I recently discovered the Platinum Carbon Desk Fountain Pen and absolutely love it! It has quickly become my new "go to" pen for sketching. The best thing about this pen and the ink it uses, is how quickly it dries. You can do a sketch and almost immediately paint over it with watercolors without any smudging. The bad thing about the pen to me though, is that it is designed as a desk pen and thus has a very long handle. It is kind of unwieldy to draw with and very limiting in it's portability. However, this can be fixed in seconds with a saw.
I ordered the pen and some refills from JetPens.com.
The front of the pen package.
The back of the package.
Unleashing the pen from it's wrapper.
As you can see the handle is way too long.
Here you can see how much extra room there is in the handle once the ink cartridge is lined up.
I just took a piece of drafting tape to mark where the cartridge ends in the pen to avoid cutting it too short.
A hack saw and a block of wood to hold the pen against will do the trick.
Be sure to use caution while cutting off the end of the pen.
Here it is done in the correct way.
And here is the incorrect way!
Next just sand smooth the end and the edges of the pen. Unless of course, you have made the cut in the incorrect way. If that is the case, immediately go to the emergency room.
Some folks take another step and fill the end of the pen with epoxy, but I can't be bothered with that.
Insert the ink cartridge...
...and then screw the pen together. You now have a much more portable Platinum Carbon Desk Fountain Pen.
Here is a size comparison next to a Pigma Micron.
Another advantage of cutting down the handle is that the cap will now fit tightly on the end while in use.
Here is a drawing I did a couple of weeks ago using the Platinum Carbon Desk Fountain Pen. I really like the line from it and the fact that it dries so quickly! Order yours here from JetPens.com.
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