Pens For Signing Logs

[+2Est8Attys]

A few years back, our city experienced a tremendous flood. A large local law firm had a fireproof vault in the basement of their building which was completely inundated. In the vault were their clients Wills and other important documents.

 

The firm sent the documents to be freeze dried to remove the water. The paper and its typed text was entirely restored, but not the signatures. Those documents signed in felt tip, rolling writer, or other flowing ink pen had only smears and smudges where signatures once had been. (Hundreds of otherwise valid Wills were thereby "unsigned.") Interestingly, those documents signed in simple ball point pen were all salvaged.

 

I know that there are "waterproof pens," but I don't happen to own one. When reaching into that drawer of pens before heading out to log your visit to a cache that may end up quite damp, consider the humble ball point.

[+El Diablo]

If you live in the area that I do, you might consider a pencil also. Ink freezes.

 

El diablo

[+amytincan]

scrapbooker chiming in: you can get a pigmented ink pen. They are archival, and that includes water.

 

Some readily available pens are Jelly Roll by Sakura. they are archival. and available in most stores. and they are not too girly, though you can get purple sparkly ink. they do make black and other stodgy colors.

[+Shop99er]

I carry a ball-point whenever I go caching. It has no problem staying warm in my pocket, and I don't have to worry about the pen in the cache being empty.

[uber_bike_geek]

I carry a Uniball Vision waterproof/fadeproof ballpoint, a 0.5mm mechanical pencil, and a Bic Stic pen, and I generally use them in that order- uniball first, if it's frozen or dead then i move on to the pencil. If that doesn't work, I use the Bic. If _that_ doesn't work, then I'd say "too bad" and get home pretty quick becuase i've had a Bic still work at about 0 degrees F... and it _*wasn't*_ in my pocket for quite a while beforehand...

 

I've gotten all three wet before, no problem with running or fading, as long as the paper is dry to start. If the paper is moist, then I'll use the uniball!

 

Happy Caching

Jeff

[+Renegade Knight]

Uni-Ball Power tank. You can't quite write on sopping wet logs with standing water on them, but you can write on wet paper.

[+The Puzzler]

Uni-Ball Power tank.  You can't quite write on sopping wet logs with standing water on them, but you can write on wet paper.

I believe they are stuposed to be resistent to freezing also, although I cannot speak from experience.

[+Doggiewoggie]

I just bought the Fisher Space Pen and am super pleased with it. It's designed for extreme conditions--resistant to freezing, and can write underwater. The ink is pressurized, and it's available in different designs--from economy to high-end. Like everything else I own, I bought it for caching.

Edited December 19, 2004 by Team Doggiewoggie

[+Mastifflover]

Uni-Ball Power tank.  You can't quite write on sopping wet logs with standing water on them, but you can write on wet paper.

I believe they are stuposed to be resistent to freezing also, although I cannot speak from experience.

Another vote for the Power Tank. Great pen for little $.

[+briansnat]

Years ago my old company had a certain brand of fine, felt tipped pens in black ink as the only choice in the supply cabinet. I used the pens for marking my casette cases and numerous other things. 15 years later everything I used those pens for is unreadable. The ink faded.

 

I now stick with ball point pens when writing anything that has to stay around for a while. I like the Fisher Space Pens that someone else here mentioned because they can write upside down.

[+Birdsong-n-Bud]

I put Bic Clicker-pencils in my cache so that they wouldn't be subject to freeze, and wouldn't need sharpening.

 

Then someone visited the cache within the first couple weeks and said "the pen is NG."

 

I went back to check, and it just needed a click. Back to square one. I replaced it with an old-fashioned pencil and sharpener, lol.

[+nfa]

Uni-Ball Power tank.  You can't quite write on sopping wet logs with standing water on them, but you can write on wet paper.

I believe they are stuposed to be resistent to freezing also, although I cannot speak from experience.

I used one of the Uni-Ball Power Tank pens yesterday to log in my first FTF( ), and it was 5-10 degrees below zero, with some wind...the ink worked fine.

 

I got 9 on ebay for $10

 

nfa-jamie

Edited December 19, 2004 by NFA

[+Medic005]

I carry a couple of ball point pens and just in case the weather is cold, a pencil.

[+Joe Smith]

I've had a space pen for about two years now, and I keep it in my pocket at all times. That kind of behavior also lead to it getting washed and dried about 10 times. No matter what I do to that pen it seems to still work. You can get one for about ten bucks. As long as nobody steals it from your cache I consider it about the best investment you can make. They have some "Economy" styles on the website too.

 

As a side note, I was reading a mag about fancy pens and they had an article about 3 pens worth one million each. Kinda pus it into perspective.

 

Joe Smith