Hello, Flourish Friends!
I ordered a pen from Pierre of Desiderata Pens
http://www.desideratapens.com/. It is very beautiful and feels wonderful to the touch. It's lightweight and the finish is very smooth. It uses a replaceable Zebra g nib. You fill the little ink bladder by squeezing the bladder, dipping the open end below the surface of a bottle of ink and then releasing your hold on the bladder. The suction acts to draw the ink up into the bladder. You then insert the open end of the bladder onto the nib end of the pen & screw the bottom back onto the nib holder. It holds a good amount of ink & you can write a lot without having to refill it again. You have to wad up a paper towel or napkin to hold the top of the bladder when attaching it back on the nib holder, or you'll get ink on your fingers. (Like that's a problem we don't all already have? Ha, ha!)
I'm attaching a photo of an alphabet exemplar, so that you can see that it gives decent thicks and thins. My lettering is not very good, as I haven't written with a straight pen (v. an oblique nib holder) in a very long time. You'll note a lot of ink splatters, particularly as I got toward the bottom of the page. I think that as I got closer to myself, the angle of the pen became too sharp, causing the ink to splatter. I'm going to have to re-learn how to maintain a proper angle without an oblique holder!
PROS: beautiful, easy to carry around, lightweight, holds lots of ink, fun to write with, relatively inexpensive, cap and base screw together very snugly!
CONS: not an oblique holder, so you have to readjust/relearn the proper angle to hold your pen. It can be finicky, as sometimes the ink doesn't want to flow. Putting just a dab of saliva on the tip seems to make that stop happening. I can't explain why, but I like to have the cap of a pen "seat" on the back of the pen while the pen is in use. I think I like the extra weight on the back of the pen? This pen is not designed to do that, so you have to remove the cap & just set it aside. And, this' just picky, but instead of having to fill the bladder, I wish that this pen would accept the little plastic cartridges of ink that come pre-filled. I use those often for travel and they are super convenient!
I haven't had to change the nib yet, but I am scared about how hard it will be. Pierre sent detailed instructions and has a YouTube video to walk you through it. I'll report back with an update after I have changed the nib.
All-in-all, this is an outstanding pen and I recommend it. I believe it has solved my frequent problem of not being able to do pointed pen practice while traveling on a plane! I've been stuck using broad-edge pens (like Pilot Parallel pens), as you can't dip your pen into an open ink bottle while in flight. Next trip, I'm going to fill up this pen with ink, throw it in my carry-on, and go! Every pointed pen enthusiast should treat themselves to one of Pierre's beautiful pens!!
I'm not able to post all of the attachments to this one post, as they are too large. I'll post the sampler to this post & then repost with pix of the pen itself!
Janis