Calligraphy Alphabet

I recently bought a rather nice $17 fountain pen with a piston-filler ink reservoir, but can't seem to find any place near where I live that sells fountain pen ink bottles. The closest I could find was Higgins Calligraphy Ink by Sanford. On the box it says "for calligraphy pens, fountain pens, and airbrushes", but it also says "waterproof". I've heard waterproof ink and calligraphy ink shouldn't be used with fountain pens because they can clog them.

I tried using it (before reading about the problems with waterproof ink online), and it seemed to work OK, but the ink flow seemed to slow a bit after a few days, so I flushed out the reservoir with water.

Anyway, is anyone familiar with the particular ink brand? Is it safe for fountain pens, or not?

Higgins/Sanford is a perfectly fine brand. Just make sure you're not using something with shellac in it. An alcohol flush would fix that problem, or some brand name pen wash with detergent or ammonia.
Anything thinned for an airbrush is good, but don't leave any kind of ink in a piston fill pen for extended periods. Flush it out .
My favorite flowing inks for black and color drawing are Rotring, and Pelikan. Dr. Martin too.
I also have a cool shaped Mont Blanc ink bottle with its own well. The ink itself was excellent.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 12:11 am and is filed under calligraphy pens. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.