TWSBI Inkwell Review

When I first became interested in fountain pens and the variety of inks that are available, I made a large bet on Noodler's Heart of Darkness. This was at a point in my fountain pen journey before I knew about ink samples. So, I purchased a 4.5 oz bottle of Heart of Darkness from Amazon that I soon discovered was impossible to use with a fountain pen converter because the bottle opening was too narrow. It was meant to be used with an eyedropper only. I was disappointed, to say the least.

I got by with a syringe for a while. I filled my converter pens with the syringe after dunking it in the large bottle.

Then I discovered TWSBI. I love the two TWSBI pens I own, and their inkwell caught my eye at first because it was, well, eye-catching. But I soon realized that this would be my solution to the awkward Heart of Darkness problem I got myself into.

So what makes this inkwell special? It makes filling TWSBI pens extremely easy, and also works with all other fountain pens.

Before we dive in, it's important to note that only the TWSBI Diamond and Mini lines work with the proprietary TWSBI port on this inkwell.

How it works with TWSBI fountain pens

Using the inkwell with TWSBI fountain pens is a piece of cake. Simply give the inkwell a light shake and unscrew the top lid to expose the TWSBI refilling port. To fill a TWSBI, just unscrew the nib section and plug the barrel section into the port on the inkwell. Fill the pen as usual, remove the barrel section from the inkwell, and replace the nib section. That's it! No mess, no fuss.

There's a small metal tube that goes into the bottle that allows the pen to draw up the ink. If you don't think very hard about it, it seems like magic as you fill the pen.

How it works with all other fountain pens

For all other fountain pens, the inkwell works like most every other bottled ink out there. Unscrew the second lid section to expose the traditional ink filling cone. The cone is rather large, so I imagine it will accommodate most fountain pens no matter their size. Filling is the same as other ink bottles -- dunk the nib into the ink, and fill the pen. The downside to this method is the clean-up after filling the pen. Let's be honest, the clean-up isn't difficult, but the TWSBI filling method is so cool!

I really appreciate the quality of the TWSBI inkwell. The 50 mL reservoir is made of glass, and the lids are made of aluminum in your choice of color. This inkwell solved my Heart of Darkness problem, and I've even considered getting another (or more) just because I like how it looks so much. If you have a troublesome ink bottle, then this just might be the inkwell for you.

The TWSBI inkwell is available on Amazon in an assortment of colors.

Diamine Salamander Ink Review

Diamine Salamander is one of the latest inks to be introduced by the venerable British manufacturer. While you wouldn't be incorrect that the name harkens to the amphibian found in various regions around the globe, there is actually a little more behind the name. The Good Captain, a member of the Fountain Pen Network, was actually involved in the naming:

Working in collaboration with Phil Davies at Diamine I was asked to come up with a name for a sample of the ink he'd sent me to have a look at, labelled 'No 93'. I was intrigued and Salamander was born. It reminded me of the colours of Royal Flying corps bi-planes during WWI so I had a look for some more information.

It is cool to be able to read behind the scenes notes like these. Check out the link for more details.

Salamander surprised me once I inked up my TWSBI Mini 1.5 mm stub to test with. I was expecting kind of a dark olive black ink, and while those colors come through, the depth of the color was intriguing. There is a lot of brown, a wide range of green, and a nice sheen that shows on the Rhodia paper I tested on. I tried to get a close-up of the sheen and only partially succeeded. It is not always immediately apparent, but after drying it does show up in certain light. Very cool.

The real gauge for me is if the ink will crack my every day rotation. Right now, Diamine Salamander is a no, but it is a close second tier color, around the Noodlers 54th Mass level. It will see intermediate action for sure. Well worth checking out if you are a fan of greens and browns.

(JetPens is an advertiser on The Pen Addict and I received this product at no charge.)

Doxie Flip Review

The Doxie Flip (Image via Doxie)

The fine folks at Doxie provided me with early access to their latest product, the Doxie Flip. Doxie has been a leader in the "going paperless" revolution, providing a stable of beautifully designed portable scanners. These scanners were made for loose papers: Receipts, invoices, photographs, etc. Anything of the individual sheet variety that could feed through the scanner. The Doxie Flip changes all of that, especially for users like myself.

Whereas previous models of Doxie scanners would allow you to scan your memo books if you cut them up and fed single pages through, the Flip is tailor made for scanning notebooks up to 4" x 6" (A6) in size. What exactly does that mean for me? I can scan in all of my memo books (standard 3.5" x 5.5" size - aka Field Notes and Doane Paper) without tearing them apart!

Doxie Flip loves pocket Notebooks! (Image via Doxie)

Sure, you could go the traditional big scanner route, scan your notebooks in, figure out where to import them, how to manage, edit, and organize them, and how to share them. And when is the last time your big traditional scanner left the house in your backpack? The Doxie Flip handles all of that with ease.

After opening the box and pulling the battery tab (yes, it is battery powered - no cables required!) I went straight to work scanning my notebooks. There are two dpi settings - 300 and 600 - with 300 taking about 7 seconds per scan and 600 taking about 12, with the resulting scans saved to the provided 4GB SD card. With a handful of scans in about two minutes time I popped the SD card into my MacBook to check out Doxie's software.

Doxie's included software (Image via Doxie)

Easy to install and setup, the Doxie companion software rounds out the scanning experience perfectly. Not only does it use intelligent auto adjust to bring out the best in your scans, you can manually crop and change color settings as needed. My favorite feature is "Staple" which allows you to do just that: Staple a group of scans together. This is perfect when scanning an entire notebook, or groupings of scans across different notebooks with similar themes. For example, I have a group of product sketches across several notebooks that I stapled into one group. Organization made simple.

Once your scans are imported, edited, and organized to your liking, the Doxie software allows you to save the files locally or send them automatically to any app on your computer. In addition, the software allows you to send directly to your Evernote and Dropbox accounts with the click of a button.

Below is a gallery of scans from my old notebooks (some more worn out than others):

The Doxie Flip gets its name from the ability to use the scanner like a traditional flatbed, or remove the lid and flip the scanner over to scan larger items. I used it traditionally for the most part, but you can flip it and scan bigger areas and stitch the images together to form a larger image. This AutoStich feature will be part of a software upgrade available in December. You can see examples now on the Flip's Samples page.

If it wasn't obvious by the tone of this review, I am positively giddy about the Doxie Flip. It fills a need in my workflow that I have been trying to find a simple solution to for years. Readers and podcast listeners are always asking how to digitally scan and organize their notebooks and I have never had a clear answer until now: The Doxie Flip.

I have never had so much fun scanning in my life.

Doxie's transparent scanning window (Image via Doxie)

The Doxie Flip is available for around $149 from Amazon (affiliate links), along with the Doxie Flip Case for $19 to protect your Flip on the go. If you order directly from the Doxie Store you will also get the Doxie Limited Edition Field Notes notebook, featuring a beautifully textured French Paper Speckletone 80# Cream Cordtone cover. (Note to Field Notes collectors - this is a 24 page memo book, not a standard 48 page book. UPDATE: I was wrong - this is a standard 48 page memo book. My apologies!)

Thanks again to Doxie and Apparent Corporation for sending me the Doxie Flip to review.

Flip Doxie over and scan anything (Image via Doxie)

Optional Doxie Flip case (Image via Doxie)