Pen. It puts down a crisp, fine line.

The problem with the stock Space Pen is that it's a messy ballpoint. I might be getting worse-than-typical results due to being left handed, but in general I find ballpoints don't write crisp lines, and the ink smudges on my hand much more than gel pens do. But with the gel swap I do lose the feature of being able to write upside-down.

[papertowels@lemmy.one]

I'll have to try it out! I currently use fisher space pens, and while the pen is reliable, I definitely notice that it's not guaranteed to write evenly.

Was there any hacks you had to do to fit the refill?

[ohvenus_baby@lemmy.ml]

This kind of intrigues me. I may give it a shot. What is a good decent pen for say 20 dollars. Smooth, thin line. Say. 5 or so.

[ohvenus_baby@lemmy.ml]

What price range would this fall under in comparison to some of the moderate levels of pen craftmanship?

[papertowels@lemmy.one]

I have no clue, I'm more utilitarian than fancy. I've tried fountain pens but found them to be too high maintenance.

The f701 is 8 bucks, a space pen refill is another 9 dollars or so.

So for 20 bucks you have a stainless steel pen that will last forever, while writing in damn near all conditions. Looks snazzy enough to trigger the "I better not leave this" for me, too.

[hallettj@leminal.space]

Yes; first pull the black plastic piece out of the end of the refill. I read that there needs to be a little airflow into the refill for ink to flow, and when the back of the refill is jammed into the pen that can cut off airflow so you might cut a little notch in the end of the refill where the black plastic piece was. I also sometimes trim about 4mm off the end of the refill, or put a tiny bit of wadded paper in the pen for spacing. But I do this a little differently every time I put a new refill in.

[papertowels@lemmy.one]

Thank you kindly!

[daytonah@lemmy.ml]

I have a bright orange with carbon fibre trim kaweco sport. The opus88 I have is demonstrator so transparent, so I wanted something different. And maybe because it was the last one at the pen show.... Lol.

[meowzedong@lemmygrad.ml]

I've seen those orange ones, but was never much of a fan. The demonstrators are beautiful though. There's nothing quite like seeing a beautiful ink sloshing around inside.