Favorite Nib and Ink Pairings - September-October (so far)

I wanted to play around with Airtable to get a sense of how it handles creating databases compared to Notion (of which I am still a very basic user). So I inputted my currently inked pens for September and October and logged my daily pen-ink usage in the planner and journal parts of my Wonderland222 planner.

Since I have a free trial of using Airtable's AI assistant feature, I used plain English prompting to have it build the database and was impressed at what it created and how it linked the daily log, pen, and ink tables together without much further input from me. I know this is basic functionality, but, hey, maybe I'm easily impressed in this case. 😛

Anyway, below is a dashboard view of data I have for September through Oct 7 (click/tap to see a larger version).

Some Ground Rules

• For the weekly planner side, I use one pen per day, and I try not to use the same pen multiple times per week.
• For my journal entries, I pick whatever pen I want, and sometimes I'll use more than one pen during a day's writing, like if I write some stuff in the morning, and again later in the afternoon or evening, I will use different pens.

Since I have so many pens inked at any given time (currently 25), I try to spread the love among them, otherwise, why are they all inked? 😅 But I know I do favor some pens or inks or pen-ink combos over many of the batch, so I wanted to see what the usage data would tell me.

Here are the pens for the ink combos chosen below:

Top Combo

As evident in the bar graph of pen-ink combos, I used my BENU Euphoria (with a F stub from All in the Nib), inked with Sailor Shikiori Yuki-Usagi the most. I really do like the nib and the ink, separately and together.

Yuki-Usagi is such a cool chromoshader. I've been resisting buying another bottle to hoard it since I have so many inks, it's unlikely that I'll use up any bottle any time soon, but this ink is so cool, the struggle against buying more is very real. It's such a unique blend of blue, gray, and brown that it's hard to think of another brand making a similar ink in the future. The closest ink I have in my collection is from another brand which is known for limited run inks – Birmingham Pen Company. Saltmarsh is an odd ink that looks differently in varying lighting (sunlight vs. indoor artificial lighting), and has interesting chromoshading besides. It also happens to be one of the runner-up inks below.

Runners-Up

It's hard to pick the top 5 favorite pens and inks for September, because besides Sailor Yuki-Usagi, I did a decent job of rotating my pens. These runner-up combos have been used 3 times each over the current time interval:

• Jinhao 9019 + Birmingham Pen Co Saltmarsh
• Waterman Carène + Birmingham Pen Co Weathered Papyrus
• Lamy Lx + Birmingham Pen Co Sterling Silver
• Diplomat Viper + KWZ Smells Like Coffee
• Asvine C80 + Herbin Vert de Gris
• Laban Skeleton + Herbin Cacao du Brésil

I roughly ordered them in order that I liked using the pen AND ink as a combo. Sometimes I use a pen a lot because I like the ink that's in it, not necessarily the pen itself. Sometimes I like the pen a lot, and not necessarily the ink (which usually results in an ink change before it is written dry). But sometimes the pen and ink work so well together that they're a great pleasure to use as a pair. (That being said, I am not yet a person who only uses one ink in one pen. I'm too much of an ink dilettante for that.)

Birmingham Pen Company Saltmarsh

As I indicated, I love Saltmarsh, but in general, I really like the Jinhao 9019's form factor, and how its M nib shows off ink properties without being way too broad for my writing, though it sometimes is quite broad with wetter inks. Luckily, writing in reverse works well also.

Birmingham Pen Company Weathered Papyrus

I am happy to have my Waterman Carène Gunmetal, a lucky r/Pen_Swap find. While its F nib is "boring", it does a decent job of showing off ink properties, too. And Weathered Papyrus looks great from this pen. For pens with "boring" nibs, I pick out inks I really love to offset the lesser nib interest. 😅

Birmingham Pen Company Sterling Silver

I inked up my Lamy Lx kinda late in the month, so I might've used it more had it been inked from the beginning. I love its metallic bronze color, the satin finish of the material, and the Lamy cursive nib that I put on it. And BPC Sterling Silver is a quirky ink that goes on a mauvey, purpley-red when wet, drying to a pretty, cool grey, so it's interesting to look at as it dries.

KWZ Smells Like Coffee

I recently got the brown Diplomat Viper secondhand and have been prioritizing using it to figure out whether I really like it, as the hooded nib feels like it is kind of sensitive to rotation angle. But with a wetter ink like KWZ Smells Like Coffee, I've been liking it a lot. Plus the ink scent is delightful. 😀 Smells Like Coffee is one of those inks that will make just about any pen fun to use.

Herbin Vert de Gris

I really like the way the Asvine C80 looks. It looks like a well-made resin pen from a smaller maker. I wish there were more shimmery colors that I liked. There is a purple one, but it uses a chatoyant instead of shimmery resin, and I don't like its look as much. 😕 Regardless, I like the quality of its #8 EF nib. Herbin Vert de Gris is a nice match for the pen body color, but weirdly it's not as gray as I remembered it when used with other pens.

Herbin Cacao du Brésil

Finally, I used my rainbow Laban Skeleton a fair amount, but I wasn't as happy with the purple-coated Nahvalur F nib I swapped in a while back. It felt too sharp, but I used it anyway, because I wanted to use this pen more. I ended up swapping a Fountain Pen Revolution EF Ultraflex late in the month, and I much prefer it. Cacao du Brésil is a cool, brown-gray that fits in with the neutrals palette I've been preferring lately.

Bonus Shout Out - Akkerman SBRE Brown

While I don't want to write up a blurb for every other pen-ink combo in the data, I wanted to call out a new combo for October that I'm enjoying a lot: my Skogsy Pens Cholla with an EF JoWo nib and Akkerman SBRE Brown. I love this reddish-brown, especially for fall. It is kind of a surprising brown for me to like since a lot of the brown inks I use are darker, in the realm of chocolate or coffee, not reddish/orange. But something about this color really appeals. I was going to write a blog post extolling its virtues a few days ago, but realized that I already did last year, apparently. The JoWo EF has been performing really well with the inks I've tried with it so far, so the combo with this ink has been satisfying to use. On top of it, this Cholla is a great pen, the first maker pen I bought at my first SF pen show. Great pen and ink combo, all around.

Dilettante Guilt

I have many pens that I like using so much that I would consider using just that pen for multiple days in a row. I'll pick up my Pilot Capless Fermo with the awesome stacked architect nib from Sallymander Nibs and want to write with it all the time; same with my Lamy Lx and cursive nib, or Lamy 2000 with M architect, or BENU Euphoria with the F stub, or, or, or... But because of how many pens I have inked, it just doesn't seem fair to the others! 😅 I don't think I could really do one of those challenges where you use only one pen for an extended period of time. I think ultimately I'd be rather unhappy about doing it...so, I won't. 😝

To Be Continued

I'm going to go back through the rest of my planner and journal entries and enter my pen and ink usage throughout the whole year. It'll be interesting to see what trends come out of that. Stay tuned for a year-end follow up at the very least!

Thanks for reading! If you like what I write and want to support me, you can "buy me a coffee". I'd appreciate it.