Just saw the new bottles of Mystery Black and Royal Blue. Goodbye shoe bottle, hello LE bottle.
I really like the shoe bottle, it was nice when filling my pen. But more concerning for me is how easy it will be for someone to scam a collector of LE inks now, just find an old box of Miles Davis and drop a bottle of Royal Blue in it…
TIL Apica has a loose leaf offering
Today I learned Apica paper is available in packs of loose leaf. The paper is 86.5 gsm, the same as the paper in the premium Apica notebooks. There was some shadowing, primarily from Colorverse Ham and Chesterfield Cobalt. I think this heavy shadowing is Ink specific and not related to ink volume since the Diamine Kong Guys and Pure Pens Celtic Sea (also made by Diamine I believe) had little shadowing.
It doesn’t come across in the photos but shading inks did well even with a pilot fine nib. Only strong sheening inks showed any sheen, Teranishi Guitar Melancholic Blue, for example, has a good amount of sheen on CAL and TR but almost nothing here.
Overall a good paper, a little stiff but FP friendly.
Want to buy a bottle of of the ink Pennonia released for the last Scriptus in Toronto.
Would love to add a Scribo Oceano to my collection, do not care what nib the pen has.
**apologies for the typo in the title**
For USA based redditors, Office Depot has college and wide rule 3-hole paper made in Vietnam that is very fountain pen friendly. You can even get sheen and shading. Ink dry times are not bad.
Spilled some water on Monarca Cardona, a rich red ink with a heavy gold sheen. Interestingly a good amount of sheen stayed in place leaving gold letters in a pink mist.
I love my Platinum Century 3776 10th Anniversary pen, the slight bounce of the nib and the chalk like feedback on most paper are two things I really enjoy about the pen. When I read that the Travia would have the same nib I jumped to order it.
I read that they added a weight to the body to shift the center of the pen and make it more comfortable to write with. The weight adds almost 10g over the 10th Anniversary pen and 12g over my Platinum 3776 Series B (see image 4) - I don’t have a standard modern Platinum Century 3776 to compare against.
I have not filled the pen yet but I did a dip test. The nib of the Travia has the same “softness” that the 10th Anniversary nib does but less of that feel of “writing with sharp chalk.” The writing experience with the Travia on Rhodia and Kokuyo Business Paper is excellent. The “feel” of the 2 nibs with that slight chalky feedback is kind of like the difference between hearing bass on a mid/full range speaker and on a sub-woofer (the Travia being the sub-woofer).
For Redditor’s who have never written with the 10th Anniversary pen, the “softness” of the nib is similar to what you would feel writing with a Pilot Custom 67 or Pilot Kaede. The Aurora flex nib is slightly softer than the Travia nib. A Pilot FA nib is significantly softer. I can’t think of anything else I have that has the same kind of softness. It is not a flex softness, it is more about not feeling a stiff firmness when you press against paper.
Regarding the weight in the body, there are two weights. The grip section is one weight, the metal band + body threads that connect to the grip is the second; the grip is the heavier of the two. When separated neither feels particularly heavy but together the weight is noticeable until the nib is about to meet the paper and then it disappears. I don’t know if this will be a positive or negative for long writing sessions but for my dip test it made me more aware of the pen as I held it because every time I lifted the nib off the paper the weight at the front of the pen pulled at my grip - not in an uncomfortable way but in a “Hey, I am here” way.
The way the weight is engineered brings to mind my Nagasawa Sailor 1911L Realo FL. It has a brass grip which creates an effect similar to the Travia but my Realo is only ~23g vs the ~33g of the Travia.