Buchan's Kerrisdale Stationery is open for business again!

After extensive renovations (as a result of the store being flooded in late December), Buchan's reopened on February 8th! 😀

(image source)

I visited their shop in Kerrisdale today and was impressed with the renovations (which included new lighting that can also be dimmed to create a pleasant ambience for evening shopping), new display arrangements that make the store seem even more spacious, the selection of fountain pens and other writing instruments (at every price point), the wide array of fountain pen inks, fine paper and notebooks...and, of course, the friendly and helpful staff :) I bought a few things during my visit and will be posting reviews of them in the near future, so stay tuned...

You can check out the selection at Buchan's virtually (link to webstore), or in person at 2141 West 41st Avenue in Vancouver (their brick & mortar store is open 7 days a week)

Reminder re: March meeting tomorrow! (Thursday March 16)

Don't forget our in-person meeting *tomorrow* - Thursday March 16 !
It's at the Kitsilano branch of the Vancouver Public Library from 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM! (click here for detailed info). 

Any questions? If so, please contact us at vancouverpenclub@gmail.com
Hope to see you there! (and no RSVPs needed!)

Newest Acquisitions (Virtual "Show & Tell") ~ part 468

Today we're featuring a couple of new fountain pens that Stuart brought to our last meeting, along with his thoughts on them....

(all photos courtesy of Stuart ~ please click on images to enlarge)

Stuart writes: "(This is) my Faber-Castell Ondoro with the smoked oak barrel, a handsome large pen. The Fine steel nib is a smooth and precise writer."

"The closeup shot (above) shows the beauty of the grained wood, which is nice in the hand, warm and textured."


"Here's the Parker Sonnet I bought at Van Pen’s January grand reopening celebration.  It has a brushed stainless steel barrel and cap with gold-plated trim and a black section, a very handsome and traditional look."

"The nib, stainless steel with gold plating, is smooth, and the pen is very comfortable in the hand."

Our thanks to Stuart for his ongoing contributions to our pen club's virtual "show & tell!" I'll be posting a review of my own recent acquisition later this week.

***Don't forget our in-person meeting this Thursday (March 16)--- details here!

Travelling with a complement of vintage pens & mechanical pencils

(~Blog post & photos courtesy of Christopher~)

"Every year my wife, Chris and I spend time at our condo in Hawaii. Admittedly, I have found that it is hard, if not impossible, to be without at least some of the vintage pens which have become a major part of my daily life. Still, travelling with pen and ink can be a problem. So, over the years I have developed a safe and satisfying pen and ink travelling case and outfitted it to keep me happy.

I started with a designer sunglasses case. A case that was big enough to contain all of the following elements, essential to being able to enjoy my vintage pens when out and about:

1. Parker Demi Jotter ballpoint. 2. Parker Vacumatic Slender, Circa 1936 3. Parker Vacuum Filler, ‘Stubby’, Circa 1932 4. Bottle of Diamine Meadow ink, small. 5. Salz Bros, Peter Pan, Gold Overlay, tiny. 6. Aikin Lambert 14k retractable, Circa 1882 7. Crystal x20 open magnifying loupe. 8. Needle nose fine point tweezers. 9. Three surface triangular metal file. 10. Plastic straw, short. 11. Linen cleaning cloth, soft. 12. Bottle of polishing liquid, small. 13. Sheet of 8000 Micro mesh polishing cloth 14. Polishing brush, two different ends. 15. Polishing cloths, 2 different types . 16. Buffing cloth, coarse weave.

 (~click on images to enlarge~)

For a number of years, this traveling pen case was enough but, in the years that followed, I found that I needed more support items! To this end, I secured a medium sized lady’s two sided cloth and clear plastic cosmetic bag, just perfect for all of the additional items! I outfitted it with the smaller pen travelling case kit plus the following:

1. A set of disposable Bic fountain pens. 2. A handful of Q tips. 3. A jar of Brasso polish, small. 4. Visconti inkpot full of Waterman purple ink 5. Lady’s Wahl pen/pencil set Circa 1928. 6. Eversharp Bantam Circa 1933. 7. Bottle of Diamine Cherry Black, small. 8. Folding glasses in small case. 9. Designer 14k Gold & Cream thin ballpoint. 10. Parker Vacumatic Standard Circa 1952. 11. Parker Vacumatic Debutante Circa 1945. 12. Parker 51 Vacumatic Deb. Circa 1947. 13. Vasoline, miniature bottle. 14. Linen napkin, soft. 15. The Illustrated Guide to Antique Writing Instruments, softcover book 16. Miller Guide to Pens, Softcover book.

I suppose any vintage pen collector would comment “What next, the kitchen sink?” (editor's note: did you notice the sink in the top photo? ;) and sure, if you are only traveling for four or five days, the smaller pen traveling kit would be just fine. But on the other hand, if your vacation is more like weeks or even a month, then the larger package is more realistic . Face it --and especially when it comes to vintage pens-- variety is the spice of life."

 Our thanks to Christopher for sharing his "travelling companions" with us!

March meeting information!

What: Vancouver Pen Club March 2023 meeting!

Where: The Branch Meeting Room (located in the basement) of the Vancouver Public Library's KITSILANO branch at 2425 Macdonald Street (between Broadway and West 8th), Vancouver, BC (*ie, the same library location as before*)

Date: Thursday March 16, 2023

Time: 6:00pm to 8:30pm (we have to leave the room by 8:30pm, as per the library's room rental policy).

Topic: Skinny/Slender Fountain Pens

Secondary Topic: Newest Acquisitions

Many thanks to Jerred for the topic/theme idea!
Hope you can make it to our meeting -- no RSVP required.

Questions? Please contact us at vancouverpenclub@gmail.com

A Super-Serious Vintage Pen Collector's Log Book

Christopher's vintage pen log book (in which he documents all of his vintage pen-related acquisitions) --photo snapped while he was on vacation in Hawaii:

(photo courtesy of Christopher ~ please click on image to enlarge)

Newest Acquisitions (Virtual "Show & Tell") ~ part 467

Aloha! Today's review is one that Christopher sent in during his Hawaiian vacation...

(photo courtesy of Christopher~ please click on image to enlarge)

Christopher writes: "One of the nicest periods in the production of Parker Vacumatic fountain pens was the Third generation between 1942 and 1948 (1955 in Canada). Further streamlining in the overall design was achieved by dropping the second (blind cap) jewel and rounding off the blind cap in a very smart design finish. Although the very successful Speedline filler could have carried on, the Second World War -now in progress- made the use of aluminum questionable. So to offset this, Parker turned to the available plastic (Lucite) for a new Vacumatic filler depressor.

This particular Parker Vacumatic is the Standard model, identified by a triple cap banding and has a Jet black matching cap jewel. As with all standard size Vacumatics, the overall dimensions are quite impressive and second only to the Vacumatic Maxima. Otherwise, most of the other features follow the design of the past Vacumatics regarding this model.

The grip section is also a matching jet black and supports a 14k Gold flexy Parker arrow factory ‘Stubbed’ nib . It is my educated guess that this pen was a special order in its day.

Personally, I was so smitten with this fine writing instrument that I have taken it with us on our vacation in Hawaii, where I will be using it frequently!"

Many thanks to Christopher for his write-up & photo of this handsome vintage fountain pen!

Newest Acquisitions (Virtual "Show & Tell") ~ part 466

I was so happy when Lawrence sent in another installment of his thoughts on his favourite fountain-pen-and-ink matchups (or what he calls "Lavalife and pens"; ). This review (Part 4) continues on after part 1, part 2 and part 3...

Lawrence's review:

This is a fairly small group which only includes a handful of pens. This group I call "Purple Pleasures" (for reasons you'll see later on LOL). This ink/pen group is basically an "offshoot" of the Syrah group (i.e., the "grail group"), and was an "unintended byproduct" of my search for the perfect colour for my grail pens. This group was based on Montblanc's Lavender purple:

(all photos courtesy of Lawrence ~ please click on images to enlarge)

It's a very nice ink actually. And it goes on brilliant purple and dries nicely without losing too much of the colour (some inks tend to become "desaturated" as they dry). I got this ink while I waited for the Syrah. I got it knowing that this is definitely not burgundy, but just want to try to see how it looks (a part of me almost felt like I was having an "affair" of sorts, because I deviated from the original goal / "the one true path"..blah blah blah...basically I know I have "sinned" so there... LOL).

Most of my grail pens are black so they match well with it. But instead of the gothic vampire vibe, this gives me more of a "happy" Sesame Street's The Count vibe. Still good, but not too satisfying for me.

Because of my "hoarding" tendencies LOL, I, of course, have more than one purple/violet ink. The other one I got was J. Herbin's Poussiere de Lune. Most J. Herbin inks have this "faded" look, but this one is actually quite "saturated" (relatively speaking). I admit, I got this ink because of the name LOL (I know it's a silly reason to get an ink but whatever):

Although purples / violets look okay with most of my black pens, I have never really warmed up to them. It's like when stories portray people having affairs, it's usually like a side thing LOL. Anyway joking aside, although these colours are pretty good, they are sort of not quite the "nostalgia blue" nor are they the "grail/Syrah burgundy" group, so they are kind of stuck in the middle, and almost ignored. Until fate intervened....

On a shopping spree at Nikaido, I obtained an unusually coloured pen (at least for me it is). This is the Faber Castell Neo-slim olive green, which I lovingly named my "Tiki pen" (I have reviewed this pen before):

Because I have never had a pen of this colour before, I also decided to look for an ink to match it. Maja helped me find a good match using the colour wheel and I ended up with Kyo no oto sakuranezumi:

This ink was a great match for the Neo-slim. This ink has a similar consistency to my J. Herbin inks, and actually also has this "faded" look. Funnily enough, compared to Poussiere de Lune, it's even more faded. However after a few weeks of using this ink, I found that the Neo-slim, due to its unusual nib design, did not quite love this ink. It writes rather dry and suffers from "hard starts". It's quite a shame. However this incident renewed my interest in purple / violet inks again. Anyway, I discovered a few of my pens (in addition to the Neo-slim) that will occasionally work with this particular colour group from time to time.

My Waterman Elegance is one of these pens. I sort of got the idea from an online review of this pen using purple ink, so I tried it out and it's okay. However I do have another ink group that this pen is more suitable for (which I will talk about in future installments):

Another pen that I tried with this group is the Kaweco sport brass. I don't really feel anything for this particular colour match, but this pen happens to be a 1.3 stub and it shows off a really cool shading effect from the purple inks. The Montblanc Lavender Purple, in particular, looks great with this larger nib size:

My demonstrators of course will take whatever ink. The one the I have using purple is my TWSBI 580:

The only grail pen I have that ended up regularly sampling the purple is my Visconti Homo Sapiens 1.3 stub. Again, this also because of the stub nib and the way the purple inks look with thicker lines:

As for my Neo-slim, my match-making attempts did not pan out very well. It ended up leaving this group due to the problems it had with the nib drying up. However, there is a nice closure to this saga....as of this writing the Neo-slim is happily on a heavenly escapade with an Italian black ink named Leonardo (courtesy of Maja) LOL.

That's it for this group. 

Wow! Our thanks to Lawrence for another fun and informative review (and all the photos that accompanied it). Thank you for the kind words, Lawrence; I can't wait for the next installment :)

Seeing red - February meeting report! (with lots of photos)

February's meeting was our second best-attended (31 is the record) --26 VPC members including seven brand-new members (Akemi, Gurmeet, Lisa, Luc, Mandy, Sally, and Syd -- a new record!) -- came to our meeting at the Kitsilano branch of the Vancouver Public Library on February 16th. I took lots of photos, so without further ado.....

(~please click on images to enlarge~)

Our meeting theme that night was "Your Favourite Red Fountain Pens and/or Red Inks" and we saw many wonderful examples, including these four Italian-made beauties (top to bottom): Jerred's Filcao 'Roxi' (reviewed by Jerred here),  Glenn's brand-new Leonardo 'Supernova' "Star Light", Jerred's modern Conklin 'Nozac' "Toledo Red" and his Delta 'Oblo' ("oblo" being the Italian word for "porthole").

Brand-new member Akemi brought a bright red Jinhao 'X450' and her uber-cool Benu 'Skull and Roses' "Red Rose" fountain pen for our meeting theme!

(From Benu's official website: "Inspired by one of the most popular motifs that represents the eternal struggle of good vs evil, the Red Rose fountain pen has been crafted in the dramatic red color.")

We also saw several very nice vintage fountain pens at our meeting, including this red Esterbrook 'SJ' model (photo above) belonging to Phil ...




We also saw a modern red Esterbrook fountain pen---Julienne's aptly-named Esterbrook 'Estie Oversize' "Sparkle"! Below it is her new London Pen Company 'Christopher 13' fountain pen, made by Sean Allott, a pen maker located in London, Ontario.




Sally--another brand-new VPC member---brought her own London Pen Company fountain pen to the meeting- a 'Christopher 14' model (which is the same length as the 'Christopher '13', but chunkier) in Jonathon Brooks' amazing "Primary Manipulation" resin. Sally's pen is shown sporting a custom (reground) nib.

Above: Julienne's London Pen Company pen next to a stylish burgundy Pilot 'Elite 95S' fountain pen belonging to new VPC member Mandy. The Pilot is a pocket pen, but when posted, becomes a full-sized pen.

Hadi's handsome Pilot 'Custom 845' (made of ebonite and coated with urushi lacquer) which he purchased in Japan...

Rene brought a multitude of red fountain pens to show us, including this stunning Platinum ' 3776 Century Limited Edition - Kinshu" (which came out in 2021), and a vintage flat-top made of mottled red hard rubber.


More of Rene's red pens (top to bottom): a nice mottled red hard rubber vintage pen with a domed cap, a Jinhao '5000' dragon fountain pen, a mysterious hand-painted fountain pen marked "Secap" and "Made in Japan" that Rene found in Paris several years ago, a Kaweco 'Special Red' (part of Kaweco's 'Collection' line) and a vintage Parker '45'.

Alejandra's elegant Pilot 'Decimo', a slimmer version of Pilot's ever-popular 'Vanishing Point' model...

Above: Chris' Pilot 'Custom 74' "Wine Red" and his new Faber-Castell 'Ambition' "Rhombus" fountain pen

Chris' beautiful 'Platinum '3776 Century' "Bourgogne" and my brand-new Platinum '3776 Balance Maestro' in black below it...

They might look very similar but, unlike the '3776 Century' model, the lower-priced '3776 Balance Maestro' comes with a gold-plated steel nib and doesn't have Platinum's "Slip & Seal" cap closure mechanism to prevent the capped pen from drying out (I'll do a review of it in the near future, but I wanted to show it next to its "rich cousin" in this blog post!)

Peter's gorgeous Nakaya 'Long Cigar' Kuro-tamenuri fountain pen , handmade of urushi lacquer over ebonite. The pen has a double broad nib that was ground to a 0.8 mm stub---nice! (Peter actually did a video review of this beautiful fountain pen on his YouTube Channel a few years ago -- link)

Over time, the semi-transparent natural urushi lacquer matures and becomes more transparent, allowing the base layer colour (in this case, a deep red) to become visible --a wonderful, natural transformation...

Next to my new Jinhao 'X450' (top pen) is a Aurora 'Optima' in "Bordeaux" resin that I brought in for the meeting's primary theme (your favourite red fountain pens/inks). I bought the Aurora from a fellow Fountain Pen Network member in 2010, and it was probably the most I'd spent on a fountain pen up to that time. 

Although I have many red fountain pens, the Aurora is among my favourites because of its classic, timeless design... and its slightly-toothy 14K gold nib; Aurora makes their own fountain pen nibs and I've always liked writing with this pen because of the feedback you get from the nib. I forgot to bring it with me, but my favourite red ink is Robert Oster's "Australian Shiraz", a gift from my fellow VPCer Alejandra (thanks again, Alejandra! :)


We also saw some really nice red inks...and ink swatches! Our thanks go out to John for bringing in the swatches above; there's nothing like seeing how an ink looks on paper! (the way ink looks on a screen can be very different, as we all know :/

Anna was good enough to fill her new "Mint Blue" TWSBI 'Eco-T' (oops!) with Robert Oster 'Australian Syrah' ink, so I wrote a few words with it. As you can see, it's a lovely, rich colour...

Our secondary meeting theme is always "Newest Acquisitions" so I brought my new Jinhao 'X450' in spiral red lacquer, and my little orange and white Kaigelu '316 Mini' fountain pen (purchased from one of my favourite sellers on Etsy - 'esybuy')

More new acquisitions brought in by our members! (top to bottom): Jerred's brushed stainless steel Sheaffer 'Targa' with factory italic nib, an Italian-made syringe-filler owned by Rene, a Sheaffer Levenger 'Connaisseur' (not sure whose it is, but it's a very nice pen), and two eye-catching fountain pens recently acquired by John--- a cheery TWSBI 'Eco-T' "Saffron" and an iridescent TWSBI 'Diamond 580' "Iris".

More new pens - (above photo, bottom to top) Anna's new Kaweco 'Sport' in "Smooth Sage" and her black vintage Pilot 'Elite' (which she filled with Diamine "Strauss" ink), Alejandra's vintage Eversharp 'Skyline' and a TWSBI '580 ALR' "Punch Pink" (I can't remember who brought it in, but I own one and love mine!)

Above: Some of Rene's newest acquisitions--two tiny vintage fountain pens, a vintage fountain pen with a snake clip, and a vintage Parker 'Duofold Senior' Lapis" that Rene bought as a "self-gift" for his birthday (happy belated birthday, Rene! :)

A closer look at that cool snake clip...

Alvin's classy stainless steel Pilot 'Elite' with crosshatch pattern, which came out in the 1970s. For more info on Japanese pocket fountain pens, check out this superb article on Richard Binder's excellent reference site.

Phil's modern Kaweco 'Original' (top) fountain pen and Anna's vintage Montblanc '32' fountain pen...


The Montblanc '32' has a 14K inset nib and was first produced between 1946 and 1970, according to the informative CollectibleStars.com website...

Last, but certainly not least--a charming miniature silver notebook and mechanical pencil belonging to Stuart! The inscription reads: "Compliments of Bauman-Massa Jewelry Co. Commercial Building St Louis, MO"). Stuart thinks it was made around the turn of the previous century.

Stuart also brought in some items he previously reviewed for this site --a gorgeous Sheaffer desk base made of Norwegian marble (reviewed here), a Sheaffer ballpoint counter set (reviewed here), a handsome Sheaffer 'PFM V' fountain pen in burgundy (shown here), and one of his Faber-Castell 'Ambition' fountain pens (this one) that he filled with his favourite red ink--Graf von Faber-Castell's "India Red". Stuart also showed us two new fountain pens---a brand-new Parker 'Sonnet' in brushed stainless steel he bought from the Vancouver Pen Shop at their new location's grand opening and a vintage Waterman C/F.

Many thanks to all of our new members for coming to your first Vancouver Pen Club meeting, and for bringing some pens for us to see. I didn't photograph them, but I remember Gurmeet's lovely Parker 'Jotter XL' "Rose Gold" ballpoint, the beautiful vintage (ca. 1929) Morrison fountain pen with gold overlay that Lisa showed us, Luc's marvelous red fountain pens (a Penlux, a Conklin 'Duragraph" "Elements - Fire", and a Pilot 'Vanishing Point'), as well as a wonderful vintage Waterman '52' with gold overlay that Syd brought in.

Thank you to everyone who came to our February meeting ... whether you brought in anything for our topics or not! I'll be posting our March meeting info here on our website --as a blog post, and also at the top of each page in big red letters--- as soon as I confirm the venue and date.

(~Blog post and photos by Maja~)