A couple of new pages today, one for the extremely modern, or dare I say “Mod”, Pelikan MK10, whose entire existence was under the shadow of the Cold War.  The other is for the new, post-modern, Eurozone Lamy Studio.

The similarities outweigh the differences, frankly, despite the yawning gulf in their contexts.

On the update front, yet another of the untold legions of Waterman models appears, a brief modern fling called the Harmonie.  I’ve also been messing around with Sheaffer Balances, which has resulted in a page for the hitherto unseen (here) Sovereign, and the removal of a quantity of embarrassingly wrong material for the Admiral.  Part of that wrongness was an unintentional gender reassignment, as I discover something I’d long taken for an Admiral could only be a Milady.  The correction adds another page to the profiles, as I’d not knowingly dealt with the Milady previously, so there’s a silver lining.

To quote a purported Dutch chap invented by Mike Myers; I love gooooooold!  I’m not quite so driven by cupidity as that character, but with the recent arrival of a Sheaffer Imperial Triumph (which has to be just about the most overbearing name ever lashed to a pen), I’ve arranged a little sub-gallery of pens that have been coated in gold from head to toe.  Happily, this was not done as a grim warning to a British spy, so you can go look with a clear conscience.

In a move which I’m sure will garner cries of “Big deal,” I’ve amended the almost every pen entry on the site.  Previously, I had given a set value, looking rather like:
Production Run: 1948 – 1960

Cost When New: $2.00 initially, up to $2.95 by the end of the run (in modern funds, somewhere around $18.00 to $23.00).

This now looks like this:
Production Run: 1948 – 1960

Cost When New: $2.00 initially, up to $2.95 by the end of the run (for modern value, try this calculator).

Why the change?  Because the previous version would become increasingly wrong as it got older.  I know my limitations in the areas of paying sufficient attention and outright laziness to realize that the regular updating required likely wouldn’t be done (and all the moreso as I keep adding new pens to the list), so this puts the tools in the visitor’s hands and makes my bouts of lazy inattention less damaging.

As part of this updating, I’ve also added some price data to the Waterman Ligne 60-– if you care about the preceding, this may interest you.

There’s some new pages in the Galleries section, which will hopefully help people who find themselves looking at a pen and having no notion what pen it might be.  For the three most thoroughly represented makers on the site, I have made up family albums, so rather than having to go page by page in the list of models on a maker’s page, it’s possible to just churn along a row of pictures until a likely match appears.

The question of why it only just now occurred to me to do something like this is one I’ll have to leave hanging– even if I knew the answer, I’d probably just be more embarrassed by it than I am by the question.

On a more minor note, I’ve amended the picture of the Parker “51” in the Dissection lab, so now all the secrets of the cap are laid bare.

Just a couple of minor updates to announce.  There is now a picture of a Parker Slimfold to be found on the site, and also a picture of Montblanc\’s clever ink bottle.  The page for that ink has also been updated to include a minor warning about relying too heavily on pre-1990 versions of their output.

Since last post here, there have mainly been subtle updates; one will find some better pictures of Sheaffer PFMs (including a new dissection) some models of Snorkel, and the Pelikan Griffix.  The page for Diamine inks has a few new colours as well, but the real post-worthy news is yet more action in the world of Waterman, and all of it cheap!  Pages are in place for the Apostrophe, Graduate and Reflex, and a modern object has been added to the roster of Watermans without a name.

Thanks in part to the recent bonanza of inks and also to a few minutes of spare time, I have arranged some pages on which ink colours may be compared without flipping from one manufacture’s page to another.  Rather more exciting news is the addition of a page for the Pelikan Souverän line of pens.  This is exciting because I now have one to call my own, a gap in my life I’ve been imagining to exist for some time.

For those who may be wondering; Pelikan pens tend to offer more ink than less when writing– thus “Damp”.  There’s neither sweating nor leaks involved.

As is very usual in this modern age, improvement caused woe.  In this case, the host of this site performed a necessary upgrade that unsettled the WordPress software the site runs on.  Those looking in from midnight CST or so until about noon will have found an alarming ‘Error establishing a database connection‘ but that’s behind us now, and no need to dwell upon it.

Thanks to a very generous lady donating a veritable ocean of ink samples to me, I have been able to expand the profiles under the Noodler’s and Diamine ink headings, as well as add ink-producers Rohrer & Klingner and de Atramentis.  A different act of generosity, which saw me with the Kaweco Sport of the previous update also renders me able to comment on Kaweco’s inks.