PEN NEWS for March 2017
There is still time for Pen News in March, only just. I really did wait until the last minute to post any, which is too bad as I had the month's ideas early on and then just lost the plot to get them written down and uploaded ... one of the pen concepts that came to me, and it was back in my Uni days when I started thinking harder about being some kind of an artist. That discovery of the time was the stylographic pen. Which in the day I called a Rapidograph as I tagged the type of pen with the brand-name[?] Although I am still not clear on that, because more than one brand of maker will sell a Rapidograph labelled pen? But I did later learn that the original and I would suspect, proper name is a Stylographic Pen.
Which defines it as what kind of pen it is, as in the case of Fountain Pen. Stylos go back as far, maybe even further to some of the first automatic ink pens. When you look at the constructs of the earlier designs. They are pretty much the same as a Fountain Pen when it comes to how hey hold and draw their ink. As many of the Stylo brands came out of Europe/Germany/France. We see a lot of internal twist pump systems. Much like the era's Fountain Pens. It's when you get to the delivery end that these pens get quite different to a nib for their mechanics.
That is because the Stylographic pen then becomes more akin to a ballpoint pen, which was a later invention. The stylo's point is a hollow barrel/tube. Some of the get quite small in their diameter. To the point you may even think hypodermic? The Stylographic's "nib" is very much in mechanics a hypodermic needle that has been rounded and smooth. We the additional attention of a solid rod/pin floating inside that tube. This addition creates several aspects to the tube. It restricts the flow of ink through the tube, as it takes up much of the inner hollow. But that isn't the only aspect. Behind this thin solid rod is a weight. Welded to it at the back. The weight is a larger diameter and acts then like a plug to stop gravity from simply draining all the ink out of the pen when held down to write. The thin rod is slightly longer than the hollow tube and protrudes out the end of it. When the tube's point meets the paper, the rod and weight are pushed up into the pen, which opens the flow and capillary action is what then pulls more ink as the pen writes along the surface. When you pick it up that flow it stopped by the weight dropping back down again. This was the mechanics that presided a ballpoint design. But fulfills many of the same mechanics.
Stylographic pens are very precise line creators. Depending on the size of the tube, relates to how wide the line is. With the larger diameters, the inside hollow remains smaller. The ink then flows out from a centre hollow and the end of the tube acts more like a Fountain Pen, Wide nib acts. Where the thin flow of ink is spread over the width. You tend to hold a Stylograph differently. Perpendicular to the paper surface. Not the angles you see with fountain pens. Stylos ended up mostly as the tools of the mechanical drawing artist. The advantage of exact lines that did not vary. Even today as these pens have become less common than Fountain Pens, the place you still see them used, even in the digital age, are Line Printers. Here you can plug in these liquid ink pens and let the robots do all the work. Inkjets can thank the Stylographic pen for their existence. As the Pen Printer was the dinosaur forerunner of the inkjet's miniaturisation approach to a mechanical forerunner.
I Learned about Stylographic pens hanging out with other artists at Uni and it wasn't my first pen, that one goes to finding my Dad's Vacumatic abandoned in an attic junk box. When I did discover the stylograph as a pen concept. I wanted one. Micro fibre pens were not yet perfected, and ballpoints were crude. Fountain pens were hard to control in mechanical drawing applications. And the thin character aspects of fine line Rapidograph, was truly a step past amateur tools. I really wanted one and secured a 2nd hand Lever fill 0.4mm tipped stamp braned as a RAPIDOGRAPH.
Later I found you could buy cheaper, newer designed stylos that were much more modular and came often in sets of size choices. But in those days I didn't really understand the properties of inks and completely killed my Rapidograph with pigmented ink. Slugging it up and seizing it's function. Trying to clean it and actually creating more harm in that process. Had I known I could buy new ends as replacements, (These are sold much like steel art nibs, because they wear out in use. The solid rod can wear down to where it doesn't protrude and the system stops working.) Also if you put them apart, the core rod is so delicate, that you can kink or bend it and then it will also never work right after that, due to the friction you add to the mechanics. The bad ink also dried and ruined that pens bladder. My early fascination with such pens, was tempered by the aspect you had to highly maintain them. Fine pointed fibre throwaways came along and started the vintage stylographic on their decline.Not forgotten, you can still find and use them. I have a few on auction, because they brought back memories and I don't know that they will sell well. These days, such a pen is quite a niche desire.
