Just Got a Lamy Safari & Love It

I.N.F.K

I.N.F.K

Joined
Jul 7, 2012
Messages
1,896
When I was 17 and a senior at high school I decided that I wanted to teach myself to write cursive again. After a few days of writing the abc's in cursive during study hall. I finally felt confident enough to use it in note taking during class. It's a terrible shame that so many people don't write in cursive any onger. I've met a few teachers in college that still right in cursive and their penmanship was absolutley gorgeous. In no way did my penmanship match up to theirs. Probably because they've been writing in curisve their whole life I only recently taught myself cursive again.

Just today my Lamy Safari arrived in the mail and I'm already wanting upgrade to something better. Maybe something with copper? I got the pen with a fine nib and in blue ink. I can't believe that this pen is considered to be a fine nib. When I though "fine" I was thinking something along the lines of a cheapo bic pen. I do love this pen, It forces me to slow down my writing and in turn makes it a bit more uniform, not much though. I will say it has prevent wandering eyes from copying me in lecture. Instructors are also unable to read my writing sometimes. I guess it surprises them to see cursive handwriting submitted by a twenty one year old in this day age, even if it is sloppy. Anyways I thought I would just share this and I encourage people my age to write in more cursive.

 
When I have to write fast, it is a combo job... short-hand/cursive with some printed lettering too... My writing is basically for ME.. very hard to read.

Me and the wifey were recently talking about cursive and if schools teach it even anymore... High school we were taught some shorthand that really made note taking easier...

Oh well, more and more people just record notes or type. And at 70WPM I am considered SLoooooooooow... getting old I suppose..

Keep up the cursive, at least it is something that can sooth the mind a bit and slow down life :)
 
A very good friend of mine gifted me a Safari, converter, & a bottle of noodler's ink. It's replaced every other pen I own for daily use!
 
sloth357 said:
When I have to write fast, it is a combo job... short-hand/cursive with some printed lettering too... My writing is basically for ME.. very hard to read.

Me and the wifey were recently talking about cursive and if schools teach it even anymore... High school we were taught some shorthand that really made note taking easier...

Oh well, more and more people just record notes or type. And at 70WPM I am considered SLoooooooooow... getting old I suppose..

Keep up the cursive, at least it is something that can sooth the mind a bit and slow down life :)
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My grandmother writes everything in a mixture of cursive and shorthand, but also very small. Makes it near impossible to read witout having to study it a few times.

In my school they required keyboarding one and two, but also offered a third as well. The last time I was taught anything to do with curisve was in early elementary. Which was also the last time a teacher wanted a assignment to be hand written. I recently was talking to a I.T. guy at my old high school and he said that the middle school now has laptops and the high school now has I-Pad's.

Bowman1911 said:
A very good friend of mine gifted me a Safari, converter, & a bottle of noodler's ink. It's replaced every other pen I own for daily use!
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I feel that mine will quickly become my daily pen as well, if the clip holds up.
 
I have a handful of fountain pens and love writing with them, sadly all the paperwork I do at work has to printed, but at least I don't have to use ballpoint.
 
You simply cannot go wrong with a Safari. Fountain pens are a wonderful way to write and the ink choices, along with nib sizes, make for almost endless combinations.

Much like knives, you can get caught up in a never ending acquisition spiral.

Suggest you check out FPGeeks. Great friendly forum. Not as big as some, but very comfortable.

As Brian Goulet (of Goulet Pens) would say; "Write on."
 
I too, went back and had to relearn cursive. Years as a mechanical drafter and block lettering with lead holders my writing followed suit. I chose to follow the Palmer Method while modifying it slightly to fit my own style. For less expensive but great pens check some of these out...

One of my favorites is my Esterbrook J... $40 vintage/used

2011-12-30003720.jpg~original



The Pilot Plumix $7 new

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The Scheaffer "school pen" $5-20 vintage/used depending on style or year

2011-11-23023336.jpg



The Parker '21' $10-$50 vintage/used

2013-11-14094747_zps8089fa56.jpg


Better view of the above pen...

2012-09-19231642_zps62e3354a.jpg




These are my favorite low priced pens. I have an affinity for the vintage ones, and all are great writers. I would suggest one of the Esterbrook series, SJ (smallest) LJ (medium size) or J (largest) to start as nibs are readily available and just screw in and out, are easy to repair, great lever fill designs and abundant enough to keep prices down. Some colors in some sizes can fetch considerable money, but many more are to be had for the approximate prices I listed for second hand market.


-Xander
 
The Safari is a lovely pen to write with. Unfortunately, I just lost one, which I kept with black ink in. I have to sneak a new one into the budget somehow, as I actually write by hand quite a bit, and I hate cheap pens. I have bad handwriting, and I need quite a fine point. The Safari has been my goto pen for over a decade.
 
fast14riot said:
These are my favorite low priced pens. I have an affinity for the vintage ones, and all are great writers. I would suggest one of the Esterbrook series, SJ (smallest) LJ (medium size) or J (largest) to start as nibs are readily available and just screw in and out, are easy to repair, great lever fill designs and abundant enough to keep prices down. Some colors in some sizes can fetch considerable money, but many more are to be had for the approximate prices I listed for second hand market.


-Xander
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Didn't know that I could buy old fountain pens. I always thought that the ink is corrosive or would at the very least gum up the pen.
 
The ink can and does gum up the pen. But, most ink is water soluble so a soak in water for a few days should get it out. There is several points you want to check when buying vintage pens in the wild, but if you find something let me know and I can help you out.


-X
 
The Safari was my "gateway drug" into fountain pens. I prefer the feel of the Al Star (safari with aluminum body). And it is essential you pick up the converters and try some different ink options. I did not like the Lamy refills at all.
 
Lamy make really good solid pens. I have never tried a Safari but I have a couple of their models and they always work, never leak and the cap seals really well so they can be left inked up for a long time without drying out. I have a black Lamay CP1 with a black nib that I use when I don't want people to notice I'm using a fountain pen

European fountain pens are a fairly broad, like you pointed out a 'fine' is really what most people would call regular. If you try a japanese fountain pen they are usually on the other end of the scale, medium = fine and fine = very fine.

The ink that you use can change the pen too, some inks flow much better than others, and some just suit a certain pen more

If you go for a really fine nib you will probably find it only writes well on expensive ultra smooth paper
 
I have a Safari, but it just sits unused. It's just OK in my opinion. I'll grab my Esterbrook before it every time. Shoot, I'll pick up one of my two Pilot Metropolitans before the Safari 9 times out of 10.

My Namiki Vanishing Point or Pelikan M200 are my go-to pens.
 
texas gun person said:
I have a Safari, but it just sits unused. It's just OK in my opinion. I'll grab my Esterbrook before it every time. Shoot, I'll pick up one of my two Pilot Metropolitans before the Safari 9 times out of 10.

My Namiki Vanishing Point or Pelikan M200 are my go-to pens.
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To each his own.
I have pens that span from the Pilot Varsity (a buck or two and great to leave out for ANYONE to grab) to over a grand (Danitrio with the sweetest EEF flexy nib) and plenty in between (including the M200, a mid 1990s Vanishing Point, and the Safari). If they're not great writers, I either modify them or get rid of them. The great thing about the Safari is the ease and low cost of swapping out nibs. My wife loves her's which has a 1.1mm stub/ital on it.
Check out the www.fountainpennetwork.com forum.
 
The Safari has been around for what - at least 30 years. And for good reason. It's a fantastic pen for the money, and has quite unique styling. Great choice.
 
Awesome (and somewhat nostalgic) topic for me! These Scheaffers are the fountain pens I used in primary school back in the Caribbean. We weren't allowed to use ballpoint, only fountain. I still have a couple other fountain pens but want to get some nicer ones.
I heard about some school boards eliminating teaching cursive writing in schools, just can't remember which boards. I think it's a shame really. Cursive is such an elegant, classy form of hand writing and it's the style I've always used. I remember as a youth in Canada before I moved back to the Caribbean we had penmanship classes and were awarded for great cursive writing. That was back in the mid to late '70s and I still have those awards (yellow HB lead pencils with the "Penmanship Award" embossed on them).
We're losing too many of the great things my/our generation enjoyed in back in the day. I shudder to think what it'll be like 10 - 20 years down the road, what with texting and other forms of electronic writing and shorthand.
OT I also recently heard that kids no longer need to learn their multiplication tables. In school as a pre-teen we had to know up to our 12x tables by heart or we were in trouble! We weren't allowed to use calculators for any tests or exams. Everything had to be calculated by our brains. Now they use calculators, laptops and tablets. We also had to know the basic formulae for circles, triangles (sin, cosine, tangent), etc, etc. but I digress. Hell I can still recite the first 20 elements of the periodic table from when I had to memorize them back in the early 80s, and I haven't taken any chemistry/biology related classes since around '85!
Sorry for the horrible derailment, I just feel sad about this. Anyhow back to fountain pens!


fast14riot said:
...The Scheaffer "school pen" $5-20 vintage/used depending on style or year

2011-11-23023336.jpg


...-Xander
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The S
 
Here are the first three versions of the Sheaffer school pens for your nostalgic thinking :D

Bullet end first generation, cone end second generation and flat end third gen. On a very early cursive practice sheet of mine. Gladly my writing is not that inconsistant anymore, as shown in samples above! All are working and in my rotation.

2011-11-30110029.jpg



-Xander
 
Thx Xander. I don't remember those earlier gens, only the flat top ones. I really need to do more hand writing, 99% of what I write down nowadays is on a pc, phone or iPad, as is probably the case for most. My hand writing has turned to chicken scratch, you'd swear I was a doctor or something! LOL
 
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