Hello and welcome to Issue#44. The monsoon has well and truly set in, and the weather has turned really pleasant, though the rain is a bit of a pain if you have to go out daily.

In this issue, we have a basic primer on burping, take a look at a big pen and a small pen, check out a pain-free way to buy Chinese pens in India and finally have a Pelikan Hubs announcement.

Pretty much every fountain pen user is familiar with this phenomenon where as you are writing, a blob of ink descends on to the paper. Obviously, this is neither expected nor appreciated, and a thorough search to find the root cause is undertaken, usually with the help of fellow enthusiasts. Today, I wanted to break down this issue, usually called burping.

As one of the most knowledgeable persons in all of fountain-pen-hood put it, a fountain pen is nothing but a tank of ink with a controlled leak at one end. Naturally, this leak sometimes becomes bigger than intended, resulting in a burp and a blob of ink on your paper.

Nib, Feed Section Issues

If the nib and feed are not fitted snugly into the section or the housing, it could cause burping. The nib and feed have to be seated within either the section or the housing without any gap - this is usually not an issue unless you have been swapping nibs.

Another cause of a gap could be the nib housing not being exactly compatible with the section, causing a gap between the housing and the section. A variation on this issue where the nib housing was made out of a material that would deform when overtightened, causing it to jump the threads was the reason behind Junlai replacing a bunch of nib housings for the 930 at the beginning of this year.

The issue also happens when your housing is not screwed in all the way into the section.

Temperature and pressure changes

These are common causes of burping in eyedropper pens. When there is more air than ink in the barrel, a temperature change causes the air to expand, pushing the ink out of the nib and feed.

This can happen suddenly (like when you move from an airconditioned to a non-airconditioned space in a tropical place) or gradually (like when the air is heated up by the warmth of your hand as you keep writing. Either way, the result is the same - an unexpected blob of ink on your paper.

Similarly, if you are in an airplane, the reduced air pressure once you are airborne allows the air in the barrel to expand, pushing ink out of the nib and feed.

Ways to avoid burping

Pre-warming the pen by holding it in your hand with the nib up makes sure all the expansion is done before you start writing.

Keeping your pen always filled is a bit of an everyday pain, but a surefire way to avoid burping.

Having a pen barrel made of a material that insulates it from temperature changes is a way to avoid burping. With ebonite, a really thick barrel seems to help. With modern materials like ultem, this is achieved with relatively thin walls as well.

Having a feed with enough finnage to catch the drop of ink before it reaches your paper is the last line of defense. Once the ink has made its way out of the section, if it flows by way of the fins, it can be trapped by extra finnage. If it plops out of the breather hole, no amount of fancy finnage can help.

When you carry your pen with you on an airplane, carrying it nib up, with a full fill of ink can usually prevent burping. A better alternative is to carry a pen with a shutoff valve which allows you to close the ink supply to the section. This is the most foolproof way not to have an inkcident when you are flying.

Most of this information is pretty basic, and well-known to anyone who has been in the hobby for a while. The point of putting it down here is to ensure that a little primer is available always for anyone who is looking anew or wants a refresher.

I recently acquired a big pen - the much-vaunted Junlai 930 - and a small one - a Benu Pixie.

The Junlai 930 has been discussed a lot by pretty much every significant fountain pen reviewer. With a capped length of 166mm, uncapped length of 151mm with 32.9mm of exposed nib on a 8.4mm diameter feed, there is no denying its bigness. The short section, with a girth varying from 12.8mm to 13.5mm, is surprisingly comfortable to hold. The entire pen is so well-balanced that you forget how big it is when you write with it.

I got the B nib - it is a smooth wet writer out of the box, putting down a line between 0.55 and 0.6 mm wide, and is easily one of the best writers in my collection.

I’ve had mixed feelings about Benu pens ever since I came across them online. The bling was, to put it mildly, a bit overpowering for me. The bright colours are alright by me, but the gold and shiny bits looked a bit over the top. However, all of this changed when I attended the Chennai Pen Show earlier this year, and had the opportunity to see them in person and handle them. The designs, over the top though they are, nevertheless worked really well, and the pens were quite attractive to look at. In hand they felt really well made. That put the Benu on my to-buy-and-try list.

When I got the opportunity to pick up a Benu Pixie Aurora Gold at a good price, I jumped at it. The Pixie (90.0mm capped and 85mm uncapped) is so small that it can take only a short standard international cartridge. It has a 17.6mm exposed nib with a 5mm feed diameter, a Schmidt B. The section girth is 9.1mm to 10.9mm. Like the Kaweco Sport, it has to be posted to be used. However, the writing experience with this is like a regular-sized pen - nothing small about it. The posted pen sits comfortably in my hand, and the Schmidt nib delivers copious quantities of ink on demand without any hesitation, putting down a line width between 0.5 and 0.55 mm. I am so enjoying writing with it that it has become my Techo Locking pen - which means it will always be with me and get used a lot!

Anyone in the hobby knows that there are a fantastic selection of pens that are coming out of China. Here’s a hobbyist who has turned his knack for finding beautiful pens at reasonable prices into a side hustle.

Fountain pen enthusiast Het Shah has launched a service under the name Chowmein Guerilla. He helps fellow enthusiasts based in India to find and buy beautiful pens from Chinese websites like Taobao and Tmall.

Het is a chow mein fanatic. Meanwhile, others often joked he was doing “guerrilla marketing,” referring to his sharing details of Chinese pens in hobby groups. So he leaned in, turned the joke on its head, and launched Chowmein Guerrilla.

What was meant to be just a playful side project has now clocked over 50 orders.

In Het’s own words, the value he brings “means more access, less markup madness, and a lot more variety in your pen case.”

Check him out on Instagram at @thechowmeinguerilla

The Pelikan Hubs 2025 announcement is finally here. Released on a Pelikan Passion post on Instagram and Facebook, the announcement confirms the rumours that have been swirling about. Here is the full text of the announcement:

It remains to be seen if the registration will be a one or two-step process, and how long the registration window will be open.

Nevertheless, this is good news for all fountain pen enthusiasts - the global flagship event of the fountain pen hobby is here for one more edition!

Share your take on fountain pens and related things in one (or more!) of our upcoming issues.

Any and all content you share will belong to you and will be credited to your name (or a pen name of your choice) and linked to any of your online profiles. Ideal content would be a write-up between 200 and 400 words with 1 to 5 images.

Here are a few things that can go in the Fountain Pen Weekly:

• Pen / ink / paper ownership experience

• Favorites in FP, ink, paper etc.

• Your social handles with your FP content - Insta, FB, Twitter, Reddit

• Any FP-related content you want to call out - articles, podcasts, videos.

If you have any other ideas as well, do share, and I will be happy to think about it.

That’s all from me this week.

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