What is the best fountain pen for a beginner?

The Pilot Metropolitan, at about $18. It is the cheapest pen in this archive that gives up nothing structurally: a brass body with real weight, a steel nib, and a cartridge/converter filling system that lets you move to bottled ink whenever you want.

Ten pens in the almanac sit at Tier I, from the $4 Platinum Preppy to the $80 TWSBI Diamond 580 AL, and the spread between them is not really about quality. It is about which filling system you want to live with. If you would rather never handle a bottle, the Preppy or the $20 Platinum Plaisir take cartridges only and seal well enough to sit unused for months. If you know you want bottled ink from day one, the $33 TWSBI Eco is a true piston filler with a visible 1.7ml tank. The full argument, pen by pen, is in Choosing your first fountain pen.

Should I buy a cartridge, converter, or piston fountain pen?

Buy cartridge/converter unless you have a reason not to. It is the most common system in this archive by a wide margin, 22 of the 40 curated pens, and it is the only one that leaves both doors open: use the maker's cartridges now, drop in a converter and fill from any bottle later.

Cartridge-only pens like the Preppy and the Kaweco Classic Sport are simpler and cheaper but tie you to one supply. Piston fillers, 10 of the 40, hold more ink and skip cartridges entirely, at the cost of being harder to flush and impossible to refill away from a bottle. The mechanism decides more about daily life with the pen than the nib does.

What do fountain pen nib sizes EF, F, M, and B mean?

They describe the width of the line the nib lays down, from extra fine through fine and medium to broad, but the letters are not standardised between countries.

In this archive a Japanese fine measures 0.3 to 0.4mm while a German or French fine measures 0.4 to 0.5mm, and a Japanese medium measures 0.5 to 0.6mm against a European medium at 0.6mm. A Platinum F is 0.3mm; a Pelikan F is 0.4 to 0.5mm. The practical rule: a Japanese nib runs roughly one size finer than the European nib wearing the same letter. Buy a Western medium if you want a Japanese broad.

Why does my fountain pen ink feather or bleed through the paper?

Because the sheet is absorbing ink faster than it can dry on the surface. Feathering is ink spreading sideways along the paper fibres, giving furry line edges; bleed-through is ink travelling down through the sheet to the other side.

Both are governed by the paper's sizing and coating, which control how much the fibres drink, not by how thick the paper is. A wetter pen, a broader nib, and a more saturated ink all make it worse on the same sheet. If an ink misbehaves, change the paper before you blame the bottle: all 30 curated papers in this almanac score 1 or 2 out of 5 for feathering, which is why they are in the archive at all.

What paper weight (gsm) is best for fountain pens?

Weight is the wrong measurement to shop on. The curated papers here run from 28 to 120 gsm, and gsm does not predict behaviour.

Fifty-two gsm Tomoe River S outperforms an 80 gsm Leuchtturm on both measures. Heavier paper is thicker, so it hides show-through better, but what actually stops ink spreading is surface sizing and coating. Look for a paper described as heavily or extremely surface sized rather than for a number. Thin, well-coated Japanese paper beats thick, lightly sized paper for fountain pen use almost every time.

Why is Tomoe River paper famous, and is Tomoe River S different?

Because it is 52 gsm, thin enough to read as tracing paper, yet coated well enough that ink sits on the surface instead of sinking in, which produces exceptional sheen and lets a notebook hold hundreds of pages without bulk.

Tomoegawa made the original on its No. 9 machine and announced the end of production in 2021. Sanzen bought the rights and the recipe, and the sheet sold today as Tomoe River S comes off different machines in a different mill. It is not the same paper. The S lets ink sink a fraction deeper: lines crisp up, dry time falls by ten to twenty percent, show-through retreats, and sheen stays abundant but loses its most theatrical edge. The original is a stage; the S is a desk. The full adjudication is in Tomoe River, before and after.

Do I need special paper for a fountain pen?

Not special, but not arbitrary either. Ordinary copier paper is lightly sized and will feather and bleed with most fountain pen inks, particularly with a wet or broad nib.

What you need is a sheet with enough surface sizing to keep ink from soaking sideways into the fibres, which is the single property every one of the 30 papers in this archive shares. That covers a wide range of prices and formats, from a Rhodia pad to cotton letter stock. If you write with an extra fine nib and a dry ink you can get away with a great deal; the wetter and broader you go, the more the paper decides the outcome.

Will fountain pen ink bleed through a Leuchtturm1917?

Sometimes, and it depends far more on your pen than on the notebook. The 80 gsm Leuchtturm1917 Medium A5 scores 3 out of 5 for bleed-through, the worst of the 30 papers in this archive and the only one to score above 2.

The reason is sizing, not weight. That sheet is lightly internally sized, so ink is absorbed into the fibre rather than held on the surface. The same brand's 120 gsm Bullet Journal edition is a different paper with light surface sizing, and it scores 1 out of 5 for both bleed-through and feathering. If you are choosing between the two for fountain pen use, they are not interchangeable.

What decides the outcome on the standard A5 is the nib. Three scored combinations in this almanac use it: a 0.5 mm fine with a wet ink scores 59, another 0.5 mm fine with a wet ink scores 60, and a 0.35 mm Sailor Naginata medium-fine with the drier Diamine Oxblood scores 83. Go finer and drier and the notebook holds. Go broad and wet and it will not. The side-by-side against a Rhodia No. 16 shows where the difference sits.

Which paper shows the most sheen?

Only three papers in this archive score 4 or better out of 5 for sheen visibility, and two of them score 5: Tomoe River S at 52 gsm and the Hobonichi Techo, which is printed on the same class of sheet. The third is Apica CD Premium at 4.

All three are heavily or extremely surface sized, which is the property that matters: sheen is dye separating and drying on top of the ink film, so it needs the ink to pool at the edge of a stroke instead of sinking into the fibre. Twenty-five of the thirty papers here score 3, which is enough to see sheen but not enough to stage it. You also need a sheen-capable ink and enough flow to lay down a wet line — seven inks in the almanac score 5 for sheen, including Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo and Sailor Yama-dori. The trade is dry time: the two 5-scoring papers take about 38 seconds to dry under a medium nib, against 14 seconds on a Rhodia No. 16.

Does more expensive paper perform better for fountain pens?

No, and in this archive the relationship runs the other way. Of the nine curated papers with a recorded price per sheet, the cheapest two score 5 out of 5 for sheen, and the dearest scores 1.

This is not a fault in the expensive sheet. Crown Mill is cotton letter stock, and what its price buys is cotton content, a laid texture and a weight that feels like correspondence in the hand — none of which is what produces sheen. Twelve times the price per sheet buys a different object, not a better-behaved one. Price tracks material and finish; fountain pen behaviour tracks sizing. Decide which you are buying before you compare the two.

How long does fountain pen ink take to dry?

Between about 8 and 40 seconds, and the paper matters as much as the ink.

Measured on a medium nib, the inks here range from 8 seconds for Iroshizuku Ina-ho to 32 seconds for Platinum Carbon Black. Measured across papers with the same medium nib, the test runs 14 seconds on a Rhodia No. 16 and 38 seconds on Tomoe River S. Coated, low-absorbency papers hold ink on the surface, which is exactly what produces sheen and exactly what makes drying slow. Left-handed writers, and anyone who closes a notebook quickly, should choose a faster, more absorbent sheet and accept less sheen for it.

Is fountain pen ink waterproof?

Usually not. Of the 50 inks in this almanac, 39 have no meaningful water resistance at all, 4 have some, 2 have most, and only 5 are fully bulletproof.

Those five are KWZ IG Blue-Black, Noodler's Black, Platinum Carbon Black, Sailor Nano Kiwa-guro, and Sailor Nano Sei-boku. Seven inks are classed as permanent. Ordinary dye-based ink lifts off the page with a drop of water. If a document has to survive damp, or has to be archival, you need a pigment or iron gall ink specifically, and both demand more maintenance: pigment inks want flushing rather than being left to dry in a pen, and iron gall is not safe in every vintage pen.

What is the best fountain pen ink for cheap or office paper?

A dry-flowing iron gall ink. Thirty-nine of the 50 inks here score 1 out of 5 for both feathering and bleed, and the three lowest-flow among them are all iron gall, all drying in under 20 seconds on a medium nib: KWZ IG Blue-Black at 54 out of 100 for wetness, Rohrer & Klingner Salix at 56, and Platinum Classic Blue-Black at 58.

Flow is the lever, because feathering on a poorly sized sheet is a question of how much liquid arrives per millimetre of line. Less ink laid down means less to wick sideways into the fibre. Iron gall helps twice over: it runs dry, and it darkens by reaction on the page rather than by flooding pigment into it. Pair any of the three with a fine nib and most office paper becomes usable.

The cost is maintenance. All three are archival and permanent, none is listed as safe in a vintage pen, and KWZ is rated high maintenance — iron gall should not be left to dry in a pen. If you want none of that, the driest dye-based option here is Diamine Sherwood Green at 62, which is low maintenance and vintage-safe but has no water resistance.

One honest limit: this archive curates inks that behave, so 40 of its 50 inks score 1 out of 5 for feathering. It can tell you which inks are best on difficult paper. It cannot tell you which inks are worst, because those are not catalogued here.

Does the paper really change how an ink looks?

Yes, substantially, and in two directions: hue and sheen.

A warm cream sheet nudges every ink toward its own warmth, the way incandescent light warms a room, while a bright white sheet closer to true neutral lets the ink's own undertone stand unfiltered. Sheen needs somewhere to pool, so an absorbent paper pulls ink into the fibre before it can gather, and a coated sheet lets it puddle at the edge of a stroke where sheen lives. Kon-peki reads greener and calmer on cream, electric and saturated on bright white. Tsuki-yo sheens more on cream and crisps up on bright. The ink is constant; the performance is a negotiation with the sheet underneath it. Before writing off a bottle as disappointing, try it on the other kind of sheet. The pattern, ink by ink, is in Why ink reads differently on paper.

What are sheen and shading in fountain pen ink?

Shading is the variation in depth within a single stroke, pale where the ink laid thin and dark where it pooled, which makes handwriting look dimensional. Sheen is different: a separated film of dye that dries on top of the ink and flashes a contrasting colour at an angle, so a deep blue can throw copper under a lamp.

Both depend on the ink pooling rather than soaking in, which is why both need a coated, low-absorbency paper and a wet enough nib to lay down sufficient ink. The almanac scores each ink for sheen and shading visibility out of 5, and scores each paper for how well it lets them appear. A high-sheen ink on absorbent paper will show almost nothing. If you want to see the effect at its strongest, the pairings archive exists to score exactly that combination.