Day	What	How Much	Pen	Ink
29 June 30 June 1 July* 2 July	First draft of “Memorial Garden” * Also, lounging for Canada Day	6 manuscript pages.	Pelikan 140 Lamy 27 Waterman Executive Jinhao 159	Edelstein Olivine TWSBI Sapphire Blue Herbin Lie de Thé Diamine Syrah

 

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Day	What	How Much	Pen	Ink
22 June 23 June 24 June 25 June	First draft of “Memorial Garden”	4 manuscript pages.	Jinhao 159 Pelikan 140 Parker Arrow Waterman Executive	Diamine Syrah Edelstein Olivine Jentle blue-black Herbin Lie de Thé

It’s not that I’m unenthusiastic, I’m just tired. Whoever turned the volume knob on Regular Job way over back in May hasn’t put it back yet.

Vacation time impends. Ravelled sleeves quiver in anticipation.

 

Day	What	How Much	Pen	Ink
15 June 16 June 17 June 18 June	Bloody nothing on Monday First draft of “Memorial Garden”	10 manuscript pages.	Montblanc 32 Jinhao 159 Waterman Executive Pelikan th.INK	Diamine Bilberry Diamine Syrah Herbin Lie de Thé Herbin Poussière de Lune

I think henceforth we might take it was given that Monday’s are unproductive, thanks to the thing I mentioned at the end of last month. It wasn’t an issue last week because, as it was a new thing, I forgot about it entirely until the next day. For the foreseeable future, though, Mondays are going to be opposed to writing.

Admiration or Envy?

It’s probably both. My idea of a dream-house is a little more late Victorian in shape and rather less… extensive… but it certainly contains the sort of high-efficiency guts the thing in this video exemplifies.

I can’t help but wonder at the name of the house, though… I hope it’s not a Wilkie Collins reference.

Today’s pen: Jinhao 159
Today’s ink: Diamine Syrah

 

Day	What	How Much	Pen	Ink
25 March 26 March 27 March 28 March	First Draft of “Tiger on my Back” finished Second draft of “A Duty of Upkeep is Owed to Your Neighbours” First draft of “Doting Mother Cradles Her Wayward Child”	Another 609 words. 510 typed words, and we’ll call it done as well. 18 manuscript pages.	Sheaffer Targa Parker 65 Jinhao 159 Pelikan 140	Herbin Poussière de Lune Diamine Bilberry Pelikan Violet Herbin Vert Empire

Yes, I’m back to handwritten drafting, and loving it. Thanks to a power outage yesterday as well as the return of a co-worker from vacation, The Regular Job is pressing upon me a little less viciously, I got a ton of work on the new story. Very gratifying, and horribly suggestive of what’s possible if I… um… abandon my sole source of sufficient income.

Y’know, phrased like that, some of the appeal goes out of it.

Bach Where I Belong

Google is doing one of its clever time-eating doodles in honor of Johann Sebastian Bach, composer, descendant of composers and powerful progenitor of composers. Which suits me right down to the ground. When I was a kid, my favourite record was a Time/Life compilation of classical music, but I really only played the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor on it, an organ version which is similar to the following in degree of reverb.

I was an odd kid. I have, however, expanded my musical tastes since then; the educational part of today’s films would have made the pre-teen version of me very cranky, as a misapplication of the divine principles of the great master (I probably wouldn’t have phrased it that way– I was odd, but I wasn’t that precocious). The modern me, though, rather likes this:

Today’s pen: Jinhao 159
Today’s ink: Pelikan Violet

Looking at Things Sideways

To mark the completion of the novel’s* first draft, how about an entry in the old style?  I started the week with a film, so I’ll end it with a ramble.

Last week, I was able to hang a new page up on the site, giving a very brief profile of the Jinhao X750; you may click on it, but the gist is, “It is a fountain pen of modern manufacture and low cost, which is slightly heavy.”  The reason I had this item in my hands is that a client who had sent some other pens to be looked at admitted a curiosity regarding the architect grind; this pen whose loss would not be a great cost to the world could travel with the others if I thought I could make the alteration.  Since I have also been nurturing a small curiosity regarding this grind, I agreed.

“What is this architect grind, then?”

Ah, right.  It is, in essence, an italic grind rotated ninety degrees.  Here’s an artist’s(?) conception of an italic point:

The image had other things in mind than the illustration of the style of point, of course.

An architect grind, then, has the slit running parallel to the tipping’s contact area rather than perpendicular, so the wide strokes are lateral and the narrow ones vertical– the opposite effect of an italic.  “Architect” gets its name from a preference of Frank Lloyd Wright, or so legend has it for this sort of variation.  This possible-legend also allows one to nicely avoid the earlier names for the shape, because some people object to “Hebrew nib,” others to “Arabic nib,” and still others to “Semetic nib.”  Humans can be a mysterious and complex bundle of prejudices and antipathies, eh?

This drawing I did for an entirely different reason shows the difference between a regular (top) tipping and an architect modification.  That different reason was “someone has done something to the point of this Lamy Studio which is why you’re having trouble with it.”

In any event, I have been contemplating the theory of this grind for some time, but never committed to it.  Because it requires a large vertical component, any point that’s going to be amended needs a pretty big dollop of tipping if there’s to be appreciable line variation, and I haven’t had a pen with the requisite blob that I was willing to commit to the transformation.  Yes, I’ve got a couple of Jinhaos of my own, but the curiosity to perform the operation was not quite strong enough to give me a shove.  When someone else offers a pen to me, though… well, that changes things.†  And what of the result?

Success, although it’s not one I’m tempted to follow up any time soon.  Among the theoretical ponderings which were borne out by this experience was a likely down-side; what I might call “scratchiness” although it’s really more of an enhanced harmonic feedback.  You see, with an italic pen moving on a wide downstroke, the sharp sides of the slit follow the movement of the pen.  On the narrow side-stroke, the presentation of the slit to paper is like a round-pointed pen’s– just a miniscule gap in the otherwise smooth face of the tipping.  This is enough to cause a lot of discomfort to the writer if the tines come out of alignment, which a lot of pen makers try to avoid through their flirting with the baby bottom problem.

The rotation of the slit relative to the long axis of the tipping turns the preceding on its head.  On the down-stoke, you still find the sharp edges of the tipping following the movement of the pen, and that’s as smooth as a knife being drawn across leather, but then on the cross-stroke, the length of the slit in contact with the surface of the paper just about the same as the width of the mark being made.  That’s a lot of chances for the relatively sharp edge of the slit to catch on irregularities of the paper.  It’s not flat-out scratching, but you are very aware of the pen passing over the paper.

I honestly don’t see a way around it, either, without losing the line variation.  In the example above, the downstroke is about 0.3mm wide, and the cross-stroke about 0.8mm.  The latter is limited by how much tipping there is to start with, while the former is a function of how close to a couple of tiny little razors I dare to make the tipping.  It was a little thinner during an intermediary step of the grinding, but it also would hardly move side to side.  There’s a similar math which goes on in the choice between italic and stub, adjusting the roundness of the contact surface for more writing comfort at the expense of some of the distinction between vertical and horizontal… but without the extra variable of the contact surface having a trench in it.

I can understand why some of the people who offer this grind state a preference for uncommonly chubby starting nibs– with a 3B you might get a broad enough cross-stroke that a 0.5mm vertical would be thin enough, and that might be round enough to see the slit over the ripples and proud fibres.  Starting with a Jinhao’s not-very-big medium point is not ideal.

The other issue with this grind, as far as I’m concerned, is that it makes a serious demand of consistency of the writer.  With most points, even italics, one has a range of pitch angles to touch the paper with…

The original caption of this image admits that it is a result of… well, basically obsessive thinking about a topic.

…while an architect grind, if you wobble around in your pitch, you lift the most of the tipping off the page and lose the variation.  Unlike an italic, you’d still get a mark, but it would be very thin because only one corner of the flat edge will be touching the paper.  This isn’t a huge problem, as most of us are pretty consistent in this aspect of writing, but if you’re pursuing an architect grind, you should know that it takes on extra importance.  You should also make sure whoever is amending your nib is aware of your preference– if you like to hold the pen well at the back and hit the paper at 30º but the grinder assumes everyone is comfortable at 60º, there’s apt to be unhappiness, hard words, and the expense of a new point for the pen.

Unless it’s a Jinhao.  Those things are cheap.

Today’s pen: Sheaffer Valiant TD
Today’s ink: Jentle blue-black

*A little something to add to the Freudian slip file; the initial typing of “novel’s” saw my fingers emit “marvel’s.”  I am not consciously aware of believing the novel to be any more than reasonably good… at least at this stage of its existence, but we have some evidence that I may be inwardly bloated with pride.

†An aside– because this was something I had never attempted, the amendment was done without charge; the pen was not dear, and we both knew that destruction was possible, so the most this would cost was the replacement of a pen you can have for $4.23 on one side and a quantity of wasted minutes on the other.  Success saw me convert theory into skill, which is payment enough, while the pen-owner had a desire satisfied (and, in an email since, sufficiently so to express contentment).  Consideration, in the legal sense, flows without any cash involved.

Smart Guys Use Fountain Pens

I don’t know about you, but I find myself with a day off today; some sort of religious observation, I think. In anticipation of people looking in here needing more than the usual amount of diversion, I’ve got a longer than usual Friday film. It’s newer, too, so the contest that’s mentioned is something you could actually pursue (if you hurry!).

Anyway, enough introduction; here’s an interview with a man who is in many ways an excellent role model.

“I love me some flexible nibs.” Fine words to live by, gang, although I’m not so opposed to a firm point as he.

Today’s pen: Jinhao 159
Today’s ink: Quink Black

Arbitrary Odometer Reading

I’m actually lounging at home right now.  However, since we do like to have end-of-year wrap-ups, I’ll offer the following:

• I still quite like fountain pens, even if I’m not so overt and vocal about it as once I was;
• I can use inks other than Diamine any time I want, really, it’s totally under control;
• I do not at all like knee-displacing, but apparently am pretty good at recovering from it;
• This has been a pretty good year for my creative aspect, as revealed by the stats at close of play yesterday:

Some will point out that these numbers fall well short of the novel I mean to have done in rather less than a year… and I have also noticed that.  However, nearly 190 of those first draft pages are the novel in question, and the completed word-count was done between spasms of first-draft writing.  It’ll be fine, I’m sure.  Oh, I should add to the year’s roster of accomplishments, in the light of the fact that I keep track of stats like that– I’ve avoided involuntary commitment again for the whole year!  What lunatic could wish for more?

Since it is also Friday, here’s a film which has zero connection whatever to the changing of the calendar.  It does, however, suggest a human urge to leave time-resistant artifacts.

Today’s pen: Jinhao 159
Today’s ink: Quink Black

The End of the Growing Season

I believe I’ve mentioned that there is a fairly rural bent to the rhythms of my home province, which is generally a good way of remembering where food comes from, although there is a price to be paid in pick-up trucks and country music.  We hear much of crop projections (good year for wheat, you market speculators), and how well things have grown.

All of which is very, very tangential in its connection to this:

Happily, my wife is in favour of a fuzzy fella.

Today’s impeccably groomed pen: Jinhao 159
Today’s fur-free ink: Herbin Éclat de Saphir