Here are a few pictures I took back in November on a nice, early autumn day. This is a few miles outside of St. Louis. (Click to Enlarge)
If I … Could Save Slime … In a Bottle …
After I got into the hobby of collecting fountain pens, I (of course) started sampling all kinds of ink to go with them. After ordering like two batches of samples, I started reading these horror stories about a condition called SITB, or Slime (or stuff or s#$t) in the Bottle happening with a brand of ink called Private Reserve (PR). There were a few reports of it happening with other brands, but PR seemed to be responsible for the bulk of these reports.
After hearing about this issue, I decided to just avoid the brand, although I still had a few samples that I bought before hearing about it.
Fast-forward to tonight. I wanted my eight-year-old son to practice his penmanship, so I brought out his Kakuno and asked him what color ink he wanted. He chose dark red, so I grabbed my sample of Private Reserve Black Cherry and a syringe and went to fill it up.
I had trouble sucking up the ink in the syringe, and I was thinking “what the heck is going on?” I pulled the syringe out of the sample bottle and found a semi-solid wad of ick crammed into the needle.
I think it’s pretty safe to say that tonight was my first and last experience with Private Reserve. Gross.
Have any of you experienced SITB with PR or any other brand? Leave a comment and let me know!
Duke 116 Fountain Pen Review
Straight from the “Well, it’s not quite as inexpensive as my other Chinese Fountain Pens” files, I present the Chinese, yet somehow also German…
Duke 116 Fountain Pen
Price: $18.00
Nib: Medium
Filling System: Screw-Type Piston Converter
About the Pen:
Despite their relatively inexpensive prices and questionable quality standards, Chinese fountain pens offer some of the nicest and most interesting designs out there. I find that taking a chance on various Chinese pens is kind of an adventure. You never really know what you’re going to get. Some are stinkers, others are studs. The Duke 116 is closer to stud than stinker, although there are some aspects of the pen I’m not very fond of. And if I do say, the pen is quite a looker.
About the Company
Duke is the “street name” for the Shanghai G-Crown Fountain Pen Company, which is a Chinese company based in…you guessed it…Shanghai. The weird thing is that they also go by German Duke Lux Pen GmbH, suggesting that they’re a German company. GmbH indicates that the company is registered in Germany as a Limited Liability company. Soooooo…is it a Chinese company or German?… Read More
Pilot Vanishing Point Fountain Pen Review
The short version of this review: Oh my God! For a slightly longer version, keep reading…
Pilot Vanishing Point Fountain Pen
Price: $140.00
Nib: Extra Fine (Oh my, yes!)
Filling System: Pilot converters & cartridges
About the Pen:
Around 1964, Pilot introduced a high-tech and remarkable writing instrument: a fully retractable fountain pen they called the Capless. Over the next 60 years, they’ve made a number of refinements and design changes, such as changing the original twist-to-retract mechanism to the pushbutton style we see today.
A note about the “Vanishing Point” and “Capless” names: The official name of this pen has gone back and forth a number of times (as has the brand name between Pilot and Namiki). I believe it is still called the Capless in many parts of the world, but it’s marketed as the Vanishing Point in the US.
The current incarnation of the Vanishing Point is as technologically advanced as it is elegant.
Quick Nib & Ink Comparison #1
I just finished up two reviews and have three more pens inked up for the next round, so I have a pile of pens around me ready to write. I figured I’d capture writing samples from each of them for a quick comparison of nib grades and inks.
The first four samples are all from “Extra Fine” nibs. I use the quotes because it’s very, very clear that different companies have different ideas of what the grades mean.
The last two samples are from Chinese pens. The nibs aren’t marked, but I generally expect Medium grades from these. Of course, the concept of “Medium” varies wildly among Chinese pens, so take that for what it’s worth. Both the Duke and Yiren pens write a finer line than my Jinhaos. Whether this puts them into the Fine/Medium category or just the Medium category probably depends on your own definition. For me, I put both squarely in the “True Medium” column.
So after comparing these samples, I have a few thoughts on the matter:
- Yes, it’s true: Japanese pens are finer than their Western counterparts of the same grade. The Lamy 2000 EF (German) is much broader than the Pilot VP EF (Japanese). The TWSBI Diamond 580AL EF (Taiwanese) falls somewhere in between. I expected the Pilot to be comparable to the TWSBI, but it’s about half as broad as that. I’d almost call the Pilot EF closer to Ultra Extra Fine…but I’ll reserve judgement on that until my Platinum “official” UEF comes in, and I can see how it compares to the Pilot.
- The Goulet EF nib (made by JoWo, a German company) is even broader than the Lamy 2000 EF. It seems to be slightly finer than the Duke and Yiren pens, though, so I’d probably classify the Goulet EF as Fine/Medium.
- What does the term “EF” even mean? I’ve got four EF samples here, and they’re all vastly different. The difference among them is striking. I recently tried a Visconti EF DreamTouch nib…and that was easily the broadest EF (or F for that matter) nib I’ve ever written with. What gives?
- Chinese fountain pens are a real adventure. Their QC is up and down, and you never really know what to expect from their pens (I’ve tried three Jinhao pens so far, and haven’t had the best of results from them…I have to wonder what everyone else likes about them). So far, this Duke and Yiren both seem like really nice, consistent writers. And they’re both beautiful pens, too.
- Yiren is the Chinese Bigfoot! How cool is that? I have no idea if the pen is named after that creature, but it makes me smile to think that it is.
So what are your thoughts? Are the nibs on your pens just as “all over the place” with regard to line weight, or has you’re experience been more consistent?
Lamy 2000 Fountain Pen Review
In my first review of a gold-nibbed pen, I present the beautiful yet slightly frustrating…
Lamy 2000 Fountain Pen
Price: $160.00
Nib: Extra Fine
Filling System: Piston Filler
About the Pen:
So after the saga of the Grail Pen that Wasn’t, I decided to tone it down just a bit and take a stroll down Entry Level of High End Boulevard. Up to now, the majority of my pens have been in the sub-$20 range, with a handful of mid-range pens (about $40-$80) peppered in for an extra dose of shiny bits. Buying a Visconti Homo Sapiens was a thrilling, disappointing, and eye-opening event for me. It was a beautiful pen…oh yes, it was (Lava! It was made from freaking Lava!). But it didn’t work out for me as a useful writer and it was WAAAAY too expensive to be just a showpiece. So I traded it in for three (count ’em THREE) pens that are considered among the first tier of the high-end fountain pens. The first one I’m going to review is this luscious little polycarbonate wonder: the Lamy 2000 (look for reviews for the Pilot Custom 74 and Vanishing Point in the near future).
I was kind of surprised. I had every intention of tearing into the Vanishing Point first, but once I picked up the Lamy, I just couldn’t put it down. So sit down, strap in, grab yourself (insert Beavis joke here) a mug of tea, and read on to find out how good it really is…. Read More
Dikawen 821 Fountain Pen Review
Next up in my “Inexpensive Chinese Fountain Pens” series, I present to you…
The Dikawen 821 Fountain Pen
Price: $9.50
Nib: Medium/Broad
Filling System: Screw-Type Piston Converter & Standard International Cartridges
About the Pen:
It’s no secret that I love Chinese fountain pens. They’re typically inexpensive and they offer some really fantastic designs. Sure, some of them flat-out suck, but I enjoy the adventure of trying them out and finding the gems amid the duds.
I was drawn to to the Dikawen 821 by two things:
- I just loved the juxtaposition of the dark, marbled wine-colored barrel against the milky-white color of the cap. I’ve seen plenty of silver-capped and gold-capped fountain pens, but I’ve never noticed a white-capped one before. I thought it looked classy in the pictures.
- The second thing this pen had going for it was that it was made by Dikawen. I recently reviewed the Dikawen 839, and absolutely loved it. If the 821 were to look as good as it did in pictures AND write as well as the 839, buying one was a no-brainer.
Baoer 100 Fountain Pen Review
As I go tiptoeing through the Chinese fountain pen tulips, I have discovered a true gem…
Baoer 100 Fountain Pen
Price: $4.00
Nib: Fine / Extra Fine
Filling System: Screw-Type Piston Converter & Standard International Cartridges
About the Pen:
I’ll admit, I had some pretty low hopes for this pen. I found it on eBay for just under $4 (including shipping from China). I was lured in by the crazy shape of the nib housing. It’s a hooded nib labeled as a cayman (and another vendor called it a “shark mouth”) design. And it does resemble a mouth…probably closer to a shark than a cayman, but whatever.
In the picture, the pen looked a little ugly, but the section’s “mouth” shape looked cool, so I bought one. It took like 47 weeks to get here (that’s an exaggeration), and the first thing I thought was that the pen looked a whole lot nicer in person than I had expected. It’s a fairly small pen, but very classy and understated looking. I immediately loved the way it looked.
But the biggest surprise was the way it wrote…. Read More
Monteverde Invincia Deluxe Review (A Frankenpen Special)
This is a Frankenpen special review for a modified…
Monteverde Invincia Deluxe Fountain Pen
Price: $80.00 + $15 for the nib
Nib: Goulet EF
Filling System: Screw-Type Piston Converter & Standard International Cartridges
About the Pen:
The Invincia was one of the first pens I purchased, and until recently, was the most expensive pen in my collection. When it arrived, I was pretty much blown away by the way it looks. It’s a beautiful pen. All the hardware has a shiny black finish, and the stub nib was black to match. Classy! I couldn’t wait to try it out.
Unfortunately, the pen didn’t write nearly as well as it looked. I think it was a matter of the feed not being able to keep up with the ink demands of the stub nib. It just kept drying up, requiring me to prime the feed (i.e., forcing ink into the feed using the converter)…. Read More
Baoer 388 Fountain Pen Review
Look up in the sky! It’s a Parker Sonnet! No, it’s an homage! No, it’s a blatant Chinese knockoff called the…
Baoer 388 Fountain Pen
Price: $5.50
Nib: Medium
Filling System: Screw-Type Piston Converter / International Standard Cartridge
About the Pen:
Somewhere between homage and counterfeit lies “blatant knockoff.” I don’t own a Parker Sonnet, and even I can’t deny the uncanny resemblance between the Baoer 388 and the iconic Sonnet: from the shape of the section, to the rounded off barrrel, to the simple gold cap band, and all the way to the looks-like-they-stole-it-from-Parker arrow-shaped clip. Blatant. Knockoff.
How does the Baoer 388 compare to the Parker Sonnet as a writer? I have no idea. And that’s not the point of this review. Now that we have the “evil twin” business out of the way, I’m going to review this pen for what it is: an inexpensive, but usable Chinese fountain pen…. Read More
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