This simple if slightly ironing-board-looking desk is designed to allow you to adjust the height of the table from a sitting to standing desk just by cranking the handle. There has been lots of press about the advantages of changing your position throughout the day, this would be a good option to make that easy without having a desk that look like a medical instrument.
(via Better Living Through Design)
Prior to acquiring the reproduction style pens known as the HERO from China, I purchased a Parker 21 from Ebay. It turned out to have a crack in the plastic that caused ink to leak out of the pen which made me very sad. Sad because just writing a few lines with it had left me fairly convinced that the hooded nib pens were more than met the eye.
To give a little history, most folks who get interested in fountain pens hear about the legendary Parker 51 almost immediately. It is a hooded nib pen design as well but it is the wealthier cousin to the Parker 21. Where the 51 has a gold nib, the 21 has a steel nib. Overall the 21 uses a cheaper plastic material for the casing as well. For more information about the Parker 21, check out Richard’s Pens.
But… where Parker 51s can fetch over $100 on Ebay and various pen swap forums, a Parker 21 can be found for under $50 and sometimes a good deal less than that too, depending on condition. So for me, purchasing a Parker 21 was a gateway into possibly buying a Parker 51 in the future.
Back to the Ebay debacle… the Parker I bought was unusable but thanks to the kindness of the pen world, Ivan R of Inktronics, offered me a “rough condition” Parker 21 that he had been given. I was honored to accept it and promised to pay it forward when the time was right. So the lovely red, hardly rough Parker 21 arrived this week and I filled it with ink and off I went.
The filler is an aerometric squeeze filler with a clear plastic sac and a metal pinch bar. I filled the pen with Noodlers Violet which a slightly more reddish purple. (Forgot to photograph! Will add a photo soon!)
Having tried two different Parker 21s and the HERO reproductions, I am still a little amazed at just how smoothly they write. If I close my eyes when I write, I can imagine that these are actually rollerballs — that’s how smoothly they write. Its really quite surprising. I miss seeing the beautiful fountain pen nib but I am willing to forgo that if it means skating across the paper.
The hooded nib makes the pen look a bit more utilitarian which has actually gotten comments in meetings (“Nice pen!”) and no one ever mentions the other pens or fountain pens I have in a meeting. Crazy, huh? There’s something about the streamlined look of the Parkers that appeal to people — even non-pen folk.
Just for comparison sake, I photographed the Parker 21 with the HERO 329 (top) to show how similar in size and shape they are. The Parker 21 is a bit wider and the end tapers more bluntly than the HERO. Also, the cap of the Parker is flat on top and the clips are different. The Parker 21 clip has a convex line on it and the 329 has a smooth clip.
Inside, the Parker 21 has a wider silver ring on the barrel where the nib and body connect. The 329 ring is lower on the body and a narrower ring. I tried to get a good macro shot of the nibs but was hugely unsuccessful but you can see in this photo that just a tiny bit of the fountain pen point is visible. You can also see the “rough” of which Ivan mentioned — there is a bit of wear on the plastic near the tip where someone may have tried to remove dirt or ink with something abrasive. I have some plastic polish I might try to shine it back up, but otherwise this pen is in great shape.
If you are curious about hooded nib pens, I do think the Parker 21 is a good place to start but, clearly, the less expensive pen also means the likelihood of more damage than the more expensive Parker 51 models. So I recommend proceeding with caution.
Do you like hooded nib pens? Do you own one. Opinions, please!
And thanks again to Ivan for giving me a chance to try it out!
I recently discovered that of all the pen reviews I’ve written over the years, I never actually used or reviewed the office supply closet staple, the Pilot G-2 gel pen. Partly I think it was because I had never found one in an office supply shop that was narrower than the 0.7mm width. I just prefer a finer line from a gel or rollerball. So, on my last trip into Office Depot, I crawled around on the bottom shelf until I found a 4-pack of 0.5mm Pilot G-2s. For the record, the finer points are kept on the bottom shelf at Office Depot. Why? I have no idea.
The G-2 has a rubber grip area and is a retractable pen. I didn’t find the grip to be as comfortable as the more silicone-based grips found on pens made for the Japanese market like the Uni-Ball Signo DX and the Zebra Sarasa. I don’t have a preference for retractables though I can see the appeal. In the case of the G-2s, I used two out of the pack and one had noticeable vibration in the spring causing some feedback in the tip when I wrote that I did not like. For a budget pen though, I suppose most people wouldn’t notice or care. I just don’t like the tip to wiggle or give when writing so it bothered me. The second G-2 I pulled from the pack had less of this give so it seems to be a quality control issue.
The ink writes smoothly and dries before I can smear it which is a big plus for a left-hander.
When compared with the one retractable pen I reach for again and again — the Zebra Sarasa — I find the G-2 to be lacking. The spring-loaded clip on the Sarasas are far more functional though no more aesthetically lacking than the G-2 clip. I have never noticed any give in the points on the Sarasa as a result of the retractable spring. And finally, the Sarasas are available in a far wider range of point sizes and colors.
That said, if you can convince your office manager to order Pilot G-2s instead of Bic Stics, you’ll probably have a better day at work but you are all good pen junkies and bring your own pens to work already, don’t you?
Its only sold in black, blue and red in the US and as mentioned before can be purchased in the larger 0.7mm and 1.0mm sizes. (4-pack sells for about $4.79)
If I wasn’t such a fan of the vintage Esterbook pens, I don’t think I ever would have imagined myself as someone who would buy a pink fountain pen. But… I have a secret desire to own an Esterbrook in every color they were ever sold in (maybe not every variation… that would get complicated). I have just about all the major pearl colors except Root Beer/Copper (if you’re looking to unload one, let me know!) so it was time to start on the hunt for the pastels.
They were several solid colored pastels sold in the Esterbrook line: pink (sometimes looked sherbet orange and later a brighter reddish color), blue (pale and then a brighter hue), yellow, green (in a couple hues), grey, lilac and the coveted white “Nurse’s pen”. So I have a ways to go but the pastel pens are often as expensive if not more expensive than the larger J-series icicle/iridescent pens of the same period. I think this is partly because those light colored plastics were often stained by the inks used at the time and their smaller size and narrower barrel may not have withstood the years of abuse as well as their larger cousins.
This particular pen came with a #9668 nib which is the Master Point standard medium “General Writing” nib. It looks to be in good shape but I could hear the dried rubber flakes when I moved the pen so I know it will need a new ink sac… someday. In the meantime, I just dip my nib in an ink bottle and can get anywhere from a few lines to a whole page of writing from one dip.
As you can see, the purse pen is quite a bit shorter and a little narrower than a standard J-series double-jewel Esterbrook. It measures just 4.25″ capped compared to the 5″ regular pen. The cap can be posted for writing to give a longer tool but in general, I don’t think the purse pens would be comfortable for most people with large hands to use. Oh, we of the dinky-hand club highly approve! It fits in my small hands as comfortably as the Kaweco Sports do.
I decided that if I was going to own a pink pen, I might as well own some pink ink so I picked up a bottle of Edelstein Turmaline, the Ink of the Year from 2012 from The Pen Place in Crown Center, Kansas City. They still had it in stock. The bottles for the Edelstein line are so elegant and, to be honest, I kind of like this particular shade of pink. It reminds me raspberries.
At first, I used the #9668 General Writing nib that was in the pen but it was a bit too wide for my taste. The ink did get some nice shading as a result and the nib wrote super smoothly but it was just a bit too wide for me.
I switched out for a MIB #9555 shorthand nib which has the numbers stamped in a wide vertical line. It seemed appropriate to have a Shorthand nib in a pink purse pen, like something one of the secretaries on Mad Men might have carried.
The line width of the #9555 shorthand nib works well for me, I’d compare it to the F or EF nib in my Kaweco Sports. All in all, I am quite happy with this purchase. Ebay auctions can be a gamble and for all the “meh” purchases of the past, this one is a big winner!
The shop has been restocked with rubber stamps! Wood block and classic handled models — you have choices!
I thought I would share a favorite app today. I discovered PicFrame for iOS awhile back which is a great way to do a grid of photos to post on Instagram, Flickr or Facebook. The app costs $0.99 and works on iPhone or iPad. Its quite flexible with an assortment of grids to choose from and then you can pull the frames to reshape them as needed. You can round corners, add filters and change the width and color or pattern of the borders too. The iOS app also includes the ability to add labels — there are default looks or you can get in there and choose font, font color and label color. Its a pretty powerful app for under a $1.
What I like even better is the Mac version of the app that let’s you drag a photo from iPhoto, right into a frame and then export at various sizes for blogs, Flickr, Facebook, etc. The Mac app is also $0.99. There are no image editing options or labels in the desktop version of the app. Since you can import photos from iPhoto or other image editing software, you won’t need the image editing features but I do wish they’d add the labels to the Mac version.
This is a PicFrame collage I made with the desktop version of the app. I used the default borders and the photos were straight from my iPhone via iPhoto. The images are some of the goodies my friends bought while traveling in Japan. I must go office supply foraging there SOON!
