Monthly Archives: March 2018

Choosing Keeping Notebooks

A little bit of history: Choosing Keeping is a shop found in London that can be reached through the Central Line or the many lines that serve London Liverpool Street. They are open Wednesday through to Sunday (which means they’ll be open on the weekend, if you plan on spending a weekend in Central London!). Choosing Keeping sell fountain pens, rollerballs, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, art & office supplies, desk objects and many more. What we have for you today is from their paper offerings: some very beautiful notebooks in three different sizes.

How it looks & feels: Those within the Inkdom were very impressed by the presentation of these notebooks. There’s a very retro look to them, which is further enhanced by the string keeping them together when they were delivered.

The personal touch and retro look is further enhanced through the envelope that the notebooks are stored in, inside the parcel package.

Hand-made in Italy with leather-looking paper, these seriously look the part! The covers do throw you a bit because you expect them to be leather, but they definitely don’t feel it. You can tear them with a bit of force, but it shouldn’t be a problem for normal carry. The covers come in three flavours, depending on the size you want: green (A5), red (11x15cm) and blue (9×13.5cm).

The pages are lined with red edges, which is a bit different. Another thing that is lined is the off-white pages themselves, though you do have the option for plain layouts too. On the inside page you have space for a weekly planner overview and on the final page is a multiplication table. Could be useful? It’s written in Italian as these are Italian-made notebooks – you can still understand the numbers though!

The paper has a bit of tooth and texture, but nothing overly noticeable or anything that would give a bad writing experience.

Crucially, how does it handle fountain pen ink?: Coming in at around 70gsm, we may have been a bit sceptical as to whether the paper would hold up, but it handled fountain pens very well.  They even held up to Nick’s tests!

Pulp! What is it good for?: Coming in different sizes, you can use these for different applications. But you have the options, from a pocket notebook to scribble down quick notes up to an A5 size for those more in-depth thoughts. They complement each other quite well as you have the different sizes which will allow you to transfer and expand on thoughts when moving to the larger sizes; it would be quite interesting to view your own thought processes expand in that respect!

VFM, and what else is there on offer if it isn’t quite your cup of tea?: £18 for three notebooks does sound like quite a lot. Especially when you consider that Rhodia A5 notebooks are around the £2 mark. Overall you get 186 pages when considering all three notebooks, which leaves you paying a fraction under 10p per page. Leuchtturm notebooks, with 249 pages, for reference will be 6p per page. Leuchtturm also come with more options, such as colour, options for planning and numbered pages, though the paper quality is often contested. However, you don’t get the same personal touch or feeling when using other notebooks and that is something you definitely get with these. They are also very easy to slip into a bag and don’t take up too much space due to their covers, but remain very stylish and looking the part.

Our overall recommendation: The personality, the way the pages keep up with fountain pens… It’s difficult to give these a miss.

Where to get hold of one: Direct from Choosing Keeping

This meta-review references:

Kaweco Steel Sport fountain pen review

A little bit of history  Every serious fountain pen fan has a Kaweco Sport somewhere; small, pocketable – and in their simple plastic form eminently affordable – they are often starter pens, and frequently stay in use as emergency back-up pens even when owners have developed more exotic tastes. For quite a while, though Kaweco has been developing a ‘premium’ line of robust, refined, reassuringly expensive Sports in interesting materials ranging from carbon fibre to industrial metals. The very first United Inkdom meta-review tested the brass version of the Sport, a pen so popular that not a single reviewer sent it back, and we really thought that would never be beaten. But now there is heavyweight competition, from a slightly surprising direction: stainless steel.

How it looks  The design is almost exactly the same as any Sport, with its small-until-posted form factor and that famous octagonal cap. What makes the Steel Sport look immediately different from even the aluminium version is the milled/brushed effect on the surface of the steel itself, which is reminiscent of classic cameras or draughtsman’s tools. If any pen were to make a statement, it would probably be this one – and the statement is something like “I don’t do bling; I’m just here to write”.

How it feels  Solid, unbreakable, built to last a lifetime and, of course, fairly hefty. But this is not ridiculously heavy, and writing with it for a prolonged period is no more tiring than with any other Sport.

How it fills  This is a perennial subject of concern as the Sport’s barrel is not long enough for a traditional converter. However, Kaweco now offer a short and simple push-rod piston converter which works fairly well. Most users simply syringe-fill a standard ‘short international’ cartridge, though, and that seems to be quite easy to live with for most users.Crucially, how it writes…  As always, that depends on what nib you choose. Like all the more expensive Sport bodies (and indeed most of the Kaweco fountain pen range) this version uses screw-in small#5 Bock assemblies, which are available in a wide range of both round and italic tips. For the round tipped-nibs, many of us find that EF, F and M tend to be safest of the steel options, although any flow or smoothness issues, which can be variable in steel, vanish if you upgrade to gold. For this meta-review, though, we put the Steel Sport in the hands of two professional calligraphers (in Kent and Austria, respectively) who put the italic options through their paces – and found the narrower 1.1mm and 1.5mm nibs worked well even for fast writing, while a little more care was required for the wider tips where the same flow of ink has to stretch further. But as long as you choose the right nib for you and your own writing style, this is a reliable performer.Pen! What is it good for?  With a round-tipped nib this is probably the pocket pen par excellence; it looks the business, works well and will probably outlast most owners. Our calligraphers thought it was good for having some fun with italic lettering too, even if not quite the thing for fee-earning studio work (which is not what it is really designed for, to be fair).VFM  This is not a cheap pen – indeed, apart from the carbon-fibre version this is the most expensive Sport so far. Retailing for either €85 or £84.99 (which says something interesting about current exchange rates), it’s a significant purchase, but still not in luxury price-tag territory in our view. It looks a lot more expensive, though, and it’s tough enough that you would have to try very hard before you damaged it – nothing short of a diamond-tipped angle grinder is going to break this!If this isn’t quite your cup of tea, but almost…  Then there’s the shinier, lighter and more affordable aluminium version, or the steampunk splendour of the Brass Sport, either of which are sound choices. We have also seen the prototype of the solid silver version – but expect that one to break the £100 barrier, as the materials alone are likely to add around £15 to production costs at current prices.

Our overall recommendation  If you’ve been putting off buying a grown-up Sport until the time was right, that moment has come. Try a Steel or Brass version at a bricks-and-mortar shop if you can, or borrow them from a friend; if one or the other doesn’t appeal to you, we will eat our collective hats.Where to get hold of one  From all the usual sources. Some pens take lots of research to track down, but this shouldn’t be one of them, and it’s currently available from almost all the places you’d expect to look. At the time of publication, The Writing Desk were selling these for £5 less than most other UK retailers, but we don’t expect their stock to last too long!This meta-review references:

Thanks to  Kaweco for sending temptation our way again.

 

 

Perkeo Give-away

DSC00478It’s time for another United Inkdom give-away! You’ve seen these attached to meta-reviews, but we thought it would be fun to run them as a stand-alone exercise every now and then to share some of the gorgeous items that we have been sent to review.

To take part, all you have to do is be based in the UK and correctly answer some questions about the prizes.  All the information will be found on either the company’s website or in one or more of the United Inkdom blog review posts.  Check out the United Inkdom meta-review for the a quick start!

We kick off today with a competition to win a pair of PERKEO pens in a smart Kaweco presentation tin.

Continue reading Perkeo Give-away

Beaufort Inks

A little bit of history Some time during the Caledonian Orogeny, around 490–390 million years ago, the Great Glen Fault formed. Wind forward a few aeons and the trench this left cuts a swathe across Scotland, including the very well-known Loch Ness and, just to the south, the rather tautologous Loch Lochy, near which is the home of Beaufort Ink. Despite the name, Beaufort Ink have made their way in the world selling nibs and pen-turning parts rather than ink – until now. Now they’re making up for lost time, and then some!

How it looks As an ensemble, this is a set of inks which immediately conjure up visual memories of the Highlands – which the creator insists is entirely accidental, but we’re not complaining! They deserve a brief review one by one, and they shall jolly well have it too.

Peacock This is where the whole range started, as the Beaufort supremo is a confirmed teal-head. A deep, rich and very dark turquoise, this is somewhat reminiscent of Sheaffer’s long-lamented Peacock Blue – and has won plenty of fans in the United Inkdom ranks.

Zodiac Blue nicely echoes the blue of Arctic waters, as viewed from a Zodiac boat. It’s a long way from boring old ‘school’ blue, that’s for sure.

Blue Black is not often a label which gets people excited; usually, that’s the ink you use at work and then set aside in favour of something more exciting as soon as you get home. Somehow, though, this recipe manages to capture the dark blue of a loch without being dull.

Obsidian is a refined grey-black with a spot of sheen too – not a jet-black ink, but a nicely saturated sort of black nevertheless.

Scots Pine is an earthy, dark green which could be as valuable to artists as to writers. Not so many testers found this one their favourite, but it’s certainly distinctive.

Roasted Red convincingly summons-up the hue of roasted red peppers with a sprinkling of paprika. A sophisticated shade to complete the collection.

Crucially, how it writes…  Smoothly! The formulation was selected for good flow as well as reliable saturation, and it shows.

Ink! What is it good for?  Most of these inks could actually be sneaked into the office without too much risk, but they also look just the thing for getting a vintage pen back into action.

VFM At £8.35 for 45ml, this is twice the farthings-per-millilitres that standard Diamine would cost, but that’s still not stratospherically expensive – and arguably good value because it works well and you’ll actually want to write with it enough to get to the end of the bottle.If this isn’t quite your cup of tea, but almost… Beaufort have indicated that other colours may join the collection if there’s sufficient demand. Unsubtle hints about the urgent need for Purple Heather have already been lodged. The case for Made In Scotland From Girders Orange, meanwhile, awaits a longer label as well as copyright permission!

Where to get hold of some Straight from Beaufort Ink.This meta-review references:

Thanks to Beaufort Ink for kindly providing samples of the whole range.

Scrikss Noble 35 fountain pen review

A little bit of history: Although Scrikss fountain pens are now produced in Turkey, this wasn’t always the case. Originally, the pens were produced in Spain for the Turkish market and the word ‘Scrikss’ derives from the Catalan verb ‘to write’, scribir.

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This particular pen, the Noble 35 in ‘titanium’ finish, was introduced to their fairly extensive range of fountain pens in 2014.

How it looks: Initially one might be tempted to head for a fountain pen with a bit more obvious pzzazz, but its classic styling is reminiscent of a Cross or Sheaffer and the mix of chrome and titanium-plated finish urges you to look more closely. The nib is not too shabby either – steel with an iridium tip, in medium only. The Noble 35 is available in a variety of finishes, including a pearl white, so check out their website to see the full range.  Remember to click the EN language option (just underneath their logo) or you’ll have to puzzle your way through the Turkish language version.

How it feels: Light, sturdy and comfortable in the hand.

Crucially, how it writes: As well as any pen in the Diplomat range. It has some bounce from its flex nib and gives a juicy inky down-stroke and a finer upstroke.

Pens! What is it good for?: With a 99 year warranty on their pens, Scrikss appear to have confidence in their products and so should you; the Noble 35 shows itself to be a trustworthy and reliable performer for everyday pen use.

Ideally wielded by: The discerning fountain pen fanatic in their business environment – the Noble 35 in this titanium finish is understated and svelte – and to those in the know, you will have the kudos of writing with a little bit of ‘Turkish delight’.

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Want to know more? Check out the United Inkdom reviewers: