This is mostly about my lovely new Waterman ringtop lever fill pen, but I couldn’t let a new toy post pass without a showing of this:

ohhh yeah.

Right? Nice chunky full grain leather belt with detachable buckle that’s an 8mm, 10mm, 11mm hex wrench, phillips screwdriver, flathead screwdriver and bottle opener. See it here.

Anyway, on to the pen.  I bought ‘im on the intertubes  (it is a 52 1/2 V to be precise. Which I think means it’s from about the 20s and is made of hard rubber), expecting to have to replace the sac and fiddle with it quite a bit – but no. It was pretty much good to go. I cleaned it out a little and just started straight in. It’s really very lovely – I am no fountain pen aficionado, but I have heard of the fabled artist nib that Waterman made in the ’30s, and long to try one – but this one is really very nice to use, and seems to have a good thin – thick range.

testing the new nib..

testing the new nib

With a standard Parker 51 for comparison – the ring top pens are quite a bit smaller than a standard sized version.

ringtop waterman and parker 51 for size comparison

The nib. Not quite an Artist nib but pretty pointy and flexy I think..

The nib. Not quite an Artist nib but pretty pointy and flexy I think..

I’ve just started on a distance learning children’s book illustration course, for which one of the first exercises is a study in textures. I tried out the pen. In sketching mode I don’t seem to use the thickness variation a lot.

it's a cardboard cutout wall, ok?

Ringtop pens are supposedly less sought after because they are smaller. I don’t understand this. Smaller things are awesome!

People are wrong.