My First Fountain Pens (Part Two)
Continued from Part One.
While the Vanishing Point was awaiting shipment from the shop, I settled in to watch more episodes of Goulet Q&A and Fountain Pen 101 and then came across this video of the Platinum Cool. I thought it looked like a nice little pen but when Brian demonstrated writing with it....well, I was so stoked to see the line variations that he pulled off. "It has a semi-flexible nib," Brian explained, "but it'll flex out when you want it to." Flex? Semi-flex? Line variation? What's all this? It was time to do some research.
I went on an Internet treasure hunt to learn about flex pens. Vintage flex, modern flex, dip pens, flex nibs, wet noodles. It all seemed a bit complicated. The word 'vintage' freaked me out totally. I imagined my hard earned cash just flying out my wallet. Nope, no vintage for this gadget-loving Apple fangirl and fountain pen noob. But, a modern flex...I could possibly handle. That's because people who flex well, like Leigh Reyes, have such beautiful writing.
I looked into Noodlers Ahab flex pens but was a little wary about have to fiddle with them. I didn't even know the basics so the thought of heat-setting feeds, adjusting the nib and feed up and down in the pen, and taking it apart to clean seemed...daunting. Notwithstanding I wouldn't know what to expect and whether it was writing well or not.
I also looked into the the Pilot Falcon but it cost far too much for something that I only intended to play around with occasionally. I didn't know if I could do this flex thing or not. And that Vanishing Point was still on the way and had already taken a a big chunk out of my wallet. I didn’t envision that I would be doing too much of flex writing…how much flourish could I put into a meeting note?!?
In the end I came back to that video of Brian Goulet 'flexing' the Platinum Cool again. Then watched the video of him cleaning the pen. I thought, "I can do this." With that, a Platinum Cool Crystal Rose EF went into my GPC shopping cart along with a Midori's Travellers Notebook (a topic worthy of it's own post, or two, three) with refills, Pilot Iroshizuku Yu-Yake (after all, I needed a good shading ink to use with the flexy nib from the Platinum Cool), as well as a GPC Notebook Sampler Package Set (well, I *did* need some fountain pen friendly paper to try with all these new pens and inks).
With a couple fountain pens and inks on order along with some notebooks, I was well on the way to pendamonium.