Fountain Pen 101
Common terms and practices that might not be so common for someone newly interested in Fountain Pens. The most asked question is regarding fountain pens coming with ink. Generally they do not. This is because your choices of ink with a fountain pen are so wide, that it's left to the owner to decide. Some pen kits will come additionally with a set of cartridges or a bottle of ink.
For my customer's benefit I offer pen cartridge auctions [see the link in the right column called, my trademe auctions] This gets you up and running right out of the packet. My pen offers all will take a cartridge unless the pen is described otherwise. I sell ink carts to be used with them purposely. Of course the real treat with a fountain pen is to use bottled ink and you can spend a lot of time figuring out what that ink is. A cartridge gets you going right away.
Every fountain pen I offer [which take cartridges,] will come with what is called an Ink Converter. It's basically a reusable cartridge that has a pump built into it. This allows you to use the pen to self fill with ink from a bottled source. It can also be removed so that you can use pre-filled cartridges. It's a very modular system. Higher end pens often have the pump and reservoir built into them. You cannot use cartridges in them and so ink cartridges in that aspect are looked down upon. It is hard to deny that a cheaper priced pen with a cartridge/converter system isn't a lot easier to use. But often buying something more expensive, doesn't make it the most efficient choice!
So, there are different kinds of Fountain Pens. Even the type of pump system in those internally configured, can vary widely. Generally a brand will have a patent design they promote. Some of this is to incline you to use XYZ brand ink in your XYZ brand pen. Rarely does this have any valid reason other than that brand's profit margin ...
So far we have fountain pens with: Ink Converters, Ink Cartridges, or various pump/filling systems. There is also a style that goes back to the very first Fountain Pens which were simple to the extreme. These pens are called Eyedroppers. Because this is the method you use to fill them. They have no mechanical part to the ink's storage. The entire body of the pen stores the ink. Using the hollow body itself as the reservoir. This is a very simple system and it has it's benefits as well as flaws. Eyedropper's have little to go wrong in them. They store a LOT of ink in one go. Especially compared to detailed options already mentioned. There is a potential for messiness with an eyedropper. First that's a lot of ink, so if something goes wrong, it does so in a spectacular volume. Also there is a physics issue involved.
All fountain pens work on the physics of gravity and capillary action. That is the trick a delicate balance of ink flowing out of the nib vs no ink, or more ink than you'd ever want to see. One thing that newer pens with cartridges or converters, or their own tank and pump systems, is they are insulated by the pen's body. You hand can warm up the pen by touch. Especially when the weather is cold. When you heat things up, they expand. The problem with an eyedropper and it's ink capacity is that you can store a lot of ink and that means you may not refill it for a long time. More and more air is left as you use up the capacity and this brings us back to heat. Air as a gas expands more than liquid. That means a cold pen with some hot hands and a only say, half the ink's volume in the tank? There is your physics lesson. Your pen surprises you with a big burp of ink on the page.
This can happen with a pen that isn't working correctly, but it also happens with eyedroppers that are low on ink, and you warm up the pen, etc. It's why pen designs became more complex, trying to perfect the system. Still, you should not discount eyedroppers. They can be wonderful, trouble-free pens and some of my favourite personal pens are eyedroppers.
There are only two things that you need for a pen to work. First is ink and second is the nib. Everything else supports one or the other. That is the simplistic view and to save time it's where I will end for now. Because the world or nibs and ink are vast, so content for another day.
