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I really do need to write more often, you can see how sloppy I got by the end, my hand was already thoroughly worn out.

Here's a preview of my latest typewriter which is special enough to jump ahead in the the queue to be featured. (look for that post tomorrow or the day after) The green ribbon spool just happened to come along with it.

Sent from my Союз авторучка

Forced hand

The only problem with the paper is that the perforations are awful, as you can see. I can usually get a clean tear, but there are the inevitable messy ones.

I've started handwriting so much more since I've begun using fountain pens. I think that their decline in popularity is a shame, because writing with them is genuinely enjoyable. But pen choice is not much of an issue at this time—the bigger choice is to handwrite at all.

Sent from my Союз авторучка with some purplish/purply/purple-like J Herbin ink.

Another look at the Everest Jolson

Basically, the ideal situation would be increase the height of part A, but that is also the hardest thing to get to. The platen can't be easily removed to access these parts (the right knob unscrews, but the platen won't come out without disassembling the sides of the carriage) and adding height would be a pretty tedious thing to do. The other main thing would be to file down part D that ratchets the toothed wheel, but that wouldn't be following the original design. I don't want to make any mistakes since this is rare, but I also want to be able to type at full speed with it.

I have tried adjusting a couple of the little bits in the ratchet mechanism that can be adjusted, and they only help to make the linespacing work at 1 line sometimes, rather than a proper complete solution, so the only choice is A through D.

The photographs are actually pre-nameplate alteration, but light wasn't good enough to take a few more pictures tonight. I've cleaned out the little brown bit under the "t".

Sent from my Everest Jolson

My ideal keyboard / Rhodia and Lamy

What particular elements of the keyboard do you prefer?

The first ink is a brown that I created by mixing a light brown and black ink. It's not ideal to used inks you mixed yourself, especially between different brands, and in my case this means the ink leaks out of the nib a bit sometimes. But I do love the color.

Sent from my two Lamy fountain pens.

Союз авторучка / Soyuz fountain pen

From what I can tell, this pen was two steps up from a cheap school pen and two steps down from the most expensive pens that I'm assuming only party members would usually have. (or if I'm overcomplicating things, the middle pen of a range of 3) Being made in the USSR, the "brand name" isn't particularly important. This doesn't say "Союз" anywhere on it. In fact, there are no letters on it at all. As with all pens, it ought to get even better to use over time as it adjusts to my hand. The nib is fairly broad and there is a little bit of flex to it, though it's not obvious when writing because the variation of the line is so slight.

Written with my new Союз fountain pen.

I keep my collecting under control

This is not a joke.

*I see it as supreme truth, not a load of rot.

Sent from my Torpedo 18a

Noodler's flex pen

Does my writing look like it's running downwards to you? I checked, in the scan the lines are perfectly horizontal. I think it's the way I hold my hand to get the right angle for the flex. Proper Spencerian pens have angled nibs so you don't need to do that.

This, the cheapest Noodler's flex pen, is finicky, has design flaws, and smells weird due to the plastic used, but with deliberation you can get results worth many times the cost of the pen, which only costs as much as an average bottle of ink.

First fountain pen / Writing setup

Lamy Safari / EF nib / Lamy blue ink

Pencast from my new Lamy Safari

More scrawling from my hand

The designs made by blowing on a blotch of ink on paper remind me of highways radiating from a large city.

I forgot to mention that I was having trouble with my Zebra stainless steel ballpoint skipping, as well as just about every other ballpoint pen I use, which partly prompted me to buy a blue extra-fine point Lamy Safari. The other reason was I wanted a more practical way to write in style than my dip pen. Which is not practical at all.

My writing is much less sloppy with a felt tip pen though. It actually looks rather consistent and nice. But still not as fun… hopefully a fountain pen will meet somewhere between the two.

Pencast with my Hunt nib and Daniel Smith walnut ink.

My first antique typewriter + much more!

Typed on my new L C Smith No. 8
at my desk as the rain fell against my window.

Royal typefaces from munk's blog.
I found that my L C Smith dates to 1919!

Mails, Fountain pens & Simon Schuster's love story

Typed on my Torpedo 18 and
my Smith-Corona Silent at my desk.