Nice one adrock. My 600 arrived very quickly! I need to take a trip to Ryman this weekend and get some more Rhodia paper. I've currently been using one of Ryman's own bound notebooks for note taking in computing and it's been pretty damn good! There's a small bit of feathering where I squish my letters a little but other than that it's been awesome for £4.
got the email saying it was shipped last night, can't imagine it'll take too long. Did you get stung by customs or RM handling?
You'll only get stung for customs by RM if the stated value on the customs sticker is over £60, so the pencil should be fine, given that we only paid £12. (Yes, I said "we". My pencil will shortly be winging its way to our shores, nestling alongside yours)
Not sure about that. I bought some of the sunski glasses from massdrop (about 30 bucks?) and got hit.
I thought the 'cut off' was £18 /*edit*/ Paying VAT You don’t have to pay VAT on most goods sent from another EU country. For goods sent from non-EU countries you have to pay VAT if they’re worth more than £15 and on all items sent to the UK from the Channel Islands. If it’s a gift, for example from a friend or relative, you only have to pay VAT if it’s worth more than £36. You must always pay VAT on the following goods, it doesn’t matter how much they cost or where they’re sent from: alcohol tobacco products perfumes and toilet waters The value you pay VAT on includes: local sales taxes postage, packaging insurance any duty already charged Paying customs duty You pay duty on goods from outside the EU if they’re above a certain value. Type and value of goods Customs duty Merchandise £0 - £135 No duty Merchandise above £135 and gifts above £630 Duty depends on the type of goods and their country of origin, call the helpline (duty less than £9 isn’t collected) Gifts less than £630 2.5% flat rate (duty less than £9 isn’t collected) The value of the items includes local sales taxes, postage, packaging and insurance.
i could be wrong or it may have ended but for a while there computer components/spares were considered duty free to import. you still got VATed and RM handling charge though (which is the real kicker when they charge you 8 quid for allowing you to pick it up from them).
That's the thing that annoys me most. Royal mail hit you with an £8 charge for the work they put in for dealing with the customs payments. What if you are capable of dealing with it yourself and didn't want them to do it for you? I don't mind being charged for a service as long as I have asked for that service to be performed. Don't just take it upon yourselves to do something and then expect to be paid.
My mistake. This must have changed recently, because when I investigated a couple of years ago, the limit was a flat £60. Almightyrastus, if you think the £8 fee is steep, my wife recently had to pay for a letter with the wrong postage on it. Postage shortfall: 8 pence. RM's handling fee? £1.
it's like city councils. they don't have to be fair or provide decent customer service, because no one has the choice to replace their service with another. for the amount of mail i send and receive compared with the amount of parcels i send/receive, if i could switch all my mail over to DPD it would've already happened.
Had a massive fail this weekend when my Lamy 2000 blackwood ballpen ended up in the washing machine So thinking about getting a replacement and upgrading to a Rollerball at the same time. Anyone have any good recommendations?
You destroyed a Lamy 2000? For shame. Sadly, I've not got a clue about rollerballs, I know my dad also uses the same pen as you (formerly) used and it writes beautifully.
Monteverde do a rollerball that you can refill like a fountain pen from bottled ink. It's in their Invincia line.
Maybe someone can help me out with something. I've recently startedd using my Lamy at work, and the way it writes in my moleskine has changed completely. When i previously tried it, it feathered quite badly and there was a fair bit of bleedthrough. tried it yesterday and today and it's not feathering and there's less bleedthrough than with my rollerball. The only thing i can think that's changed is that i've refilled the pen. Now, i shake the bottle before refilling (no idea if i'm mean't to, it seemed appropriate), Does anyone know whether this would have any effect in terms of: a) should i be shaking the bottle before refilling? b) does ink separate out if left to stand too long? c) would anything else explain what i'm seeing? i know moleskine paper is very hit and miss, but this is in the same notebook, same pen, same nib and same ink. either way, i am enjoying being able to use it at work, it's a hell of a lot smoother than the rollerball, which i still love.
Less pressure when writing? The more pressure you use the more the tines of the nib will open and the more ink will flow. Another option is that there might have been a tiny amount of movement between the feed and the nib which has caused the pen to write a little drier, not that probable with a Lamy due to the way that the nibs are mounted on them but still a possibility. Moleskines are not too bad on consistency within the same book but it could be that you have a slightly different surface on that particular page than you have been used to. Lastly ink, most inks don't require remixing unless they have solids in them, such as Mont Blanc Midnight Blue or some of the J Herbin special editions which have a gold sheen to them but it can't hurt to give it a quick swill around before opening. You should be able to see if there has been any kind of sedimentation if you tip the bottle prior to opening.
How not to remove your feed. The other half of the feed really doesn't want to come out...might just replace the pen. Namiki falcon Fine perhaps?
So I may have managed to snag myself a complete set of Rotring 600 MK1 (FP, BP and a pencil). After doing some research it seems I will need to use a "Piston Converter". The following seems to have gotten good reviews. http://www.thewritingdesk.co.uk/showproduct.php?id=301 I'm new to the fountain pen world so I'm looking for some advice on the best ink to get my started to use with the 600 fountain pen. In addition I'm trying to work out which refills will work with the ball pen. As I believe it comes with blue ink and I much prefer black. I understand it may accept "Parker style" refills? Apologies for the all the questions bit a of a noob here
I'm using a Faber Castell converter and Diamine Oxblood in my 600 FP right now. All the Diamine inks I own are actually pretty nice in my 600 (Royal Blue, Prussian Blue, Oxblood) as well as Lamy blue-black and Quink washable blue and permanent black.
