Is this serious? Do students still need technical pens and even more curious do companies still make them?!

OK if you are serious: I'm with OF, Rapidograph always worked best for me, inlcuding when I worked for <name-drop warning> Ron Krueck and we bought their tiniest, smallest, hair thin size pen to draw - I kid you not - one line on a competition entry.

If you are buying the pens also buy the supersonic cleaning machine (jeez, really?? Do they really still make this stuff?!?) because proper cleaning is essential if you want them to last longer than one or two lines.

But honestly, technical pens simply won't last that long because they are such delicate instruments. It reminds me of a friend of mine who asked (rhetorically) how she could make the stockings she had to wear to work last longer? My answer: leave them at home in the drawer.

liberty: sadly he's not joking... we were required to buy a set of rapidographs in our first year. they try at every opportunity to force us off the computers and on to the mayline just in case 1983 happens again. my tablemate swears i'm some kind of dick for designing with a computer when clearly making models and hand-drawing and inking plans over and over again is the superior method. go figure...

rhino: go rapidograph. and keep those babies capped religiously. if you do you just might not need the cleaning machine. oh and when you find a pen that won't clog or drip, treat it like gold, don't lend it to anyone else and don't f@cking drop it!

I personally am glad to hear that they still teach hand drafting in architecture school, and I think that tech pen drawings can be beautiful objects independent of their content. On the other hand, you will NOT find me breaking out the Rapidographs any time soon (or at all) and I still have a small black dot deep in the fingertip of my right index finger from a late night pen cleaning mishap a dozen years ago.

I think that concepts like lineweight, hand 'feel' and even page layout are better learned from an unforgiving medium like ink on mylar than they are from assigning 'pen' attributes on a screen, but maybe that's just me.

I seem to remember that Rapidographs came in steel tip and jewel tip flavors, with the jewel tips costing more, performing better, and lasting longer. I would buy the set of steels, then as the most used wear out, replace with the jewels.

fro9k, I totally agree, I believe all architecture students should learn hand drafting! And understanding line weights (which is critically important to understanding drawing communicability!) can really best be understood via the muscle memory of drawing the lines themselves. Tech pens on mylar is an art form, but one that can be easily taught/learned by doing.

I'm just suprised, I guess, that there are still schools out there that apparently agree!

Students: understand what line weights mean in terms of the object and location they represent, and don't underestimate the ability of dashed lines to communicate content.

rapidograph hands down. if they still make jewel tips spring for those too, esp. the smaller sizes like 000.
i recall the zen practice of drawing many many 000 lines on cold-press watercolor paper for Andy Zago's class...the perfect antidote to an evening of that inward self-control was riding my motorcycle back home in the dark fog.
i'm beginning to think a well-defined .CTB file is as golden to an architect as a pro-forma is to a developer.

# 1 - r a p i d i o g r a p h
# 2 - s t a e d l e r

day in day out pen of choice I must confess is
Pilot precise rolling ball V5 extra fine

I buy them in boxes of 12 or 24................... I get nervous when there are only a couple freshies around.

the tech pens are stuck in a flat file drawer of other specialty pens/pencils/etc.......... ( i got tired of having to keep a thin piece of kleenex wrapped and taped in a stripe around my left index finger as a "just before you ink a clean line - you wipe the tip" program)

But - I would never ever get rid of them - just in case. And I always run a diluted ammonia solution to store tips. they unclog themselves

Rapidograph. And do supplement the regular set by springing for the super fine point one (the one with the lilac band.) Be careful with those super fine ones though - don't take the points apart to clean them if you can possibly help it - and don't touch the points if you do!

I'm surprised that they still make students buy these too, but I remember my rapidographs fondly. I had three sets - one in the studio, one at home, and a third set for filling with colored inks.

Cleaning them by hand often just results in destroying the pen. The time involved wouldn't be worth it to SOM - much cheaper to get a new pen.
But as a student I don't think throwing the pens away was really an option. I had (probably still have somewhere) the ultrasonic cleaner - you'd put in the fluid, then the pen assemblies, then turn it on and let it shake the crud out. The same gadget is more typically sold as a "jewelry cleaner", in a different box.

Hey, yes liberty bell we are still doing hand drafting (my schools in the UK if that makes a difference). But i think the main reason is our head tutor is a big fan of handdrawing and believes thats if you understand how to draw by hand it will help when going on to use autocad etc, instead of going straight onto the PC. We ae yet to be taught autocad, which i am looking forward to as it seems more practical in many ways, but the later years in our school still do hand drawings of final presentations etc, and they do seem to have a much much personal touch (even though they are mostly traced CAD drawings).
Thanks for the advice i think it will have to be rapido's, and I'll remember to keep the lids on!

I'm currently finishing up my undergrad here in the states, and we're still busy with hand drawings as well. I have a set of Staedler pens that came with a drafting kit I had to buy my first year. I need to pick up some replacement nibs for my .15 and .25. My advice, don't let anyone else use your pens, lock them up!

The pens, when their nibs are not broken, work quite well.

For most presentation drawings - i do things in cad - then doctor them with pencil or pen and still do lettering by hand. Hands down people love nice hand lettering and it gives a personal 'craft' of drawing touch. Nice pens & pencils will never die - just the tips & #00>#0000 nibs.

Its amazing that the UN's convention on human rights doesnt include a clause for application of technical pens on mylar. Looks like you've already gotten some good advice above, but as to my own two cents....

I think a good strategy is to buy the normal tip (not the jewel tip) rotring rapidograph F series pens. Unless you've got a surgeon's hand, you're more than likely to break the .13 and .18 tips (esp if you have a lot of x-hatching to do). So instead of dropping $70 a pop on the Jewel tips, get the regular "F" series and thus if they break, you can replace the tips at $25 a piece.

Another tip- pun intended - is to purchase just 1 or 2 actual pen casings (maroon colored shafts) and then use them interchangeably with the various tips. It will save you a couple bucks at least.

Finally- Avoid Koh-I-Noor pens. They're cheap and they'll break/leak/clog immediately. Bad news. You'll be money ahead with the Rotring F series.

Go on ebay and do some searching for an old Keuffel & Esser set. When I started school, I received a set as a gift and they are awesome pens.

Actually, eBay is the way to go for pen sets- new ones. I got the itch to work in ink last year and all my pens from grad school were clogged up (note to self: clean ink out of pens if I'm not going to use them for awhile). Got a brand new 7 pen set for $30.

its intersting that people think Rotrings are bad, i used to use them back in the day and thought they were really really good, never clogged up on me. It was fun inking them drawings on vellum.

yes there are many schools outside the US where using these technical pens is a part of the curriculum, and frankly i think it instills a great sense of disciplines in making clear drawigs with proper lineweights for different levels of detail. Most of the new students/interns i work with have a very bad sense of lineweights that make the drawing unreadable.

The Best Techhical pen comes wrapped in wood....spring for good quality lead pencils...and go buy an eric sloan book. It is far more worth your while in the long run. Cause you can do so many more things with a pencil than you can with a technical pen.

back in the day Koohinoor - expensive but required simple maintenance only

yeah we still produce hand drawings at my school every week on vellum/ mylar/ strathmore with rapidographs. the majority of documents due must be hand drawn (no computers allowed).

i was looking on here for a better quality pen. i've been using the koohinoor rapidos for a couple years and 7 of them have already broken within a year. i'de like to change brands but there are like no companies who make these guys anymore.

Hmm... I wondering if you can write off the depreciation of these expensive little pens over the course of their life time.

Also wondering if you feasibly write off the hour-related maintenance costs on these pens.

I think anyone still drawing/maintaining technical pens should be able to get a tax refund

I know that this is an old thread, but I found myself using my Peltasonic Ultrasonic, cleaning dried ink out of 5 decades of Mid-Century, and Rotring Sets that appeared that the Engineer simply bought a new set, every time he lost too many of the dreaded 00 and 000. My mom was the Architect who'd used Staedtler everything, Dad Used Rotring and Fountain Pens. He gave me each set, and I simply sent in the broken nibs to Rotring - and they used to send me back new ones, on their, "Life time Guarantee." As a Professional Artist my entire life, I obviously grew up on all of these things, and gently loved them. Mom refused to give me any of her Drafting Equipment, until I inherited them this year. I received all parts anyone found. And I once again was intrigued by these wonderful Technical marvels, especially since I'd overbought Carbon Ink for my Brush Pens and Fountain Pens!

I still have my Rotring Humidor, so glad that I never tossed it. If anyone recalls, you keep the sponge on the bottom soaked in water - although, I learned to put a few drops of disinfectant with it. You'd pull off the bottoms, stick the pens in with the cap on, of course with the reservoir attached. Kept the ink fresh, daily! But I adhered to what Rotring themselves told me, even though I've always kept their Universal Ink at hand: Clean the nibs, dump the ink, same time every month! That's how you prevent them from clogging on you. If you use the ink faster than even the converter, Ultrasonic for 2 minutes, with the Rotring cleaner, (of which I buy, 32 oz plus, at a time, for my brushes, fountain pens, etc.). Maintenance has always been the answer, with all of these pens. Evidently, some of us started a Renaissance in using all the old implements, as nearly all the old artists who used them, have passed. Even the Quill pens!

Of course I have Cintiq and all that Jazz. But I also have thousands of bucks in paint and equipment, that should be used before they expire!

Sincerely, Julie S