Mmmm Vacumatic!

There seems to be a rather ravenous bunch in the fountain pen world that simply must collect every Parker Vacumatic ever made. Luckily, I haven’t been bitten by this bug yet but I now have my first working Parker Vacumatic and I thought I’d share it with you.

I picked this Vac up at an antique store in Houghton Lake Michigan, it came in a pen box with another Vacumatic, a Wahl Eversharp with a nice flexy #2 nib, and a broken Eversharp pen/pencil set. I picked all those up for $40 so I count my purchase price of this pen as $10. Of the two Vacs, the 2nd gen was in the best shape so I sent it off to Daniel Smith to be restored. More on that later.

The pen in question was made in the 4th quarter of 1939 and it sure doesn’t look like it. I showed it to a couple coworkers today and they both couldn’t believe it was a ‘39. Let’s take a look shall we?

This color is what I believe to be called “Golden Pearl”. There’s some transparency to the barrel although I’m not sure how it stacks up to better examples.  The body was in decent shape but the blind cap had some teeth marks on it but Dan managed to polish those out. It turned out pretty darn nice!

The nib is a two tone with the Parker arrow. I think it’s a fine but it’s not so fine that I don’t like it (I’m a medium kind of guy). If it were up to me, I’d rather it be a fatter line but I’ll be happy with what I have.

Here’s the whole pen in the 3 pieces. The blind cap jewel and the cap jewel don’t match, not sure if that’s how it should be or not. Feel free to hit the comments and tell me.

How does it work? Well, it’s pretty much everything I expected from a vintage Parker. The nib has a nice size to it, slender but with a bit more size to it than the other nibs I’m used to. There’s a slight spring to the nib as well which you don’t get from a lot of modern pens. I haven’t really tried to put any pressure on it since it’s not a flex nib but a little bit of pressure does cause the line to fatten up. Ink flow is on the wet side which I very much enjoy.

Now a note on the restoration. I sent this pen out to Daniel Smith for restoration and I can’t say enough about the service I received. The pen arrived to him on Monday night and I had a message on StyloForum on Tuesday morning saying it was on the way back. Yes, less than 24 hours turnaround. Obviously your mileage will vary but I can’t complain. I had the diaphragm replaced, the nib/feed straightened, and had the body polished. I’m very happy with his work and he has my recommendation from now on.

If you want to contact Dan, you can find him on Twitter as @mr_maxim or at his website dannzeman.com.

Review: Custom ground italic Pilot Varsity

Did you read that title and say “What? Who grinds disposable pens?” Good, that was the point. I myself had never considered messing with the Pilot Varsity but if you think about it, what better pen to practice on? They’re only a couple bucks a piece and if you ruin one, who cares?

But this isn’t about me trying my hand at grinding, this is a plug for the work of Dan Smith. You may know him as @mr_maxim on twitter or by his website, dannzeman.com. He’s been doing pen repair for a while and when he offered me a custom ground Varsity to try, I jumped at it.

Why would I be excited about such a lowly pen? If you’ve never used a Varsity, you’re missing out. It’s the poster child for how great fountain pens can be without costing a fortune. I absolutely love the blue ink color and when I opened the package from Dan and saw that he had ground a blue one, I was elated. I’d keep blathering on about it, but I already sat down and did a mini-review with my chicken scratch. Click the below picture to see a much larger version.

As you can see, the line variation is just about perfect. In fact, I think it has inspired me to get something a bit more expensive ground in the same fashion. As noted in the written part, I’m sending him a Vacumatic to repair after the holidays so I’ll have more info on Dan’s work very soon.

As a disclaimer, I never checked with Dan to see if he sold these. I know he gifts them to some of his customers, but don’t be offended if he won’t sell you one. I’m just giving him props for a job well done, I don’t want to put words in his mouth.

QOTW: What’s your pen collection focus?

For months I updated this blog at least 5 days a week as if I had some unending fountain of words from which to draw on. After taking a month off for NaNoWriMo, I find it almost impossible to think of things to write. And so, I’ve moved the Question of the Week to Monday for now. I figure that’ll give me something easy to come up with on the worst day of the week.

Those of us who are pen fanatics tend to accumulate pens. You might not consider yourself a collector one day and the next, you realize that you’re surrounded with <insert pen type here>. For me, I’ve mainly focused on Sheaffers with a minor interest in Parkers. I’m no collector and I’ve been quick to sell off pens when I feel like spending money on something else, but that’s not the point of this.

Take a look at your pen collections, what do you see? Maybe you collect fountain pens of random types, maybe you’re a gel pen fanatic, maybe you are one of the crazy souls who simply must have every color that the Sheaffer No Nonsense came in?

Now that you’ve figured out what you are, direct yourself to the comment box and share with us. We’ll all understand your crazy obsession, trust me, we’re all family here.

Review: Quo Vadis Habana

In my handful of years deep in the midst of the crazy pen people (that’s what I call you all, don’t worry, I’m included in that grouping), I’ve went through a bunch of phases.

The first phase was the “any paper is fine” attitude, we’ve all probably been there once we learned that it simply wasn’t true. That quickly let go to the second phase which was when I discovered Black n’ Red notebooks and decided I had no reason to look further. To be honest, I probably could have kept using their notebooks and been perfectly happy, the Black n’ Red line is great. But alas, that’s not what happened, I started trying to branch out. And that brings us to the third phase where I just went nuts buying notebook after notebook trying to find something else I liked.

Of course we all know I’m a Rhodia fan (who isnt?) and I’m also a fan of Piccadilly and I bet if I ever opened this Ciak journal I bought months ago, I’d probably love that too. Hmmm wasn’t I supposed to be reviewing something? Ah! I remember where I was going, I wanted to point out that I learned something else about myself; I hate small notebooks for journals. At the moment, I’m trying to use a small Rhodia Webbie as my journal and I find I rarely use it because the small size is uncomfortable to me. The notebook itself is great, I just don’t care to use the standard 5×5.5″ notebook for a journal. Lucky for me, the Webbie comes in a larger size so I’ve just added that to my list of things to purchase in the future. It’s a long list.

You’re still wondering what that has to do with the Quo Vadis Habana, right? Well let’s just cut to the chase, this notebook embodies the notebook I think I can see myself using as a journal. It’s the right size, it has the right paper… I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let’s start off with the form factor. The Habana I’m reviewing is the large version and it measures 6″x9″ according to the packaging (Quo Vadis website says 6 1/4 x 9 1/4). That, in my mind, is the perfect size for sitting down at a desk and cranking out page after page of … whatever you put in your personal journal.

The cover is a bit hard to explain, it’s soft to the touch yet slightly rigid. The top layer is so soft, in fact, that the elastic enclosure (which isn’t strung super tight) still leaves marks in the edges of the cover. While it feels soft, I don’t think you’ll be bending it into a U shape, I sure didn’t try it for this review. There’s something to be said about the appearance, it’s one of understated elegance and I’d have to say that something about it makes it one of the sexiest notebooks I’ve reviewed thus far.  It also opens to almost flat which is something I really look for in a bound notebook.

The Habana seems to take cues from the ever popular genre of the black notebook. From the elastic enclosure, to the marker ribbon, to the expanding rear pocket, it offers all of the most popular features of the genre. Is that wrong? No way! It’s what the people want and have come to expect and there’s a reason for that.

Let’s face it, the sexiest notebook in the world doesn’t mean squat if the paper isn’t quality stuff. If you’ve read my reviews on the other Exaclair products, you already know where I’m going with this. Inside the beautiful cover is 80 sheets of crisp white 90 gr Clairefontaine paper. Do I even need to say anything else? Ask 25 notebook fanatics who has the best paper and I bet Clairefontaine falls into the top of your answers if not the very top. I’m not even going to bore you with a writing sample as I plan on using this for my personal journal and well, I have problems writing on beautiful objects. The first words to be entered into these pages shall be personal, it’s just that nice of a piece.

What I have here in my hand is a very sharp notebook that’s just waiting to be filled with your deepest darkest secrets. At the $20 price tag, I assume you won’t be buying this for meeting notes at work but for filling with words that might mean something to you or someone else one day, it’s the perfect choice.

Thanks to Karen at Exaclair for providing me this notebook to review. I feel truly honored to have had a chance to test out their products and as you can probably tell I haven’t found one I don’t like yet.

I’m supposed to edit this?

Now that NaNoWriMo is behind me, I have my first novel in my hands and I’m now faced with the inevitable next step; the editing process. To me, this is almost more of a daunting task than the writing was, I don’t even know where to start. I’ve read some suggestions but it seems like every writer has a different idea of how to edit, when to edit, and the sequence of the editing steps.

I started by printing the novel so I could hold it in my hands. This seemed like a better option than trying to read it on the computer screen and making edits on the fly. If I make notes in the margins, they’re not changed yet, they’re just suggestions. Then I can come back after my initial read through and see if I really think my notes apply.

One of the biggest problems I see ahead is dealing with the ending. I sort of chopped the end off in a cliche sort of way and I really want to continue with the story and end it properly. Unfortunately that probably means I’ll be adding a lot more to the story. I also know there are numerous occasions where I started a scene with more than one character and then forgot about everyone but the main character. Those areas are going to demand a major rework to fix my oversight.

I’ve read that the best way to edit is to focus on fixing the story first, then worrying about grammar and sentence structure and things of that nature. I plan on trying to tackle my story in this same manner. I certainly hope this is the most effective way of editing!

Anyone have any other good editing tips they’d like to share?

NaNoWriMo 2009 Afterthoughts

Whew! NaNoWriMo is over and I’m sort of … sad? It’s funny how your mind can change from fear and uncertainty at the beginning of the month, to the complete opposite at the end. Well, I suppose that’s not true if you don’t win but lucky for me, I did! I didn’t think I’d make it, but I came out alive with a word count of 50,203.

What did I learn from the month long experience? A lot! It’s not easy sitting down and writing anything that long and I’m sure the first time you do it is always the worst. Here’s a few things I learned along my journey.

• If it’s your first time (or maybe second, third, whatever) you probably want to make this as easy on yourself as you can. I started with a story idea but it felt like I was dragging it out of my head through a swamp. Six days into the process, I dropped that story and changed subjects to something I’m very comfortable with. I think the worst thing you could do on your first try is venture down a road that you’re not familiar with. Simply changing subjects helped me write a lot faster and the story sort of just came out.
• Ditch the editor. It’s SO hard to try to not think about what you’re writing but you must! Early on it’s a bit of a chore but you must put your head down and run past that mean old editor! Once you get used to pouring words onto a page without the editor’s interference, you become a lot more relaxed.
• One thing I didn’t do was plan anything out. I had a piece of paper with some character names scribbled on it and that’s about it. If I had it to do over again, I might like to plan out the scene of the novel a bit more, re-think the characters and the number of them (I have WAY too many nameless characters in my novel), and maybe think about how I want it to end. I like to leave the middle open for the characters to weave their own story, but my ending sucks!
• Don’t lose track of your characters! I have at least 4 scenes where I started out with 2 characters and ended up just focusing on one. I would be three thousand words in before I realized I had lost the other guy in my memory. Oops! Again, probably something I could have avoided with a little planning.
• If you have a day where you really get in the groove of writing, wring as much of that out as you can! There are enough days where you struggle that it’s worth it. I did find that those days where I struggled, sometimes just hammering through a few hundred words would get things flowing nicely.

I guess that’s the basics. In the end, I have a novel that I wrote myself and even though I know it’s poorly written and needs major work to be good enough to share with anyone, I’m still extremely proud of myself and looking forward to editing it. I even started a new novel, imagine that!

To all the winners, congrats. To all those who tried, there’s always next year. Keep hammering at it!

Review: Clairefontaine Basic Notebook

Nothing makes a review harder than trying to write about something that’s high quality. I’m staring at this Clairefontaine Basic notebook on my desk and I’m tempted to make this review as complex as “It has Clairefontaine paper. You know what to expect.” and call that good. But alas, I think I’m supposed to say a few more words than that.

The picture you’re looking at above this sentence is the Clairefontaine Basic notebook. I think Basic is a good name for it although at first glance you don’t see “basic”. When I think “basic” I think about the Mead single subject notebooks I used in school. I suppose putting this next to the Quo Vadis Habana or the Rhodia WebNotebook might force you to focus on the “basic” Basic but we’re not going to do that here. Instead, I’ll just run over the basics (yes, pun intended) of this notebook.

The Basic has nice textured hardboard covers with a raised Clairefontaine logo in the bottom right hand corner. It might not be super fancy but I think it looks great. It’s low key yet a lot better looking than a lot of other notebooks. Besides, I don’t think we buy notebooks for their looks… do we? Oh maybe we do and if that’s the case, this is a handsome notebook so you should be delighted. It’s also nice and flexible as I shall now demonstrate in the ever classic “bent notebook” picture.

Perhaps the “basic” name comes from the binding, unlike everything else I’ve held in my hands that came from Exaclair, this notebook has a cloth binding. I don’t know that I own any other notebooks with this kind of binding, in fact I know I don’t. The beauty of this type of binding is the flexibility that allows the notebook to open flat on your desk. I think we all know the pain of dealing with a bound notebook that doesn’t lie flat. Basic yet functional, no complaints there.

And now we’re at the part of the review where one would typically scribble some random gibberish on a page and take a picture of it. Well guess what, I’m throwing that part out the window. This is a notebook made by Clairefontaine so I think you know what paper it uses. All you have to do is open the cover and caress a sheet to know it’s going to be a delight. I’m so confident it’s going to be an absolute dream to write in, I’m not even going to try. It’s Clairefontaine! Why bother? I’d bet we see the Lions in the Super Bowl before you find yourself disappointed with the 90g Clairefontaine paper inside these covers. It has the same amazingly bright white color you are familiar with in the Rhodia pads. The line spacing’s the same as well and the lines are just a bit brighter blue.

Let me break it down to you. If you’re picky about your notebooks and you want something light years ahead of the stuff you’ll find at your local drugstore, go get yourself a Clairefontaine Basic. It’s 192 pages of pure Clairefontaine bliss and if you’ve touched anything with Clairefontaine, you know I’m not exaggerating.

And now I must get back to my NaNoWriMo writing! And you need to go shopping for a Clairefontaine Basic.

A closer look at the Lamy Safari

Oh the beloved Lamy Safari, what can be said that hasn’t already been said a hundred times? This pen is probably one of the most reviewed pens on the ‘net right now. By now, you’re probably bored to death with Lamy Safari reviews! When I decided to do this, I asked myself what I could talk about that might be slightly different from all the other reviews out there.  That’s when I came up with the idea of focusing on the various design aspects that set this pen apart from the others.

Obviously the biggest selling point is the price. Yes, that’s a lame joke, ignore it and move on. Go read just about any “what pen” thread and you’ll find numerous people suggesting the Safari, regardless of the question. Why? Well it’s a flat out good deal. This pen delivers more in the sum of $30 or less than a lot of much more expensive pens have ever managed. Granted, you need to buy the converter separately but it’s an amazingly versatile pen for the few bucks the converter might cost you.

Let’s look at some of what makes this pen great shall we? To start, we’ll head to the top of the pen and check out the clip.

Look at that, it’s a monster! In the world of the utilitarian, this pen has a clip to put all others to shame. Need a firm grip on your shirt pocket? You got it! Need to slip it on your notebook cover? No problem! It’s a simple wire loop that just plain works. Sure it’s funky looking but this isn’t a normal pen so who cares?

Next up, let’s look at the body. I’m not sure how exciting you might find this feature, but it has a built in window that gives you a glimpse into the ink reservoir.

Yes, I’m aware this isn’t an amazing feature but hey, take a look at the pen with the body unscrewed. That ink window is an exact science. There are 2 indentions in the section that match up perfectly with the windows in the body of the pen. Unscrew the body a tiny bit from the section and half the window is obscured. When the body is screwed tightly onto the section, the window is all you see. That’s engineering!

While we’re talking about the exterior aspects, check this nib feature out.

Yes, the nib just slides off the feed. Why is this great? You want a Fine point today and a Medium tomorrow but don’t want to pay for 2 pens? Buy 2 nibs! The nibs slide off and back on with an ease that I’ve yet to find in any other pen. What’s that? Your Esterbrook has interchangeable nibs? Bah! This is even easier! No unscrewing required, you just slide the nib off and slide a new one on. Want to sign that birthday card with an italic nib? Slide your current nib off and slide the italic nib on, sign the card, and swap them back. This is pure genius.

You want more? Take a look at any inexpensive pen you own that has a converter. Chances are it just slides on like a cartridge would. This means it can be slid off without much thought. Sure, that’s not a big deal but what if you were a German, would you really engineer your pen that way?

Yes, you’re seeing correctly, the converter has little bumps that lock into the section. Seems like such a little thing but it really makes the converter a part of the pen instead of just something you stuffed into the front section. I know what you’re thinking, the German’s can really engineer a pen! This thing is starting to seem more like a BMW than Kia right?

While we’re on the subject, check this converter out.

Yeah it looks like your normal piston style converter but it’s SOLID. I’m not kidding, don’t mistake this with a cheap converter, this thing is precise. Sure, that’s not a a huge deal but trust me, it matters.

And finally, I want to take a look at the section. Most pens have a round section and we’re all quite familiar with that. Lamy threw the normal design out the window and made the Safari section a little differently. Or if you want me to be candid, they made the darn thing comfortable.

See that? Those 2 flat spots are perfectly placed for a proper pen hold. I love writing with this pen!

And there you have it, a glimpse into something I hope most reviews have ignored. If you want to hear people gush about how great they write, there’s a ton of reviews for that and just between you and me, those other reviews are absolutely correct, this thing is a joy to write with. But I won’t get into that, because you came here for a funky review and I hope I delivered.

I’ll toss you one last tip. If you head to Lamy USA’s website and click on the Care, Repairs, & Parts link, you can find parts for your Lamy. Say you wanted a Lamy Safari in Charcoal and you can’t find it anywhere (a quick Google search proves this to be false but play along anyway). You can actually build the pen from parts right on their website. I don’t know if they ever release any of the limited edition colors but right now you could get the parts for 5 different colors. If you happen to find one of those colors sold out and you simply MUST have it now, for a few bucks more than a complete pen, you can build your own. Hey, you could even build yourself a crazy multicolor pen!

Now, if you don’t have a Lamy Safari, go get one! And if you already have one, get another! You won’t regret it.

Writing is hard!

Wow, NaNoWriMo is beating me up! If you haven’t tried writing a novel, it’s no walk in the park! I think the first time is probably always the hardest and thus, I was sort of expecting this to happen.

Last Thursday I abandoned a week’s worth of work (I’m not sure if it qualifies as a real week’s worth) and started a new story. Oddly enough, the words began to pour out of me and I finished 3,300 words in one sitting. The next night I sat down and cranked out 2500 words. I was feeling great!

Then came Saturday in which I expected to make up a big chunk of my deficit. Unfortunately that didn’t happen. Sunday I tried to write and it just wasn’t coming out.

That has me sitting here tonight on Monday thinking about how I’m 9,000 words behind. Oh well, I can’t complain, I’m actually getting somewhere.

By the way, I’m aware I’ve been ignoring my blog and I apologize. I have 3 nice products from the Exaclair line that I will be reviewing as soon as I can. It’ll be worth it.

QOTW: Are you a pencil user?

I don’t know about you, but 99.5% of my time spent in front of a piece of paper, I’m holding a pen. Very rarely do I bother with pencils unless I’m attempting to sketch something which is quite rare.

It seems like there’s a lot of people quite dedicated to the use of pen just as I am but surely there are those wild and crazy folk who would rather hoist graphite than pen?

Feel free to admit your love for pencils or go ahead and tell us that you never use them.