“How things work is how you work with them”—100%! The most common one of these I see every day is the little tabs on the end of the aluminum foil box—I only found out how to use them in my 30s and realized the biggest annoyance with those rolls had been solved by engineers years ago, and no one I knew was using this tool embedded in every version of the product!
In case this idea is useful: my father has a fountain pen holder that he uses to hold the pen when he needs to put it down but only for a moment. Cap stays in the holder, pen can drop into the cap but doesn't have to click on. That way you get a slightly prolonged period where the nib doesn't dry out, with less chance of flooding the feed. The holder is just a block of wood with a cylindrical hole the diameter of the pen cap.
I cannot understand how anyone would not find this fascinating. And it's a total surprise. I've just tried it with my fountain pen and the cap on/off cycle works.
I know, right? The explanation was so implausible that I actually skimmed past it the first time thinking it was talking about something unrelated and looking for the relevant bit about drying times.
I like to think that with extensive experimentation I would have spotted the smoking gun that putting a pen cap on and taking it off immediately fixed a dry pen, and from there I could have figured out the right answer, but I'm genuinely not sure I would have figured this out even if I spent all day experimenting.
Not sure! I think they mostly just don't have the problem that this solves, though the fact that my uni-ball eye also has an air tight cap and small enclosure suggests that they at least have it a little bit.
Rollerballs and biros and the like are much less prone to drying out than fountain pens, I think because they don't draw ink out of them in the same way: The ball is in contact with the ink, and it's the mechanical rolling of the ball that causes it to be exposed to air, so as long as it's not in use it's mostly protected from drying out, and if they dry out then just rolling the ball for a bit usually fixes the problem, while for a fountain pen you need some other way to get the ink flowing again.
They also use paste-based ink, which resists that kind of drying out more readily. Fountain pen ink has depths of nerdery that scare even me; the Nikola Tesla of ink is Nathan Tardif, owner/founder/mad scientist at Noodler's, merrily doing his thing up in Massachusetts. One of my favorites is his Dark Matter, a painstaking recreation of the military ink used on the Manhattan Project.
This is a bit of evidence in a question I’ve long pondered, why a fountain pen leaks terribly if you open it on an airplane. If ink is already being sucked through the nib, perhaps the difference in cabin pressure is enough to exaggerate the effect.
Yeah, I think that's entirely a cabin pressure thing. I think because there's some air in the cartridge, and that air is at ground atmospheric pressure, and so when the pressure on the outside lowers, ink is pushed out as the air in the cartridge expands.
(This predicts that a fountain pen with a full ink cartridge should leak less than one with a half empty one, which sounds plausible but I don't actually know if it's true)
I used to be very obsessed with all this pen/fountain pen back in high school and this post may have reignited my interest! Thank you for this!
Relatedly, my partner and I have been talking about how we realized there's so many fundamental tools and mechanisms that we just Do Not Understand and just use without even thinking. Even contemplating the pen cap with you here made me realize I didn't understand it either, but it was very exciting to think about. I'll admit I haven't been too excited about learning things recently or reading either, but maybe this could be the start of a change. Thanks again!
PS my favorite fountain pen is my yellow Lamy Safari
I'm astnished how much learning about the pressure + fountain pens function combo blew mind mind. Also, the extrapolation from learning this is brilliant, thanks!
A couple of points - firstly, it seems that pens are way more technically advanced than one thinks. If I remember correctly, making high quality ball point pen is so technically challenging that when they finally cracked it, it was a big BIG deal for China.
Next, I think one of the biggest advantages of LLMs (and before that, the internet) is that one can get answers to difficult problems. The curious guy can suddenly become way more competent in arcane and quixotic topics.
I think the LLM thing is true, but you've got to be careful! It lets you operate in areas adjacent to your pre-existing areas of competence, but the further afield you go the harder it is to judge whether the LLM is just feeding you nonsense.
I had a very memorable episode of trying to figure out when my typewriter was made with Claude's assistance. It was asking me these really detailed questions and telling me the significance of them until we reached an age for it that was convincingly argued, well supported by details, and completely wrong because Claude had made all of that up.
I use LLMs quite a lot, both for learning and for delegating boring tasks to, but I think they're better as a companion to learning than they are as a primary resource.
Yes I believe fountain pens and rollerballs are all water based, and that a fountain pen couldn’t work with an oil based ink, and ballpoint pens are oil based. I think this is why it’s OK for ballpoint pens to have those cheap shitty caps with a hole in the end - you don’t actually need to do anything much to keep the pen from drying out.
This is mostly just some basic checking and guesswork on my part though. I’m not actually a pen expert!
This is very useful information for someone who likes fountain pens but also loves clicking the cap on and off as a sort of fidget toy. Guess I should find another way to fidget
Commercial airliners typically pressurize to 8,000 to 10,000 feet pressure altitude when they reach cruise. This is a difference of roughly 4 PSI, from 14.6PSI (ground level) to 10.1 PSI at cruise.
“How things work is how you work with them”—100%! The most common one of these I see every day is the little tabs on the end of the aluminum foil box—I only found out how to use them in my 30s and realized the biggest annoyance with those rolls had been solved by engineers years ago, and no one I knew was using this tool embedded in every version of the product!
...what do the little tabs on the end of the aluminium foil box do?
You fold the tabs inward into the box, and then they act as a restraint against the roll coming out of the box when you pull foil off the roll.
In case this idea is useful: my father has a fountain pen holder that he uses to hold the pen when he needs to put it down but only for a moment. Cap stays in the holder, pen can drop into the cap but doesn't have to click on. That way you get a slightly prolonged period where the nib doesn't dry out, with less chance of flooding the feed. The holder is just a block of wood with a cylindrical hole the diameter of the pen cap.
Ooh, interesting. I had no idea this was a thing that existed, but it does sound useful. Thanks!
I cannot understand how anyone would not find this fascinating. And it's a total surprise. I've just tried it with my fountain pen and the cap on/off cycle works.
The picture used in this article is the same exact fountain pen I have! Great explainer!
It's a great pen!
(That's just a picture I took of my pen sitting on my desk, hence the rather amateurish photography)
As a fountain pen user and enthusiast, thank you for your service.
wtf. that is crazy! genuinely would never have guessed - i always assumed your hypothesis 1 / hypothesis 2 was both true depending on the type of cap!
I know, right? The explanation was so implausible that I actually skimmed past it the first time thinking it was talking about something unrelated and looking for the relevant bit about drying times.
I like to think that with extensive experimentation I would have spotted the smoking gun that putting a pen cap on and taking it off immediately fixed a dry pen, and from there I could have figured out the right answer, but I'm genuinely not sure I would have figured this out even if I spent all day experimenting.
what about clicky pens!
Not sure! I think they mostly just don't have the problem that this solves, though the fact that my uni-ball eye also has an air tight cap and small enclosure suggests that they at least have it a little bit.
Rollerballs and biros and the like are much less prone to drying out than fountain pens, I think because they don't draw ink out of them in the same way: The ball is in contact with the ink, and it's the mechanical rolling of the ball that causes it to be exposed to air, so as long as it's not in use it's mostly protected from drying out, and if they dry out then just rolling the ball for a bit usually fixes the problem, while for a fountain pen you need some other way to get the ink flowing again.
They also use paste-based ink, which resists that kind of drying out more readily. Fountain pen ink has depths of nerdery that scare even me; the Nikola Tesla of ink is Nathan Tardif, owner/founder/mad scientist at Noodler's, merrily doing his thing up in Massachusetts. One of my favorites is his Dark Matter, a painstaking recreation of the military ink used on the Manhattan Project.
This is a bit of evidence in a question I’ve long pondered, why a fountain pen leaks terribly if you open it on an airplane. If ink is already being sucked through the nib, perhaps the difference in cabin pressure is enough to exaggerate the effect.
Yeah, I think that's entirely a cabin pressure thing. I think because there's some air in the cartridge, and that air is at ground atmospheric pressure, and so when the pressure on the outside lowers, ink is pushed out as the air in the cartridge expands.
(This predicts that a fountain pen with a full ink cartridge should leak less than one with a half empty one, which sounds plausible but I don't actually know if it's true)
I used to be very obsessed with all this pen/fountain pen back in high school and this post may have reignited my interest! Thank you for this!
Relatedly, my partner and I have been talking about how we realized there's so many fundamental tools and mechanisms that we just Do Not Understand and just use without even thinking. Even contemplating the pen cap with you here made me realize I didn't understand it either, but it was very exciting to think about. I'll admit I haven't been too excited about learning things recently or reading either, but maybe this could be the start of a change. Thanks again!
PS my favorite fountain pen is my yellow Lamy Safari
I'm astnished how much learning about the pressure + fountain pens function combo blew mind mind. Also, the extrapolation from learning this is brilliant, thanks!
A couple of points - firstly, it seems that pens are way more technically advanced than one thinks. If I remember correctly, making high quality ball point pen is so technically challenging that when they finally cracked it, it was a big BIG deal for China.
Next, I think one of the biggest advantages of LLMs (and before that, the internet) is that one can get answers to difficult problems. The curious guy can suddenly become way more competent in arcane and quixotic topics.
I think the LLM thing is true, but you've got to be careful! It lets you operate in areas adjacent to your pre-existing areas of competence, but the further afield you go the harder it is to judge whether the LLM is just feeding you nonsense.
I had a very memorable episode of trying to figure out when my typewriter was made with Claude's assistance. It was asking me these really detailed questions and telling me the significance of them until we reached an age for it that was convincingly argued, well supported by details, and completely wrong because Claude had made all of that up.
I use LLMs quite a lot, both for learning and for delegating boring tasks to, but I think they're better as a companion to learning than they are as a primary resource.
Love pilot fountain pens! I just got a prera, and the experience of capping it is incredibly satisfying
According to https://www.dayspringpens.com/blogs/the-jotted-line/what-ballpoint-pen-ink-made ballpoint pen inks are oil based, so the small air exposure probably doesn’t dry them up very much. Are fountain pen inks all water based?
Yes I believe fountain pens and rollerballs are all water based, and that a fountain pen couldn’t work with an oil based ink, and ballpoint pens are oil based. I think this is why it’s OK for ballpoint pens to have those cheap shitty caps with a hole in the end - you don’t actually need to do anything much to keep the pen from drying out.
This is mostly just some basic checking and guesswork on my part though. I’m not actually a pen expert!
This is very useful information for someone who likes fountain pens but also loves clicking the cap on and off as a sort of fidget toy. Guess I should find another way to fidget
I love fountain pens.
I love experiments.
I loved this post, fascinating stuff really!
Commercial airliners typically pressurize to 8,000 to 10,000 feet pressure altitude when they reach cruise. This is a difference of roughly 4 PSI, from 14.6PSI (ground level) to 10.1 PSI at cruise.
https://www.sensorsone.com/altitude-pressure-units-conversion/