Why I started Minabeko
First off let me do some introduction of myself: I’m an engineer that got really into fountain pens just a few years back and went through all the stages of collecting selling and collecting again. Since I’m an engineer I tinker with most of the pens that I’ve owned and have been fascinated with various aspects of fountain pens.
Trying my hand at nib grinding was only just the beginning for me and ruining an expensive pen or two was just a road bump. What slowed me down the most was finding the information that I needed. Piecing together Reddit and Fountain Pen Network posts to try and get a clear picture of how to take apart a pen or grind an architect nib always took such a long time for me. This is why I made Minabeko, to be a place where I could condense the hard to find information into one place that was easy to understand and free for everyone.
Minabeko consists of articles each focusing on a different topic. Topics would be something like “Grinding a Cursive Italic” or “General Feed Theory”. Each one will describe with pictures how to complete some modification or give an explanation to a complicated topic. The hope is that these articles are not just recipes that you can follow, but also learning tools to help you understand the underlying principles of fountain pens. Some explanations will talk about some basic scientific principles that I will try my best to explain so anyone can understand without having any technical background.
Most importantly, I want Minabeko to be a place for community. I will not always be able to get everything right when it comes to fountain pens. Many of the principles are hard to determine definitely and there are many different types of pens, ink, papers, feeds, and nibs that I don’t know about. So I encourage anyone to send in emails with your own experiences and experiments so that this can be a real community driven resource. Anything than can advance everyone’s fountain pen knowledge is welcome.
Lastly, Minabeko is also a blog of my own fountain pen journey tinkering with pens and generally having a good time. I’ll throw up new blogs semi regularly with things that I’ve been seeing, fountain pen trends, cool new companies or products and generally create an excuse to enable my pen spending. If you want to help keep this going I would love to try to get some support on Patreon mostly for the yearly fees for this website. I would offer some exclusive perks for any Patrons. Either way I hope you enjoy Minabeko!
