Fountain Pens & Writing Updates: TWSBI, Platinum, Noodler’s, & More

The vintage Lamy 2000 is a beauty. As is this old Lamy. I love the look and idea of the TWSBI pens, but have no ieda how to pronounce it, it seems short at least a couple of vowels.

Whatever: TWSBI Diamond 530: "The Diamond 530 is the first of the TWSBI line that is expected. It is a piston filling pen and there are plans for a vacuum filing pen in the future. From what I have been able to glean from reading the TWSBI Blog and FPN the target introduction date for the vacuum filler looks to be sometime around March 2011."

lq Handcrafted Notebook - Cool Material: "With all the scribbling down of bands to check out, new beers to try, and High School classmates to find on Facebook, it’s pretty easy for the average guy to go through a ton of notebooks in a year."

Platinum - Kamakura Pens General Grant LE - Fountain Pen Network: "The Kamakura Pens General Grant LE is a work of art that begs to be used daily. It's based on the 3776 body, and is lighter than my Koi celluloid. I discovered it thanks to a post on FPN, and I managed to snag one of the few remaining."

BengKia's Cave: Noodler’s Flex – Clear Demonstrator FPen: "As promised, a review of the Noodler’s Flex pen. I got mine in the clear demonstrator version, which is pretty handy since this pen drinks ink like a fish and it’s easy for me to tell when i need to refill."

Review: J. Herbin Lie de Thé Fountain Pen Ink - The Pen Addict: "Not long ago I started exploring brown pen options in the post Brown Pen Battle. Now I add for consideration a fountain pen option: J. Herbin's Lie de Thé (Tea Brown) ink."

Scriblets: Not a Wet Noodle: "Liking the look and feeling encouraged by reviews and talk about the new Noodler’s Flex Pen, I jumped on the bandwagon and ordered one from Brian and Rachel at The Goulet Pen Company."

J. Herbin Orange Indien - Writing and Scribbling: "I have found that Orange Indien performs like most Herbin inks. The dry time is a little slow but that is about the only fault I can find in this ink. Orange Indien lays a nice line that is not overly wet but smooth and it flows well."

Notepad Review: Rhodia dotPad - Rants of The Archer: "Sometime in spring last year, Rhodia introduced a new addition to their line of notepads, and they called it the dotPad. dotPads are 'functional black stapled notepads with a dot grid.' Yes, the dotPad has dots – not lines, just dots – tiny, subtle purple dots spaced 5mm apart."

Dave's Mechanical Pencils: Ohto Auto Sharp Mechanical Pencil Review: "It’s a lightweight mostly plastic pencil. The styling and colour scheme are quite nice, although nothing outstanding. The body and the grip are triangular, although the front end of the grip does start to taper down and transition into round where the front tip screws in."

Additional links:
Photos Of A Lamy 2000 Fountain Pen(Circa 1967)
pencil talk - Steinbeck’s favorite pencils
The Bellmont Pen - The Fountain Pen Network
YouTube - How it's Made - Fountain Pens
Meta-Review: Behind the Curtain
Note Booker, Esq.: Do you match up pen and ink colors?
The write stuff: O'Fallon collector has more than 13,000 pens
A Farewell to Handwriting? - CBS News Video
Pocket Blonde: Pentel Tradio Pulaman Fountain Pen
Porsche Design strikes up new partnership with Pelikan
Dodo eyePad 100 pages notebook