I have a Field Notes cover from Bellroy. It is awesome, and I’ve had it for years.

I haven’t used it a lot since COVID started, but I suspect it will get more use as things get back to normal.

It is leather, but it doesn’t look like the kind of “grandad leather” a lot of leather covers look. Other than that it looks very clean and simple, it fits a single field notes, it has some magnets to help it stay shut. You can fit a small pen or pencil in the cover.

And if you want to hack it, it is possible to fit more notebooks than the one. I have used it with three notebooks by some clever paperclip hacking.

Up until now I have mostly been into broad nibs. Most of it have been about how much I enjoy the feeling of sliding a slippery nib acorss the page and seeing a thick line of ink there.

But I Have recently realized how much more readable and nicer my writing looks with a finer nib.

It all started when I put the stock nib back in my Ystudio, and then I ordered a EF TWSBI Eco and two EF nibs from FC for my YStudio and FC Pocket 66.

Not sure where this will lead me.

For sure a interesting development.

In August and September last year I started a Blackwing subscription

A big concern for me when I did it was if I used enough pencils to justify it. The short answer is no, or at least kind of no.

At the point of writing I have two unopened Volume boxes, plus about 20 other pencils I haven’t sharpened yet.

So I cancelled it.

At this rate I’d probably end up with 1.5 boxes more than I use if I bought no other pencils; something that will never happen. So we are probably talking more like 2-3 boxes more than I use in reality.

If they had a option to get either 4 or 6 pencils per shipment instead of 12 it might have been an option for me.

Lined Leuchtturm1917 hardcover A5 notebooks have been my go to for drafting longform stuff for years at this point.

This is how I use them.

I write the title at the top. Line under it. Then I start writing. Two blank lines between paragraphs. And when I’m done I sign it and move on the the next empty page.

And when I transcribe something I write “(Done)” or “(Nope)” next to the signature. Done means it’s transcribed and Nope means I ditched it.

Just a list of the things that annoy me about the different places that make good pencils.

• American pencils has that dumb eraser at the top that is useless and everyone hates.
• European pencils are scratchy and hard. Plus they always come pre-sharpened something I hate.
• Japanese pencils are in general my favourite. Blackwing are basically Americanised Japanese pencils. But they put that terrible plastic thing at the top that is a pain to remove if you want to sharpen both sides.

Of the two filling mechanisms you are the most likely to find in any random fountain pen on the market I prefer piston fillers.

A big part of why is that I have no interest in any ink I have ever seen available as a cartridge. Partly because of the expense, but as much because of how few inks are available for the various cartridges.

That leaves me with either a converter or eye dropper filling the pen. The latter is a little bit messy and the former is either the same as a piston just worse in most ways. Or as messy as eye dropping it if you try to make it better by filling the converter with a needle.

A converter is like a piston filler. Or most of them are a piston filler on the inside. But they have less room for ink since they are inside the pen. And they are usually worse at being able to fill the entire room with ink plus you have to unscrew the pen to get to it.

The bad thing about a piston filler is that it is usually a bigger hassle to clean it than with a converter.

Fountainpens are not the most practical writing instruments. Probably the least pracical out there.

You need to clean them, refill them, sometimes they leak etc.

I guess most people who are into fountain pens, either bought one or tried it at some point. And really liked either the feeling of writing with it or how their writing looked when using it. Or usually a combination of the two.

What I love about them is a complicated one

First of all I love the tactical feeling for writing with one

Second, I love how much more personality your writing have with a fountain pen nib than a regular pen.

Third I love how you can find more or less any color you want for it

Fourth I love how many pens and nibs there are to pick from. You can literally find anything. Everything from very inexpensive to very expensive.

It feels kind of weird writing about these products after Nock.co is no more. And I have gone back and forth many times on if I should write about them or not.

I decided on yes.

Hightower as the first Nock.co product I got. It is a great pen case. I used to bring it everywhere for years. My setup at the time was to have my current Field Notes + two spares in it (or my previous + current + a spare). Plus two fountain pens, a gel pen and a ballpoint pen.

This was back when I was a student, and because of carbon paper I always had to have a ballpoint.

It was great for this kind of setup, and served me really well for a very long time.

This is just a quick summary of the different filling mechanisms for fountain pens. There are almost certainly a lot of minor details and machnisms I’m forgetting about (or straight out ignorning) here.

In general there are two kinds of filling mechanisms. There are the pens that have some kind of built in system for sucking ink into the pens and the kind where you stick some kind of cartridge into the pen.

The latter are either single use cartridges or a converter that let you fill the pen with ink from a bottle. Some pen use propretary while others use the the international standard for them.

Pens with a built in system are usually what we call a pison filler. It the same idea as most converters use. You have a sylinder, some kind of screw that moves the piston up and down. When you move it down it pushes ink or air out and when you pull it up it pulls in ink or air.

You also have some other systems with a similar idea to the piston like the ones the Conid pens use, or vaccum pens.

A third option that work with some pens is to just fill the whole pen up with ink and seal it off with some grease.