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Fingers Were Meant to be Inky

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Yongsheng 088 Fountain Pen Review

The Yongsheng 088 Fountain Pen, capped and laying down

Straight outta the “You sure looked different in your picture” file, an inexpensive Chinese pen from a mysterious manufacturer…

Yongsheng 088 Fountain Pen

Price: $8.00
Nib: Medium/Fine
Filling System: Cartridge/Converter (International Standard)

About the Company:

This one has me mystified. I’ve heard in the past that “Yongsheng” is a slightly different translation/Romanized spelling of “Wing Sung” and that they’re made by the same company (both of which would be owned by Hero now). And in seemingly logical fashion, the Yongsheng 088 did, in fact, come with a Wing Sung nib installed. Cut and dried situation, right? Except that I went looking for some background on Yongsheng and where the name came from, only to find reference to two separate Yonghseng pen companies: Jieyang Yongsheng Pen Manufacturing Factory and Zhejiang Tonglu Yonghseng Pen making Factory.

Now, Jieyang and Zhejiang seem like they could be different spellings of the same name; however, these two companies have different postal addresses, indicating that they are most likely different companies. Kind of a weird thing. More weird things… Read More

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Yiren 856 Fountain Pen Review

Yiren 856 Fountain Pen Uncapped, with the cap laying down and the pen resting on top of it

Inexpensive. Chinese. Classy. Dependable. Bigfooty. It’s the…

Yiren 856 Fountain Pen

Price: $7.50
Nib: Medium (#5)
Filling System: Standard International Cartridge & Converter

About the Company & Pen:

Yiren has probably become my favorite Chinese fountain pen brand. It’s not just because their pens are attractive and work well (they are…and they do). It’s also because the Yiren (or Yeren…or 野人) is the Chinese Bigfoot (or Sasquatch…or Skunk Ape). Yes, I know. I mention that every time I talk about Yiren pens. And I will continue to do so every time from here to eternity. I like fountain pens. I like bigfoot. It’s a match made in heaven. Deal with it.

Yiren, and their sister brand Bookworm, are made by the Nanchang Yiren Pen Company from the Chinese town of Wengang. Yiren refers to Wengang as the “pen capital” of China. I can neither confirm nor deny this claim, but it sounds like… Read More

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Quick Look: Cheap Composition Notebooks

The covers of Five Cheap Composition Notebooks, four from Norcom (Brazil, Colombia, USA, Vietnam) and one Casemate (China)

“Back to School” Means Dirt-Cheap Notebooks! Are They Any Good with Fountain Pens?

Fountain pens are wonderful. That’s a given. But because they use water-based ink, they’re really not suitable for most run-of-the-mill paper (see what I did, there?). Fountain pens aren’t very popular in the US, so most of the everyday paper found here is a poor match for pens that use water-based inks. Ballpoints and gel pens effectively make up the entirety of American daily writing instruments, so manufacturers only need to supply paper that works well with those inks…which, really, any crappy paper can do.

So that leaves us poor fountain pen users stuck buying higher quality paper, mostly imported from France or Japan. These papers are great, but they’re pretty expensive compared to… Read More

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Jinhao 3005 Fountain Pen Review

The Jinhao 3005 Fountain Pen, uncapped, with the pen resting on the cap

Inexpensive. Chinese. Fountain pens. Some are gems; some are disasters. How does this one measure up? Let’s mess with the…

Jinhao 3005 Fountain Pen

Price: $1.58
Nib: Fine / Extra Fine (Hooded)
Filling System: Cartridge/Converter (Standard International)

About the Company & Pen:

There is a huge number of Chinese fountain pen brands. Some, like Hero and Wing Sung, have been around for several decades. Others, like Duke and Kaigelu, are relatively new, but considered among the high-end of options from the Middle Kingdom.

Jinhao—a property of the Shanghai Qiangu Stationery Co., LTD—is another new-ish pen brand that came storming onto the scene in 1988. Okay, so maybe “storming” is a bit of an exaggeration. But at the present time, Jinhao produces a large number of fountain pens that are considered to be of… Read More

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Baoer 508 Fountain Pen Review

The Baoer 508 Fountain Pen, uncapped, with the pen's section resting on top of the cap with the top of the nib facing the camera

Getting back to some good, old-fashioned inexpensive Chinese fountain pen action. Is it cheap? Or is it good? Could it be Both?

Baoer 508 Fountain Pen Review

Price: $3.00
Nib: Medium (on the finer side)
Filling System: Standard International Converter & Cartridges

About the Pen:

Exploring the world of Chinese fountain pens is an adventure. Some are inexpensive, others are less so. Some are outstanding performers, while others are absolute disasters. And there seems to be no real correlation between price and quality. Some of my best finds were in the $4 to $7 range, while some of my biggest disappointments cost between $12 and $19.

Some Chinese pens lead to adventure not because of the price-to-performance ratio, but because of some of the crazy things that happen with them. The Baoer 508 is a perfect example.

I filled the 508 with ink from a sample, so I used a syringe. I was also filling another pen, so I stood the 508 up on its cap to let gravity help the ink find its way to the nib. After about three minutes, I came back to it and took the cap off. Ink went flying… Read More

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Yiren 860 Fountain Pen Review

Yiren 860 Fountain Pen, uncapped

Next up in my “Cheap Inexpensive Chinese Fountain Pens” series, another winner from one of my favorite Chinese brands…

Yiren 860 Fountain Pen

Price: $7.00
Nib: Medium
Filling System: Standard International Converter (& Cartridges)

About the Pen:

I’m a really big fan of gunmetal-colored pens. It’s just classy, you know? Eye-catching. I often peruse eBay in search of cool-looking pens that won’t break the bank. Quite often, I find interesting Chinese pens for under $10. I’ve purchased and used a number of them, and I’m always happy when I find new designs that I haven’t seen before. I stumbled on an auction for this beautiful little Yiren 860, and immediately fell in love with the gunmetal and gold colors.

Given the terrific success I had with another Yiren pen, I pounced on the 860 like a rat on a Cheeto. And I’m not sorry about it, either…. Read More

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Duke 116 Fountain Pen Review

Duke 116 Fountain Pen, Capped

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.

Duke 116 Fountain Pen, Uncapped

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

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Dikawen 821 Fountain Pen Review

Dikawen 821 Fountain Pen, Uncapped

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.

… Read More

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Baoer 100 Fountain Pen Review

Baoer 100 Fountain Pen - Capped

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

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Baoer 388 Fountain Pen Review

Baoer 388 Fountain Pen Uncapped

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