Pen & Ink News

Yesterday I had the nicest presents waiting for me in my PO box - a beautiful Sailor 1911M and the long-awaited Levenger ink!

Sailor 1911M
I'm really pleased with the Sailor - it's nib puts my Pelikan nibs to shame. I've filled the Sailor with Levenger 'Fireball' ink, and it's a very nice combination! I'm going to take a few photographs of the Sailor tomorrow, and then I will add a more detailed overview about the pen here.

Levenger Inks
I really love the Levenger 'Slightly Wild' ink colours. To my surprise, I find 'Skies of Blue' to be a very pretty blue, and normally I don't care for blue ink. 'Pinkly' is a great hot-pink shade also.

Snorkel Dislikes Noodlers
On an interesting ink note, my new (to me) Sheaffer Snorkel started to write very poorly the other day. It was two days after I had filled it with Noodlers Saguaro Wine, and the pen had started to write so dry that I thought I must not have filled it with enough ink. I filled it again, and there was no change. Then I rinsed it and tried some different inks, again, no change. I then figured something had gotten in and clogged the snorkel tube.

I sent a little e-mail to Peter Ford, who serviced the Sheaffer after I bought it, and he advised me to flush the pen with a weak ammonia solution. Sure enough, after doing that several times, the pen wrote a lot better when I had re-filled it with Caran d'Ache Blue ink. I guess the Noodlers is just too saturated for my Snorkel, which is a pretty dry writer.