Rambling reviews of fountain pens, inks, & other stationery goodness.
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I don't know what happened to 2025 but it's already long over and 2026 has come barrelling through the front door like an overzealous first-footer. I think it'd been a decent enough year, although my posts here have unfortunately been few and far between. I hope that this year will be better on that front.
My pen acquisitions reduced ever-so-slightly down from 69 in 2024 to 65 in 2025, 4 of which were gifts and 1 was a giveaway win. Inks were down a fair bit this year from 170 in 2024 to just 136; 46 of which were 10ml mini bottles from the Cult Pens Ink Subscription (R.I.P.), and 16 were samples. I imagine there would have been a fair bit more in the way of samples had the Edinburgh Pelikan Hub gone ahead, but it sadly fell through.
Neither of these reductions were conscious efforts on my part, it just sort of happened. But hey, a reduction is a reduction; I'm not going to complain about that! I'd very much like for that trend to continue going into 2026, but we'll need to wait and see how that pans out.
With that out of the way, what were my stand-out stationery items from 2025? These aren't ranked so I've just listed them alphabetically.
This pen continues to blow me away. It feels far more like a pen in the £200 range from a small maker than it does a £30 mass-produced Chinese pen. The acrylic is gorgeous, the finish is flawless, the #8 steel stub nib is an absolute banger, and it seals wonderfully. Sure, the V800 might be a better pen on paper with a filling system I much prefer, but the look and feel of the C80 easily beats it out for me.
Technically I got this pen sans nib in 2024 from John himself, but it was only made whole in 2025 so I'm counting it from then. I originally planned to complete it with a titanium #8 Bock nib, but the price of said nib had me holding off. Then out of nowhere, Bock started making steel versions, so I grabbed one from fpnibs.com with my logo engraved on it, a sandblasted finish, a fine cursive italic grind, and a flow hack for the feed. I can't get enough of this pen! It's constantly inked with Diamine Winterberry which matches perfectly with the gorgeous Conway Stewart Red Stardust acrylic, and the fine cursive italic nib gives a flair to my small writing that I've never had before.
Nahvalur's Voyage range had been of interest to me for a while, but I hadn't quite found the perfect one. They're essentially the old Nautilus style but using acrylic resins instead of ebonite. With the Cherry Blossom edition they started to modify the clip to match the theme, making them stand out even more from their Nautilus roots.
This model is adorned with two small rose gold cherry blossom flowers, which are set off beautifully against the sparkling resin that ranges from dark blue to white, with hints of pink throughout. It's a delicately beautiful pen that fits perfectly in my hand and writes as wonderfully as I've come to expect from Nahvalur pens.
I'd been looking for a "normal" pen to live next to my Namisu N2 Ti on my Passport-size Traveller's Notebook. I tried a few different ones, but nothing really felt right. Until I tried the Roady. The Roady is about the size of a Kaweco Sport, so it fits perfectly on the side of the TN. It's made up of an anodised aluminium cap and a titanium section with a steel nose cone. There are two things that really set this pen apart from others I've tried. I'll go into this a little more in a future post, but to summarise: The magnetic capping & posting system has the most satisfying *"clunk"* as the magnets pull the cap into place that I've ever experienced, and the little ring they put in front of the spring on the refill which completely eliminates tip wiggle and rattle. It comes with a Schmidt EasyFlow 9000 refill, which is great, but I replaced mine with the Ohto PG-105NP Needlepoint, which is my favourite of all the Parker-style refills.
My mother's jonesing for a purple version after falling in love with mine, so Brad if you're reading this, please make more!
I'm somewhat reluctant to recommend a pen that can only be bought second-hand, but it's too good not to mention. I stumbled across this one on eBay & was immediately taken by the Art Deco styling and the striking black and red colourway. It's a shame these have been discontinued as it's a real workhorse of a pen, which makes sense considering this was essentially a school pen. If you're not as keen on the Art Deco styling, the Kultur (mostly discontinued, but you can still sometimes find stock) is a simplified version that came in some great colours, including colour-shifting paint jobs that I absolutely plan on picking up at some point.
There was no way an orange ink didn't show up on this list, and this has been my favourite of the year. Fire on Fire was already a great sheening ink, but adding a coppery shimmer to the mix puts it on another level.
Unsurprisingly, the rest of the inks are chromashaders. My love for them is only growing stronger. Yuki-Usagi is a blue-grey ink with chocolatey-brown coming through, something that I hadn't seen from any other inks before. It looks amazing in writing and is dark enough to easily be an every day work appropriate ink.
Amamoyoi is another knockout chromashader from Sailor, this time featuring a green base with yellow-ish pinks coming through. I'm not much of a green ink fan (other than Taccia Sabimidori ❤️), but this ink has a lot of character and I've been loving it in every pen I've inked up with it.
Tono & Lims brought out a couple of great chromashaders last year, with my favourite being Space Sunset. It features a somewhat pale peachy-orange base with turquoise appearing, but is still dark enough to be completely legible.
It was a toss-up between Ugly Duckling and The Sorrows of Young Werther for this spot, but Werther won out in the end. It's another blue-grey, but slightly lighter than Yuki-Usagi and with greenish-yellows coming through instead of brown. I'd say Wearingeul are one of the most interesting ink makers around at the moment. It's rare for them to release an ink that doesn't end up on my wishlist.
With the release of the Diamine Forever ink line this year I was hoping to find an orange-red along the lines of a waterproof Blaze Orange. Coral Blaze was close-ish, but a bit too pinkish, especially as it dried. So I decided I'd try to mix my own version using a combination of Coral Blaze, Solar Yellow, and Hot Magenta. The 2 mixes I like the most were what I dubbed "Hot Yellow" (3:5 Hot Magenta to Solar Yellow) and "Solar Blaze" (3:1 Coral Blaze to Solar Yellow). Solar Blaze not only has the best name, but is precisely my favourite shade of orange. Sadly, there was zero shading with it, something that made Blaze Orange such a great ink. There was something about having Coral Blaze in a mix which just killed any shading for some reason. Hot Yellow, on the other hand, is extremely close to my perfect shade while also having lovely shading. The only reason it's not in my Top Inks is because it's not something you can buy, but feel free to mix it yourself!
This was the second-last pen I picked up last year, but it didn't take long for me to completely fall for it. The FWI Pencket has been around for at least a few years now, but it really came to light for many people when Esterbrook launched the Niblet—a clone of the Pencket that's three times the price and which FWI had no involvement with. This amber version was made in collaboration with Galen Leather and released on Fountain Pen Day this year. I love the warm rose gold trim against the amber resin, the writing experience is fantastic, and the threads are among the smoothest I've ever used, making even uncapping a joy. I love it!
The only non-pen item in this list, but it's been so useful to me that it deserves a shout-out. Since I use crutches to get about, it can be tricky to move lots of items to other rooms without having to take 10 trips to do so. This makes that task so much easier for me. I mainly use this for carrying all the bits and pieces that I use for ink swatching from my room to the kitchen, but I've also used it for storing medications when I went on holiday. I have a little Nite Ize locking carabiner attached to the D ring so that I can easily hook it to my bag or a belt loop, freeing up my hands. It's such a useful and versatile little pouch, and it's able to fit even extra large pens like...
The release of the 930 was a big deal last year. An 18k gold version had already been kicking about on Jun Lai's eye-wateringly expensive ebonite 900 models, but as far as I'm aware, this was China's first steel #9 nib, and the first to bring it to the rest of the world at such a low price. It's essentially a 630 on steroids, and that was a BIG PEN in its own right. I still prefer the Kanwrite Mammoth, but I think the 930 is deserving of some recognition.
Another discontinued pen, but it's one I've been trying to track down for years. After a tip on Mastodon I found a Spanish store with it in stock for a decent price, so I jumped on it. I'm happy to finally have one, as the orange and grey with white text is my perfect colour combo. It's *very* light, only a few milligrams heavier than the AL Sport RAW. I tend to prefer heavier models like the Steel Sport, but it does have the bonus of being more comfortable for longer sessions.
And that's my favourite stationery from 2025! I had considered titling this post "How Much Paper Is Too Much Paper?" to keep the pattern from previous years going, but I decided against it. I did buy *a lot* of notepads, notebooks, and loose leafs last year as I wanted to try out lots of different paper types, but I've yet to properly test them out so I wouldn't be able to give any meaningful comments on them. Maybe next year. Of the paper that I *did* use extensively in 2025, LIFE Noble Note remains on top, followed by OG Tomoe River 52gm^2^ in 2nd place and Midori MD in 3rd.
What about my intentions from last year? Well, I didn't get my 743 or 1911L (although the later has been somewhat achieved in 2026 already and even made a small cameo in one of these photos). Sadly, PenBBS seem to have given up on Lunar New Year pens, but Hongdian have been doing a great job on that front in their stead. As for nibs, I got a fine cursive italic grind for the JG8 as shown above, as well as two stacked nibs. One was in the Endless Phantom, the other was a #6 size stacked nib from China that was far higher quality than the price would suggest.
This year I—once again—want to get my 743 FA, as well as visit my first pen show. As long as I'm sensible with my spending this year, I feel they both have a higher chance of happening than ever.
What have been your favourite stationery items that you picked up in 2025? Feel free to leave a comment here or over on Mastodon.
When it comes to Chinese pen brands, Majohn (née Moonman1) is one of the biggest out there. They're known for producing many pens that are heavily... er, "inspired" by other pens. They've leaned so hard into this on some models that certain parts are fully interchangeable with their original counterparts. This is one of the things some people—quite fairly—have a problem with. At what point does a homage become a clone or even an outright counterfeit? For me, their pens tend to land somewhere between a homage and a clone. They can look a lot like the real thing, but they're not pretending to actually be the genuine article or trying to fool people into thinking they are—at least not the people buying them. I'm sure a decent amount of their appeal comes from looking like you're using a more expensive pen than you actually are. Whether you think Montblanc's are worth their price or not, they have a huge amount of brand recognition. Ask a non-pen person what a Good Pen™ is, they'll likely say a Montblanc. Since they're viewed as luxury items, using one makes you appear more affluent—in some peoples eyes, at least.
On the plus side, their pens being so close to the originals can be useful to see if you like the size & feel of the real thing without spending hundreds or even thousands to find out. Sure, that could be done at a brick & mortar store, but not everyone has access to one and they may not stock the pen you're interested in, especially on the higher end of the scale. They also provide an affordable way to access pens that are either long out of production, exorbitantly expensive, or both. Granted, whether this is a positive or a negative point is highly subjective.
Something to keep in mind is that this kind of copying isn't anything new in the fountain pen world and isn't unique to Chinese makers. From practically its inception, companies have been lifting cues from—if not outright copying—each others designs. If a pen became popular, that design would start showing up in other companies catalogues both locally and abroad. This doesn't make it okay, but I've seen enough vitriol directed towards Chinese brands as though this is all they do or is a uniquely Chinese thing that I feel it needs pointed out.
Majohn do produce their own original pens in various shapes & sizes that have proved popular over the years. But it's their catalogue of—let's say non-original pens—that tend to get the most attention. We're going to add to that attention today by looking at the six seven fountain pens in Majohn's P-Series, all of which are based on various Montblanc pens. Massive shout-out to fountainpen.de which was invaluable for tracking down the majority of Montblanc's referenced in each of these pens. Any links to stores are purely for illustrative purposes and are neither affiliate links nor endorsements.
The P135 was the first in this series and has been around since at least 2020 in a few different designs. As the name alludes to, this is based on the small cartridge/converter Montblanc 145, with specific "inspiration" from the Unicef Solitaire Doue and Le Petit Prince models depending on which colourway you go for. I decided to go with the coral red & rose gold "Fu" edition as the rose gold stood out to me among it's silver-capped siblings, although I do prefer the motif on the cap of the dark red version a bit more. As mentioned earlier, this is a cartridge/converter pen just like the real 145, and the only one in this series that isn't a piston filler. Thanks to this, I have absolutely no idea what the "P" stands for if it isn't "Piston", that's if it ever even stood for anything in the first place...
This is the smallest of the series, although it's surprisingly not the lightest despite the lack of piston mechanism. I tend to prefer larger pens, but the P135 feels very nice in the hand—provided you don't post the cap. At 15.6g the cap adds significant weight to the back of the pen, completely throwing off the balance. Thankfully, the pen is still long enough to be be used un-posted, which is the way I prefer to use most pens anyway. The rose gold plating is nicely done, with the nib matching the other trim perfectly—something that isn't always the case with rose gold trims. I'd say the tone leans closer to gold than rose, but it has a pleasant warmth to it.
Details of the P135, including the misaligned finial
Since this is an older pen, both the nib and the cap band still read "MOONMAN", with clean imprints on both. I've always preferred the Moonman branding, so I'm happy to still see it whenever it pops up. It's interesting to see that the cap band is imprinted rather than engraved as we'll see with some future pens in this series. The imprint is clean, clear, and smooth, which I unfortunately can't fully say about the Chinese text on the rest of the cap. Yes, it's clean and clear, but the edges are very crisp and slightly catch on your skin when you run your fingers over it. Unfortunately, I can't read any of the text on the cap, and my translation apps can't get a clear reading on it. Continuing with what I don't like, the rose gold finial on the body isn't flush with the acrylic. A little more attention to the finish in these areas would make a big difference. I'm not a fan of the "ruby" on the cap finial, either. I don't know if this is a synthetic ruby or if it's coloured glass, but it does refract light nicely, so I don't think it's just plastic? The fact I can't really tell means it just looks rather cheap and tacky, and detracts from the overall look. Finally, the nib & feed don't seem to cope very well with shimmer inks. Actually, they don't seem to cope with any inks at all. I've had awful skipping and hard starts that I haven't been able to rectify no matter how I tune them. The tines are even with an adequate gap, there doesn't appear to be any baby's bottom or canyoning, and I even increased the feed channel a little to try and get better flow, all to no avail. I ended up adding some FPR Railroad X which helped a little, but it only works for as long as the feed is primed before drying out again, and has the side effect of feathering when the feed is at its juiciest, so it's not a real fix. It's a shame, because the pen feels nice in the hand and—other than the ruby—it looks great. I've since tried it with a rose gold Hongdian nib with a different ink but have ran into exactly the same issue, so I have to assume the feed is the problem. With no other immediately obvious solutions, I decided to hack away at the feed even more with a 0.3 Eiger Tool diamond file and an X-acto blade. This seems to have helped a little, but I'll need to test it more to be sure.
The P136 is (along with the P141) the most instantly recognisable of the set, even if you're only somewhat aware of Montblanc's standard Meisterstück pens. Once again, just as the name alludes to this one is based on the Montblanc 146. I had never been particularly interested in any of the 5 colours it was previously available in, that was until they released titanium versions last year in a number of finishes, including this one with a hammered body & cap. I'm a big sucker for hammered pens so I had to grab it, and I decided to replace the standard nib with a hammered stub nib from Bobby of ChinesePen on Etsy to complete the look. Just be careful with the feed if you decide to switch nibs. The fins on Majohn's #6 feeds are incredibly thin and fragile and will fold like a leaf if you so much as frown in its general direction.
I adore this pen and have it permanently inked with Sailor Yurameku Seki—a beautiful chromashading ink that subtly changes colour as it dries, leaving you with grey, purple, & green tones. The titanium P136 and P137 models do have a disadvantage to them, though. First, the rim of the cap and the threads on the body are very, very crisp. I don't think they could cut you, but it can sometimes feel like it, especially if your fingers rest on the body threads. Secondly, the ink windows on these versions are recessed, so any ink that ends up in the cap can then become trapped in those little indents ready to transfer onto your fingers. At some point, the ink window on my P136 slightly cracked, possibly from over-tightening the piston assembly after cleaning which compounded the ink build-up issue, but it's been much cleaner since I replaced it. Shout out to 365Days Stationery on AliExpress for helping me get the replacement part. I would advise against messing around with removing the piston mechanism on any of these pens, but that's especially true for these titanium models. The ink windows on these is a separate plastic tube that is held in place by the piston mechanism. If you tighten the mechanism down too tightly (as I think I may have done) you'll crack it, so please be very careful if you must do this for some reason.
Despite the lower model number, the P137 is a recent addition to the family coming in between the P140 & P141. It bears more than a passing resemblance to their earlier F9 models which were based on the Rouge et Noir & came with a few different creature-themed clips.3 The P137, however, is an altogether chunkier pen based on the Agatha Christie Writers Edition—itself based on certain versions of the even larger Safety No. 12 from the 1920's, which to this date still sports the largest nib Montblanc ever produced. Instead of being made from "precious resin", our P137 here is fully titanium. The gold trim is set off nicely against the raw titanium, especially on the snake clip that coils around the cap.
I ordered this one with a fine nib, which is my default choice for most pens. The one they sent was decent enough; it was a plain steel nib that was smooth & did the job. However, they also included a bi-colour extra fine nib which complimented the trim far, far better. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy thinner nib points. The Platinum UEF is one of my all-time-favourite nibs, after all. But I find that fine points are my sweet spot for small-enough writing while still being able to show off ink properties well, so I was a little disappointed to be swapping the EF back in. But after filling it with Taccia Ukiyo-e Sabimidori—one of my absolute favourite inks and one that I think matched the snake theme well—I had no reason to be worried. It was juicy without being a gusher and laid a clean, sharp line. Despite this, I did eventually swap it out for a bi-colour Kaigelu "King of Yue" long knife nib which has a snake-like pattern on it. This has upped my love for this pen by a fair amount, and I was already enjoying it greatly. The architect-like grind adds character to my writing making it much more likely for me to grab this pen now compared to when it had a standard EF nib.
Edit: After writing this Majohn released another version with a different design for the snake clip that I significantly prefer to the Montblanc-style one. It looks like it's more of a roll-stop than a clip, but it's a more attractive snake & moves the needle on this model fully to homage. They've also released an anodised blue version with the original clip for ~£135.
Majohn got a bit retro with this one, looking more like a pen from the 1920's instead of the 2020's. This time it's based on the Marcel Proust Writer's Edition, available in silver or all black & with 2 different cap styles. One of them sticks to the design of the Proust model, with the other drawing from the Lorenzo de Medici Patron of the Arts edition by extending the octagonal silver design on the body all the way up the cap, with a riveted and unbelievably stiff clip that Majohn themselves recommend not to try and force open in case the rivets rip out. This is the version I opted for as I think it has a classier look than the black cap version, but if I'd realised how nigh unusable the clip was I may have opted for the other model. That said, it looks fantastic. The imprints—or castings? I'm not sure how they make these—are clean and smooth on the body, although there are a couple rough parts on certain facets of the cap that catch your skin. Not as bad as the P135, but still noticeable. Something to note is that there is no ink window on this pen making it impossible to tell how much ink you have left, which I know can be a deal-breaker for many people.
In staying true to the design of the original they've included threads below the blind cap for securely posting the cap. Now, there's a very good reason why the Lorenzo de Medici model doesn't have these rear threads. When you cover a pen with metal, it—surprisingly enough—adds a considerable amount of weight to it. In this case, it makes for the heaviest pen in the series at 47.2g inked, with a whopping 23.4 of those grams located solely in the cap. You're basically adding the full weight of the body onto the back of the pen when you post it. I imagine the version that more closely follows the Proust design fares better in that regard since its cap is just resin, but for this version—and really all of these pens—you're better off leaving it un-posted.
It took a while for Majohn to come out with their own #8 nib—with Jinhao, Wing Sung, & Hongdian way ahead of them—but they eventually came out swinging with the P139. This one is based on the Montblanc Hemingway which was the first of Montblanc's Writer's Edition series of pens, which in turn was based on the Meisterstück 139 from the 1940's and is where we get the P139 name from. The version I have uses a sparkly white resin for the body, but they also have an orange-bodied version which more closely resembles the Hemingway, and a new "Black Rock" resin version. Unusually, they released this pen with both #8 and #6 nib options—perhaps as a nod to the smaller-nibbed 102 S from the 1930's which was the first time they used this clip design—as well as now having the option for the new Bock stainless steel #8.
This very quickly became my favourite Chinese #8, although only slightly ahead of my much-loved Wing Sung 630—itself a clone of the Meisterstück 149—more on that later. It's a little shorter than the 149-style body, but keeps the girth, making it very comfortable to use with the large nib. The sparkly white resin body looks great, with some lovely depth to it when the light hits just right. Interestingly, there is a Moonman engraving on the back of the cap, which is surprising for such a recent pen. But the star of the show is the nib and feed. Taking a leaf out of Hongdian's book, they opted for an ebonite feed which provides better flow than standard ABS feeds. Combine it with a large, bouncy nib and you've got a fantastic writing experience with a touch of line variation.
Our final penultimate pen is the P140, which I believe is their version of the exceptionally rare Meisterstück 149 Demonstrator (although it's now also available in solid green, blue, & purple). I didn't even know the 149 Demo existed before I started researching for this post. There were a couple versions of it with either black finials on the body & cap, a white finial on just the cap, or completely clear.4 The P140 is based on the latter version & is (marginally) the largest of all the P Series pens. It makes use of the same #8 Majohn and Bock nibs with ebonite feeds from the P139, but I stuck with the Majohn nib as the gold plating on them better matches the pens trim, plus I find the Bock nib to be a tad stiffer.
I initially didn't realise this was based on anything, as it just looked like a piston version of one of their original clear acrylic eyedropper pens, but once it arrived it was clearly the 149 design (pun not intended). The fan design on the cap band carries over from the P139, as do the aforementioned nib and feed, and the section has the same dimensions. There are slight differences in the threading, so the P139 cap will fit comfortably on the P140, but not vice versa. I really like this fan (or wave?) design on the cap band. As far as I can tell, it's wholly original and is one of the little details that helps to immediately tell you it's not a Montblanc. The writing experience is essentially identical to the P139, and although the caps are much lighter on these two than on other models, they still add more weight to the back than I find comfortable, so I still recommend leaving them un-posted.
Just as I was getting ready to publish this post, the P141 comes along. There's no getting around it—it's a Meisterstück 149 clone, through and through. The weight, dimensions, and styling are as near as damn it, but there are 2 ways you can instantly tell that it's not a Montblanc: the cap finial and the cap bands. Instead of having a thin band above and bellow the main cap band, it only has one above it, and instead of the snowflake/snowcap logo inlaid in white on the cap finial it has a plated tip matching the trim colour. The P141 is available in 4 colours (black, dark blue, dark green, and red), each with gold or silver trim options. I opted for the red model with silver trim as I think it's the sharpest looking version. Instead of using their "Expedition" #8 nib and ebonite feed used on both the P139 and P140 (although some sellers are now offering it with the Expedition nib units if you prefer them), they've gone back in line with the usual dual-tone Moonman design—itself based on Montblanc's Meisterstück nibs. At time of writing there is no option to buy them with the plain silver Bock #8 nib.
If I'm being honest, I'm not sure why this pen exists considering solid-colour versions of the P140 were released at the same time, giving a modern twist to the 149-style. Do we really need yet another carbon copy of that pen? My first thought is as a Wing Sung 630 competitor, but it seems like a strange time to do this when A) the 630 has been around for a long time now and is both well established and well regarded, and B) there's been so much attention on the #9-nibbed 930, which in turn has given fresh legs to the older 6XX models. Or, it could simply be that they just want in on that style of pen. So the question is, how does the P141 measure up to the P140 and the Wing Sung 630?
Comparison of the P141 & 630 nibs with a vintage 149 I had a few years back | The P141 side by side with the 630
Spoilers—it doesn't. Don't get me wrong, it's a fine pen. It does everything it's supposed to and it's comfortable to use. I especially like the rounded cap band which you rarely—if ever—see on 149 clones. The 630 is the closest point of comparison. The overall dimensions are very similar, but the proportions differ slightly, so it's not just a rebadge of the 630. The nib imprint is far better on the P141 than the 630, something that's been a long-term issue with the large Wing Sung / Jun Lai nibs. Both of them use a plastic feed, but the 630 is a wetter writer than the P141 and has a slightly softer nib. I feel the P141 would have benefitted greatly from the ebonite feed found in the P139 and P140, so it was disappointing to see it missing here. The design of the 630 & P141 nibs are extremely similar, with only slight differences on the sizing and angle of the swirls & flourishes around the edge. Both of them are imitating the MB149, with the 630 being ever-so-slightly closer to it. The Moonman nibs have always borrowed elements from Montblanc's design while still making it their own, but this is their first time copying the flourishes almost 1:1.
Some details of the P141 | The mis-formed flat end of the piston knob | The fully brass piston of the P140 compared to the plastic in the P141
It doesn't compare all that favourably to the P140 either. Not only is it missing the ebonite feed, but also the fully brass piston mechanism. There is a significant amount of play on the blind cap between when it turns the piston either way of ~150° compared to ~80° on the 630 and only ~15° on both the P140 & P139. Not only does the P141's blind cap have a huge amount of play, but it's not even properly rounded on the finial. It has a large flat surface that is quite difficult to see but is immediately obvious when you feel it. Since it leaves an asymmetrical finish on the finial I don't believe its intentional, and hopefully this was just a random manufacturing defect, but it does speak to the lower quality feeling that this model has. The nib unit on this version is also different than what's used on the P139 & P140, so they're not directly swappable. You can't just swap the ebonite feed into the P141 either as it's too large for the housing. The Expedition nib is also too thick to fit on the plastic feed, so the models that come with those nibs must be keyed differently for those housings. I'm not sure why you'd opt for that nib though, as the whole point of this pen is to look like a 149 🤷
Edit: Again, after writing this Majohn released a hammered titanium version. I still don't recommend this pen, but I love the hammered P136 so much that a larger #8 nibbed version makes me weak at the knees...
Now that we've looked at these six sorry, seven pens and their heritage, has my opinion changed at all regarding where they stand on the homage – clone – counterfeit scale? Not really. None of these could be considered counterfeits, although some fly closer to the sun than others. Certain configurations of the P136, P138, P139, and P141 can look almost identical to the real deal, aside from the branding and some nib design. None of them quite stoop to that level, so they land in the clone region for me. The other pens can have similarities to the real thing but either contain unique details, elements from other models, or use materials not seen in their "inspirations", so I'd say that they fall somewhere between homage and clone, perhaps leaning slightly towards the side of homage. I'd include the P137 in that group, especially since it's now also available in anodised blue or with a different style of snake clip which I think actually looks much better than the original, so much so that I'm actively considering selling my original version & re-buying it with the new clip.
My favourite of the group is easily the hammered titanium P136. I love how it looks, I love how it feels in the hand, and I love how wonderfully it writes, especially with the hammered stub nib. It's not the one I would recommend to most people, though. That acclaim goes to the P139 thanks to it's fantastic nib and feed, its comfortable body, and the option to get it with a #6 nib if you're not a fan of the larger #8 nibs. I would advise trying to get the updated version if at all possible. It moves where the ink is drawn into the pen from the back of the feed to the middle, making it much easier to fill from less-full bottles. Look out for "Low Ink Refill function" or "LIR" in the description, or ask the seller about it. I'd highly recommend having an Ink Miser to help with refilling large-nibbed pens, but the LIR versions can negate the need for one. My least favourite is the P135. I like how it looks for the most part, I could even look beyond the somewhat tacky "ruby" cap finial, but the ink flow issue was too frustrating to use. I wish the nib had been the issue, as that's usually very easy to fix, but feeds are a fair bit trickier. The P141 is close behind as I just don't see the point in it and the writing experience is lacking compared to the P139 & P140. I'm sure the P141 wont be the last in this series, so I look forward to seeing what future models may bring to the table.
Have you tried any of these pens, or even the pens they're based on? What are your thoughts regarding clones of expensive or out-of-production pens? Let me know in the comments here or over on Mastodon.
1 Both Moonman and Majohn are English trademarks of 末匠 (Mugjiang/Mòjiàng—roughly translated as "last craftsman"). The Majohn name was created after Kaweco trademarked "Moonman" in Europe back in 2021. They apparently felt that the design of the Moonman T1 too closely resembled the Kaweco Sport, despite Kaweco not having any piston-filling pens (at least, not at that point), them not holding a copyright on the Sport design, and the fact that it—in my & many others opinion—has a closer resemblance to a TWSBI Eco than it does to a Sport. In response, the Majohn trademark was created (along with an actual Sport clone in the titanium RS1 that came with a 14k gold nib for less than half the price of the TITAN Sport Kaweco would eventually release. Hey, if they're going to be accused of doing something, they may as well go ahead and actually do it—and do it really well at that!). Despite this name change, you will often find pens using the Majohn name while sporting Moonman branding on the pen and/or nib. You can find a deeper dive on this subject in this reddit thread from the r/HobbyDrama subreddit.
2 All prices listed are from AliExpress and are "sale" prices instead of RRP, as you will pretty much always find them on sale.
3 The original version from the 1910's, not the quickly discontinued model from 2000 that went on to become the Boheme.
4 Requires an fpgeeks account to view the images, sorry!
14.11.2025 18:14The Montblanc-alikesSorry it's been so quiet here of late, folks! To help get back into the swing of things, I though I'd take part in the "12 Pen Person Questions" that Lisa from Olive Octopus Ink shared. She's great, so please check out her blog & streams, especially during the Relay for St. Jude fundraising going on during September. A huge thank you to her for providing a recording of her reading the questions for the audio version of this post as well.
With all that said, let's get cracking!
If you consider the different ways you can engage with pens and stationery—as a user, a collector, a hobbyist, a creator, a maker, a vendor—which roles fit best and what percentage of 100% would you assign to each? Are you happy with the balance?
I'd say I fit mostly into user, collector, & hobbyist, with just a dash of creator. I reckon it would break down as this:
I'm mostly fine with where it's at. I would like the Creator part to be bigger, but I've had a lot going on this year so things have fallen by the wayside a bit. I would probably like the Collector part to get a bit smaller as well, but as long as the Hobbyist and User are the main focus then I'm happy with that.
What is something you want to understand better or develop more informed opinions about?
How to review ink. I find pens reasonably straightforward to review, but for whatever reason I struggle to write more than a couple paragraphs when it comes to ink. I love inks, possibly more than pens, but inks have far more variability that you need to take into consideration. You can't just try it on one type of paper because it may perform and even look completely different on others. How much of the feeling you have when writing with it is down to the pen rather than the ink or even the paper. It's a tricky one, and it's certainly one I want to get better at understanding.
In the pen community, what's something someone has said or done that stuck with you?
I can't think of something specific—I'm horrendously bad at remembering things like this—but something that has always struck me about the pen community is how kind & welcoming it is, especially towards new users. There's very little in the way of gatekeeping and questions are always welcomed, which is awesome to see.
There are now 25 hours in a day, a bonus hour is available to use however you like as long as pens or stationery are involved—how do you spend your hour?
Considering how backlogged my pen cleaning is, I like to think I would use that hour to give them some attention. But in reality, I'd probably just use it to ink up more pens to add to the pile.
In the pen community yearbook, what would your superlative be? (i.e. "Best ______", "Most _______" "Most likely to _______")
At the moment, it would probably be "Most Likely to Randomly Disappear for 9 Months" 😅 Jokes aside, perhaps it'd be "Most Likely to Have Tried This Random New Chinese Pen". I do enjoy keeping up with Chinese pens and seeing how that side of the industry is continuing to develop in interesting ways.
How do you feel about your handwriting?
I kinda like where it's at when I'm writing normally. It still needs some work, but I'm happy with most of it. My capital T's & Q's probably need the most work & I've yet to find a way of writing them that I really like. I do need more practice at keeping all my letters at a consistent size, though. They tend to get away from me a bit. Cursive needs a fair bit of work since I don't practice it often, and my fast handwriting when taking notes is pretty rough. I've always felt that I inherited my faither's "doctor scrawl". He was a microbiologist rather than a GP, but he still has the stereotypical chicken scratch that even he struggles to read.
What is something you are proud of doing, achieving, or overcoming?
I'm proud to have reached over 100 subscribers to this blog. It may be a small number compared many others in this space, but I'm blown away that there are this many people interested in what I have to say about pens. Thank you so much to everyone who reads my ramblings, whether you're subscribed or not. I truly appreciate it <3
You're going on a writing retreat anywhere in the world—where would you go, what would you write, and what would you write with?
It would probably be my aunt's "hut". It's basically a small log cabin that's in a remote mountain forest somewhere in the middle of Norway with this gorgeous lake out in front of it. I've never felt more at peace than when I was sitting outside the hut in glorious sunshine, no noise from cars, planes, or other people. Just you and the beauty of nature. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any of my photos from that time. It's been a good 20 years since I've been there & I beleive they've modernised it a little (they now have solar electricity that can power more than just the lights and an actual walkable path from the parking area, although I think it's still a dry toilet), but I'd very much like to go back again sometime even if it's not exactly as I remember it.
I'd want to take my folks with me, as I think it would be really nice to write their life stories down in a place that's so serene. They've lived such interesting lives, even if they don't think so themselves. As such, I would want to bring eyedropper or vacuum pens for their extra ink capacity, possibly my PenBBS 535 Year of the Ox, Asvine V126, and an eyedroppered Platinum Preppy Wa. If my Opus 88 Bella wasn't broken it wouldn've been ideal for this. For inks, I'd want to go with something permanent, so inks like Platinum Classic Khaki Black, Rohrer & Klingner Salix, or Diamine Forever Ink Smoky Mauve. And for paper, Life Noble Note A5 grid notebooks are my current bae, so I'd probably bring a couple of them along.
What's a current or favourite creative outlet?
At the moment, probably writing & photographing blog posts. Even when I'm feeling my worst, being able to have something creative I can focus on while in bed and that takes minimal mental or physical exertion is incredibly important to me. Unfortunately, most posts that I start end up not going anywhere. I get so far into one only for it to flounder around the half-way point and I struggle to bring it to some kind of conclusion. Sometimes it's just a case of me ending up without any particularly strong feelings about the item and the review starts feeling directionless and vapid. I don't enjoy reading reviews like that, so I don't want to put them out into the world either.
Finishing posts I've started is something that I very much want to get better at, so I'll likely give many of them a revisit with fresh eyes and see if I can turn them into a post that's worth the time of the people reading it.
The photography side takes much more out of me, but I get the strongest joy from it. At the start of my blogs I'd wanted to have a uniform way of photographing things that was more utilatarian, but I quickly realised that making the images more creative while still accurately portraying the pens makes the whole post more interesting. I love using focus stacking techniques, especially in close-up macro shots so that the areas I want to highlight are fully in focus, and I don't think I've used the same lighting setup 2 posts in a row. Hopefully that keeps things interesting, not only for the readers, but for me as well.
What's something that causes you benign envy—the kind of admiration and desire that leads to inspiration or motivation?
As sort of a folow on from the last question, it's great photography. For example, there's a user who posts regularly to the #FountainPen hashtag on Mastodon called "konama" who posts such wonderfully atmospheric photos of foutain pens with their morning coffee. Seeing a great pen photo in a post makes me want to push my own photography to be more creative. I love seeing it!
What's a comfort item, material, or color?
Diamine Kong Girls. Just looking at that ink—whether in the bottle or on the page—fills me with a strange contentedness & brings me joy. It's a collaboration with the Hong Kong-based stationers Kong Girls and is a beautiful purple with electric blue shimmer. I don't know why it does this for me. Purple isn't even a particularly favourite colour of mine—ink or otherwise. But for some reason it does, and I'm happy that's the case.
What would be a dream collaboration, project, or partnership?
I've kinda already had it when I got to write a guest spot in the Pen Addict review of the Sailor Tuzu. Brad is one of my most favourite people in the hobby, so getting to help out a little thanks to my abnormal grip was dope.
I would absolutely love to make an ink with Diamine at some point. It's likely nothing more than a pipe dream, but it's good to have one of those, right? I'm not quite sure what that colour would be. My perfect waterproof orange-red would be a strong contender—perhaps more on that in a later post...—possibly with some shimmer thrown in there for good meassure. Or maybe a chromashader? We don't see many of them in the orange/brown range, so that could be cool. I doubt I'd get to do something that complex with a first ink, but it's fun to think about.
And that's the 12 Pen Person Questions! Thanks again to Lisa for these questions, & please feel free to post your own answers using the #12PenPersonQuestions hashtag. I also want to give a big thank you to those who have stuck with me thus far. I have another post queued up that I just need to photograph and record the V.O. for, so I promise you won't need to wait another 8 months for the next one!
In January of 2024 I decided that I had bought far too many pens throughout the previous year, capping out at a whopping 95. I wanted to try and get in control of my Pen Purchasing Problem™, and I think I succeeded with that. I managed to reduce it down to just 69 last year, which is a ~25% reduction. That's not bad! Sure, it's still a lot, but it's a decent improvement. I'll speak more on some of these pens later. Inks on the other hand—now that's a different story...
I exactly doubled my ink collection last year with 170 different inks acquired (~60 of which were 2-5ml samples), bringing me to a grand total of 340. And here I thought I had a pen problem! However, unlike with my pens, I don't think I'm going to try and curtail my ink purchases this year. At least, not intentionally. One of the factors that added to the total last year was that I wanted to complete my Inkvent Blue collection, so that was ~23 inks sought out for a specific purpose that wont need to happen again, but other than that my habits will be roughly the same.
The Cult Pens Ink Subscription was a large contributor to my collection when it started back up again in March as a rolling subscription instead of the 3-month version from 2023. I've been loving these little boxes which bring me 5-6 new inks in 10ml bottles each month—sometimes even including full-size bottles of ink—along with a bonus stationery item. Often times they're inks that I would never have bought myself but I ended up loving. You'd think with the size of my collection that dupes would be a problem with an ink subscription like this, but I've only had 3 or 4 since they started. Perhaps this will become more of a problem as my collection continues to expand, but for now whenever I do happen to get a dupe it'll give me inks that I can then share with others!
So what have been my favourite inks from 2024? Well, I've got a lot to pick from but I'll try to keep it short(ish). They don't necessarily need to have been released in 2024, just that I bought them during that timeframe.
Goryeo Celadon is an ink exclusive to the retailer BlueBlack in South Korea. I first fell in love with this ink when I hired a Visconti Homo Sapiens a couple years back which came pre-inked with it, but it took me a while to resolve account issues on their website and put together an order. It's a fabulous sage green that flows well and looks great on any paper.
Fire Hydrant is one of 5 Birmingham Pen Co. samples I received from the hub master of our local Pelikan Hub. It's the most vibrant red I've come across, even more so than my previous favourite Laban Ares Red.
Firecracker may well be the greatest shimmer ink ever made. The orange with gold shimmer isn't anything new colour-wise, but it's the properties of this ink that makes it so groundbreaking. KWZ weren't kidding when they stated they had found an "innovative way of stabilising particles in the ink, so that the naturally occurring sedimentation is significantly slowed" in their "All That Glitters" range. I'll be honest, I was pretty sceptical about this claim. When the bottle arrived the particles were already fairly well suspended, which was unusual, but I put it down to the box perhaps being jostled around during shipping. I gave it a good mix, then put it back in its box for later. When I went to swatch it the next day, the particles were still completely suspended! So after swatching, I filled it into a Jinhao 80, and left it untouched for a week. A little had settled, but the vast majority of the particles were STILL in suspension!! You're normally lucky if particles manage to stay suspended for more than a minute! The Stardust Blue ink from this series didn't fare quite as well, starting to settle after a day or so, but that's still impressive! I'll be picking up the other 2 inks in this series soon to see how they compare. It also helps that the ink is my favour orange-red colour, and the classic gold shimmer sets it off nicely.
Campfire Crackle is part of the Endless Pens exclusive "Cozy Comforts" range. It's in the orange-red range again, so that already makes it a favourite for me, but the black sheen with both dark & silver shimmer gives it a unique effect among the sea of shimmers.
Phoenix is an ink that you can't easily pin down what colour it actually is. It has a pink-ish base with a strong gold sheen, giving the ink an orange-ish appearance overall, with a strong emphasis on the "-ish" part. I did attempt to add even more colours into the mix by adding 2 different Pennonia Csillam shimmer additives, however I think the sheen overpowers them as I couldn't get it to show up even after adding 4x the recommended dosage.
Deadly Nightshade isn't a particularly unique colour, even among other Diamine inks. It has a purple base with purple & blue shimmer and strong green sheen, but what really sets it apart is its gimmick. You see, this was an ink released during Halloween, so in the 50ml bottle they added a few little plastic skulls as a fun little feature that also help to agitate the shimmer when you shake the bottle. That feature alone elevates the ink for me.
2024 was the year of chromashading inks for me. If you're unaware of what I mean by "chromashading", it's an ink that exhibits more than one colour once dried. You'll also hear them refered to as multishaders. I've had a few Sailor chromashading inks like Fuji, 123, and 280 for a while now, but 2024 was when our options seemed to explode. There have been so many I've picked up this year that it would be impossible to pick just 2, so I've plumped for 5 inks from 5 different companies. I'll try to keep each one brief...
First up is one of my most recent chromashaders: Dominant Industry Duftraush from the "Twilight Gardens" series. It's a lovely dusky pink with shades of grey and teal coming through. Plus, it has a lovely rose fragrance to it that I get a gentle whiff off every time I uncap the pen. I know that may put some people off, but I really like it.
Hosia Mengchen (Mont City) wasn't what I expected. It was one of five chromashading inks I bought on AliExpress to try out Chinese inks for the first time. The product photo for it showed a bright orange with turquoise coming through. As you can see from the photo, that is not at all how it looks. Despite this discrepancy, I ended up really falling for this ink. It's a warm brown with shades of grey, blue, and teal showing through. It's a great ink that flows well & looks gorgeous on the page.
Wearingeul Robinson Cruseo is somewhat a rarity among chromashders in that its base is a bright turquoise with shades of blue, green, and yellow coming through. It's a very summery ink and I think it works wonderfully at reminding you of tropical waters on some deserted island.
Seki is from Sailors second Yurameku set, which is known for the way the colours change while drying. Date Gokoro from that set is easily in my top 5 all-time favourite inks, but Seki is no slouch either. It goes down a brownish colour before morphing into pink as it dires. It's a paler pink than Duftraush, but thanks to the greys and greens that join the party it's still perfectly legible.
Lastly, we have Marley from the Inkvent Black calendar. This was easily my favourite of the set with its dusky lilac, grey, and pink tones.
This post is mostly about inks, but I wanted to highlight some of my favourite pens I picked up during 2024, as they're some of my all-time favourites.
The first pen of the year was also one of the best—the Kanwrite Mammoth. An absolutely GIANT pen with a monsterous #9 nib that you can read more about here. They recently came out with a version with flat finials called the Mammoth X which I hope to pick up this year.
Of course, Endless Pens got me with one of their crazy sales again, this time being the Lamy 2000. After using one earlier in the year and loving it, I was going to go for the standard Makrolon model at a ridiculously low £100, but the steel version was only £20 more so I opted for that instead. I decided I wanted this to be a platform pen, so I got it with a 14k double broad nib which has a tonne of tipping for a nibmeister to work with. I haven't decided what I want to get it ground down to yet, but I've got a while to think about it. In the meantime, it's still fun to use as is.
There were 4 specific pens I wanted to pick up last year, but I only managed to acquire one of them, the Nahvalur 365 Schuykill Obsidian Pumpkin. And hoo-boy I'm glad this was the one I was able to get! The hammered sterling silver body feels amazing to hold & it writes wonderfully.
Bonus shoutout to another great hammerd body pen — the titanium Majohn P136, to which I added a hammered stub nib to complete the look. I guess I have a thing for hammered metal pens now.
The next pen is one I've been trying to find for years. Back when I worked at a printers/stationers, the pen I always carried around was the Pentel GraphGear 1000 Ball — a pen which many of you might not even know existed as it was discontinued somewhere in the late 2000's-early 2010's. Unfortunately, they had a nasty habit of snapping in the middle that its pencil counterpart doesn't seem to have despite them having practically the same construction, with many parts interchangeable between them. Because these are so rare now eBay prices tend to be ridiculous, reaching over £100 at times, but I eventually found someone selling one for not too much more than its original RRP & snapped it up to go with its 0.7mm mechanical pencil sibling.
There were also some great Kickstarters that were fulfilled last year in the Ensso Bolt and Namisu Nova Pocket Ultem. They're both excellent pens that I've enjoyed using a great deal throughout the year. I anodised the nib & section on the Nova, but I hadn't realised the section on the ultem model is steel, not titanium, so it took over 100 volts to get this slightly yellowed colour (it looks more yellow in the photo than it does in person). It also meant that when I anodised the titanium Bock nib afterwards I completely overcooked it. This seems to have changed the surface of the nib, giving it feedback like a Sailor nib on steroids. I might anodise the Bolt at some point as well, but likely not until I get a power supply instead of daisy-chaining 9v batteries.
Lastly, I got a lovely transparent orange version of the Pilot Iro-Utsushi dip pen. It hasn't supplanted the Sailor Hocoro dip pen with the fude nib for my main ink swatches (shoutout to the new Straight Stria body they released towards the end of the year), but I've been using it for making smaller swatches to go along with ink samples I was sending out to friends. I was surprised by how incredibly smooth and pleasant the medium nib was to write with, having only ever tried the extremely fine EF version of this Kakuno nib before. It also held the ink very well despite having no reservoir or feed. The only reason it wont be replacing the Hocoro for my swatch cards is purely due to the lack of line variation compared to the Hocoro's fude nib.
Honourable mentions go to the Sailor Tuzu, whose rotating grip section makes it one of the most comfortable to use pens I have (thank you, Brad!), and the Kaweco Sport Piston AL, one of the best pens modern Kaweco have ever produced, made even better with Galen Leather's excellent Dentist nib grind from their Carmine Sport.
To wrap things up, I want to have a look at how well I did with my purchasing intentions for last year. As mentioned earlier, I only managed to get one of the four pens I had planned on. Hopefully this year I'll be able to pick up at least one more, preferably the 743 FA. I'm looking forward to seeing what the Chinese brands will be releasing for the Year of the Snake, as well as what the PenBBS Year of the Dragon will be once it eventually arrives. I partially succeeded at getting more custom nib grinds, as I got a few pre-ground nibs from BobbyNibs on the ChinesePen Etsy for some Jinhao, Majohn, & Wing Sung pens. I didn't get a cursive italic or needlepoint, but I did kill two birds with one stone by getting a stacked nib on Endless's successor to the Creator: the Phantom. Granted, it hasn't been delivered yet, but it was bought in 2024 so I'm counting it (and will probably count it for 2025 as well!).
So, how much ink really is too much ink? Who knows? I'm certainly not at that point yet, and I feel like even if I were to double the size of my collection again I still wouldn't be there. The biggest challenge would be storage, but I'm good on that for now.
How much ink would be too much for you? What are your purchasing intentions for 2025? How well did you manage to keep to last years, if you had any? Let me know in the comments, on Mastodon, or you can shoot me an email.
Ever since I fell back into the world of fountain pens a few years ago, I've bought a few bottles of ink. Okay, perhaps "a few" is a slight understatement. I may have flown way past the 300 mark in the past few weeks. That's a lot of ink, to put in mildly. So, how do I manage that many inks?
There are 2 main systems I make use of—one physical, & one digital.
Physically, I make swatches of every ink I get on a standard size Col-o-ring Ink Testing Book from the Well Appointed Desk. Each book holds 100 swatches, and I'm now on to book 4. I wanted to make the writing look as close as possible to what you can expect in normal use. Dip pens tend to write much wetter, so I used a TWSBI Eco with a broad nib on the first book. I would draw a little ink into the feed without letting it into the body, wipe off the nib, & then write on the swatch. The results were decent, but it quickly became a pain to clean between swatches, especially if I was doing quite a few at the one time & accidentally drew the ink in too far . So for the next books I decided to use a Sailor Hocoro dip pen with the fude nib & feed. Now, I did say earlier that I didn't want to use a dip pen as they write much wetter than a fountain pen, and they do, but the Hocoro is a bit of an outlier. It's still wetter than most normal fountain pens, but because it can make use of a small feed that clips to the underside of the nib, it can hold a decent amount of ink & keep it there, helping it to have a slightly more restricted flow a bit more like a fountain pen. I decided to go with the fude nib since it allows for both thin & thick strokes with a single nib. The Hocoro is also far easier to clean between swatches, making the whole swatching process more efficient.
Design-wise, on the left side I stamp each swatch with an Iroshizuku bottle stamp from Inky Converters on etsy. I write the ink brand above the bottle, the name bellow it, & fill in the bottle. I then dip an absorbent cotton bud into the ink & spread it over the right side of the swatch, going over half of it a second time to help show any shading or sheening properties. Now, not all cotton buds work well for this, & unfortunately you can't really tell if they'll be effective until you try them. I'm currently using a box of Johnson's Baby cotton buds from my local supermarket, & they've been working great. I leave the used cotton buds on a paper towel which gives a faux-chromatography effect as the towel absorbs the ink & it separates out into its components. Finally, I put a round holographic numbered sticker on one corner, then another sticker with that same number on the corresponding ink bottle or sample cap, making it easy to locate an ink from the swatch.
On the digital side, I make heavy use of Fountain Pen Companion. FPC is one of the most useful sites on the internet for fountain pen users. It lets you keep a database of both your ink collection & your pens. This also allows you to easily keep a record of your currently inked pens, along with how often you're using them. There is a huge database of inks that you can add to your own collection with just two clicks, or you can manually add the details yourself. Along with the standard information for each ink, it lets you indicate if your ink is in a bottle, sample, cartridge, or swab, whether you've swatched it, plus two additional fields for a publicly visible comment & a private comment. I use the public comment to record the bottle or sample size, & put the number from the swatch in the private comment. This allows me to quickly look up an ink from the swatch. Finally, you have an option to set an ink as private—which hides the ink from your public profile—and a section to add tags to your inks.
The combination of these 2 systems helps me keep everything organised & easy to reference whenever I need to. The swatches have been invaluable to me, and I feel they could be useful for others looking to see inks as close as possible to how they'll look in person. So, I created a searchable website a month or so back where I uploaded colour-corrected scans of all my swatches. I wasn't too happy with the system I was using as it had quite a few limitations that were starting to become annoying. And so, I'm happy to present the 2.0 version of swatches.stationeryvagaries.com! The site is still somewhat in progress. The main parts are in place with the inks grouped by brand & series as well as by book (which, honestly, is probably only useful for me 🤷), but I'm still working on adding a section with the inks grouped by colour & feature. I'm just trying to work out how granular I want to be with the colours. These layouts are what I had originally envisioned for the site, with multiple smaller swatch images visible on the one page so that you can quickly see the inks together, while still able to see a larger version of the swatch on its own page when you click it.
How do you organise your inks? Do you make ink swatches? Let me know in the comments or on Mastodon.
The three pens I'm sharing with you today have basically nothing in common, other than being pens I've been wanting to try out for a while. Just three random pens. Three great pens, to be sure, but totally, 100% unrelated. Yep, nothing in common whatsoever.
Anyway...
The first pen is a real beauty—a Tortoiseshell Brown vintage Pelikan 400 from the early 1950's. We initially thought it was a 400N, but based on the lack of engraving on the cap band and the nib having script text instead of the logo, as well as slightly different finials, all point to this being an original 400 from between August 1950 and mid-1954. This is my first time using a higher-end Pelikan, and my first experience with their gold nibs—although vintage gold nibs are a very different beast to their modern counterparts. I've been hesitant towards picking up an M200 series pen despite really liking a lot of their designs. As much as I love pocket pens, I've found larger pens are much more comfortable to use, so I was concerned that they would be too small for me. The vintage 400 is surprisingly close in size to the modern M200/400 despite the ~70 year gap between them, so this would be a great opportunity to both see how the size works for me, and to play with a flexy vintage gold nib.
As it's both vintage and a piston-filler (plus 1 other reason, but we'll put a pin in that for now), I didn't want to use any kind of shimmer ink in it. I'm super into chromashading inks at the moment, so I inked it up with Sailor Ink Studios 280—a sandy-yellow with hints of green showing through which matches well with the tortoiseshell stripes. As the 14k gold fine nib is from the early 50's, it's rather flexible. It's not a wet noodle by any means, but it gives a good amount of line variation. There's a bit of feedback when writing, not so much that I'd call it scratchy, but enough for there to be a pleasant audible sound as the nib moves across the page. It's lovely to write with, but it is a touch on the small side for me. After ~20-30 minutes of writing my fingers started hurting, but that's not too bad since that's about the longest I tend to write for at a time. I'm still on the fence with picking up an M200. I now know that, although small, it's not too small. But, I think I'd need to be really in love with a design for me to go for it. So no plans to pick one up at the moment, but I'll be keeping an eye out for that special one.
Next we have another pen that I wasn't sure if it'd be comfortable for me to use, but for a different reason. The Lamy 2000 is a pen that is very highly regarded, but doesn't work for everyone due to the 2 "ears" that stick out either side, which are used to let the cap seat securely in place. These are probably the most contentious part of the pen due to the fact that they get in the way of many people's grip, digging into their fingers. This wasn't a problem for me thanks to my wonky grip, so my fingers were well clear of the ears. I do tend to prefer finger-stops on pen sections so that my fingers don't slide down onto the nib, so I was concerned that the sloping section of the L2K might be an issue, but the Makrolon & brushed steel materials were grippier than expected and my fingers never slipped the whole time I used it.
This specific model is the limited edition brown version from Lamy's 55th anniversary. It's a pretty dark brown, so much so that in normal light I forget that it's not the standard black version. The only thing that gives it away is the brown clip, which is brushed steel on the standard version. Again, as this is a piston filler and a rare model (plus 1 more reason, but 🤫) I don't want to use shimmer in it, even though it's easy to disassemble and clean, so I once again opted for a chromashading ink. Hosia Ink Studio Mengchen is a Chinese ink that I recently picked up which consists of a chocolatey-brown with teals & oranges showing through that I thought would work well with this pen. As soon as you start writing with it you realise why this pen is so highly esteemed—beyond the timeless Bauhaus styling. The 14k gold fine nib is beautifully smooth and just wet enough without being a fire-hose, and the thicker body is incredibly comfortable to use, with no finger pain or fatigue past the 30 minute mark. I'm very much in the "L2K is awesome" camp now, whereas I was pretty indifferent towards it before. However, it's not the pen I've enjoyed the most of the three. That accolade goes to...
The John Garnham JG6 Carbon Oversized is a pen I came across purely by chance, and I imagine this will likely be a new maker to many of you as well. You wont find his pens in any stores as he only sells them through the Fountain Pens UK Facebook group in very small batches. I am in that group, but I very, very rarely go to facebook these days, so I tend to miss a lot of the stuff going on there. The pen is a smidge longer than the L2K at just over 140mm, but a decent amount thicker at 16mm at its widest point. It's a straight rod for the full length with flat ends that have slightly rounded-off edges. The main part of both the body and the cap are made from carbon fibre, with the finials, cap bands, and the section made from a swirly magenta resin with some lovely chatoyance. The section has a roughly ½mm concave and provides a very comfortable grip. As this is the JG6 model it takes a #6 size Bock 250 nib, in this case a Fine in Titanium. I like Bock's titanium nibs more than their gold or steel nibs. They're very juicy nibs with a little line variation and exceptionally smooth.
As this is a cartridge/converter pen and can easily be dismantled for cleaning, I decided to use Octopus Fluids Phoenix—a red/pink/orange/gold ink from their Sheen range that defies clear classification. But that wasn't quite enough colours in one ink, so I added Pennonia Óceánkék (Ocean Blue) & Sötélila (Dark Lilac) Csillám shimmer additives to it. Pennonia recommend adding 1 or 2 drops to 5ml of ink, which I did and you wouldn't've even known it was there. I bumped it up to 5 drops of each, which looked more along the lines of what you would normally see in shimmer inks, but unfortunately it still isn't showing up too well. Maybe the monster sheen overpowers it, or maybe it needs a tonne more shimmer. I dunno, I'll experiment with it more another day.
Since the pen is predominately made from carbon fibre, it's exceptionally light at just shy of 20g capped and fully inked, and only 13g with the cap off. This, combined with the larger size and juicy nib means long-form writing is an absolute dream, with zero pain or discomfort when writing with the JG6 even during marathon sessions over multiple hours. I didn't expect this to be the pen I liked most out of the three considering the classics I rented along with it.
Wait... rented? You can rent pens?!
That's right! There was something that linked the 3 pens after all—I rented them! That was the other reason I didn't want to put shimmer ink in the 2 piston fillers. As much as I love shimmer inks, they can cause problems and I don't want to run the risk of damaging these valuable pens when they're not mine to risk.
I suppose the first question is: Why? Why would you want to rent a fountain pen? There are many reasons. I don't have any kind of Pen Club in my area, so I don't have the opportunity to try out pens that I would never be able to afford myself. So I rented a vintage Montblanc 149, a 1 of 1 Leonardo Momento Zero Grande, and a Visconti Homo Sapiens last year for exactly that reason. Another possibility would be to try out a pen before purchasing it, especially if it's near the top-end of your budget. There are no brick & mortar stationery stores near me that I can go to for a hands-on with a pen before buying, which was the reason I rented the pens we looked at today. It doesn't necessarily have to be an expensive pen either, just any pen you fancy trying out.
The next question would be: How? It's taken me 1600 words to get to the true purpose of this post—to introduce PenSharing.com to more people! PenSharing.com is the brainchild of Jon Rabbet, who brought it to the world back in 2018. It was initially a place for people in the UK to share pens with other pen enthusiasts, but has since grown to include networks in the US, Belgium, Norway, & the Netherlands. In Jon's words:
Pensharing was created to enable the pen community to share their love of pens! We're all on the lookout for the next pen, but that doesn't mean you have to buy it. Owners can hire out their pens to fellow enthusiasts and make some money, whilst hirers can enjoy the latest pens for a short time for a fraction of the cost of buying.
You can either hire pens FROM other pen lovers or hire pens TO other pen lovers. But you don't have to hire to others to be able to hire from others - it's up to you!
To help keep things secure, the site operates on a members-only system. Membership costs just £12 for a year (this will be going up to £14 on 1st September) with a 3-month free trial, which I feel is extremely reasonable. Pen rentals start from as little as 50p/week for lower value pens, with £20/week being the highest I've seen for Namiki's & the like. Shipping costs vary depending on the value of the pen, and this is something you absolutely do not want to cheap out on. The more expensive the pen, the higher the shipping cost in order to make sure you're covered if something goes wrong during delivery. This is fairly uncommon, but it does happen. People are also usually willing to combine items, so if you're renting more than 1 pen from the same person it works out a bit cheaper.
But pens aren't the only things available on PenSharing.com. It's also an excellent place to get ink samples from! I've been planning to sell samples there for months now, but I still haven't gotten around to it yet. Maybe by this time next year I'll have done it. Maybe...
TL;DR—Visit PenSharing.com! Rent Pens! Hire out your own pens! Buy & sell ink samples!
Is there a pen you'd like to try renting? Do you have any that you'd consider renting out? Let me know in the comments or on Mastodon!
I love it when we see a new company try to break into the fountain pen manufacturing world, especially when they're taking risks from the off with their designs. Endless are one such company. They made their start with notebooks using the fountain pen friendly Tomoe River paper, before switching to their own Regalia paper, but decided to break into fountain pens with the Creator back in May 2023. Most companies start with fairly standard affairs & then build upon that as they gain experience. Endless, on the other hand, decided to make the most notoriously difficult to get right style of fountain pen that they could possibly try—the retractable. There's a reason I can count the number of companies that make retractable fountain pens on one hand. They're far more complex to make than any capped pens, so it takes some guts to try and release one as your first attempt. So, how did they do?
I'll start with the positives. They truly made the pen their own. It's not just some copy of an already proven design (cough Majohn A1 cough), the pen has a unique & instantly recognisable look. Despite the angular & somewhat aggressive styling, I actually found the pen fairly comfortable to use, with my wonky grip fitting into the facets quite nicely. The ABS material it's made from is fine, comparable to the ABS on the matte Lamy Safari, so it's grippy enough for me. The medium nib it came with was smooth, wet, & wrote well. The nib is the same type that you see in the hooded Parker 51 pens and their many, many imitations. I've seen plenty of these nibs over the years, but I've never seen them with the sword imprint present on this nib before. I'm assuming it'll be Indian-made, but I can't say for sure. As good as the nib was, I ended up swapping it out for a Chinese mini-fude nib as I enjoy the line variation they allow, something that they actually made available themselves later on. I also like the way they designed the window on the nib unit so that it lines up with their —⦁⦁⦁ logo on the converter. It's nice little touches like that I appreciate.
However... as soon as I pressed the knock I was met with a horrible, grindy squeak. I've gotten used to it over time, but it was incredibly jarring. Not a good start. Turns out it doesn't seal particularly well either. This is something all retractable fountain pens struggle with, but some deal with it better than others. The Creator doesn't deal with it that well. Depending on the ink, if I've left it alone for even a few hours I need to prime the feed to get it going again, which isn't ideal for a pen designed around quick deployment.
That being said, I don't regret buying the pen. I have a huge amount of respect for Endless trying something so ambitious & different with their first pen, and I want to see them keep doing this. I believe a Creator 2.0 is in the works, so I'm looking forward to seeing what lessons they've learned from this one.
But the Creator 2.0 was not their next pen. Much to my & many other's surprise, at the end of May 2024 Endless sprang the Captiva on us. At first glance it looks much more traditional than the Creator, opting for a normal screw cap pen this time. But this being Endless, they'll have something weird going on. Your attention is quickly drawn to the large inset dial on the end of the pen and a long ink window in the middle. "Oh, so it's a piston filler?" I hear you ask. No. Well, kind of, but not really. That would be far too straightforward, wouldn't it? What we have here is what's known as a Captive (or captured) Converter pen. Sort of. Captive Converter pens aren't something you hear about all that often, but they are out there, most recently seen in the Taiwanese TaG Submarine as well as some Visconti's. Essentially, they're a cartridge/converter pen where the converter has been glued in place. There is then a mechanism on the end of the pen similar to the blind cap on a piston-filler which will turn the converters knob as you twist it, allowing you to fill the pen without having to take it apart. They're not super-popular as many people feel that they have the downsides from both c/c & piston filling pens without any of the benefits. I'm not sure I fully agree with the latter part, but the former is certainly true.
Thankfully, the Captiva does things a bit differently by allowing the converter to be removed, which makes cleaning far easier. It uses a Schmidt screw-in converter that's fairly standard looking. Well, apart from the large, grooved, metal knob that's been fused to it. Other than that, it's a normal converter. Since it's a standard international fitting, you could technically put a cartridge in it instead, but it'd leave a huge hole in the back of the pen. I went for the Cult Pens exclusive "Stealth Orange" colourway, so the knob on mine is a gorgeous metallic orange. Speaking of colourways, this is something new for Endless as well. The Creator was only available in black with silver trim, but the Captiva has 4 colourways (that I'm aware of, at least): 3 standard & 1 store exclusive special edition. For the standard models we get the choice of "Infinite Space" or "Deep Ocean", a.k.a black or blue with silver trim, and "Stealth" which is entirely black, including the nib. The "Stealth Orange" from Cult is—as you can imagine from the name—the same as the all-black "Stealth" version, but with some orange, namely: an orange knob and an orange dot on the cap finial. It's definitely the best looking in my opinion, but I am biased towards orange. The ABS material is again very close to the Lamy Safari, but the glossy version this time. I prefer the matte material as I can find the glossy can sometimes be quite slippery. It does look great, though, especially in photos. But, the gloss has another downside in that it's a giant fingerprint magnet, so as good as it looks straight out of the box, keeping it looking that good can be a bit of a pain.
The other exciting part of this pen is in the nibs. They've done something generally only seen on Esterbrook pens by including options for Architect & Needlepoint grinds as standard. Unlike Esterbrook, though, they aren't charging a large premium for these special grinds, only increasing the price by £5. I would love to see more companies try this. Unfortunately, the Architect, Needlepoint, Stub, & Extra Fine nibs are only available on the models with plain steel nibs, which is a shame. I've emailed Endless to see if it's possible to buy individual nibs, and they will indeed sell you them for ~$30, which is great to know. The #6 black fine nib I have in mine is lovely, smooth, and reasonably wet. I really like the imprint they have on it. The —⦁⦁⦁ logo down the centre gives a cohesive & precision feel to the pen as it lines up with the long ink window and the logo on the converter knob. Speaking of precision, the logo on the aforementioned converter knob is centred on the top side when the pen is inked, and is centred on the bottom side when the converter piston is fully wound down. Just like with the Creator, it's the little touches like this that I really appreciate in a pen, as it shows a great deal of thought and care has been put into both the design and the manufacturing.
There are a few things I don't like about it. As I mentioned earlier, I'm not a huge fan of its glossy, fingerprint-magnet finish. There have also been a few occasions when I've tried to cap the pen but it has gone on at an angle, causing the threads to cross & stick. Because the threads are just plastic, I'm concerned that if this happens often enough it will eventually cause damage to them. From an aesthetic standpoint, I don't really like the gap between the end of the piston knob and the end of the pen. It can be reduced a bit by unscrewing the converter a full turn, but that's not really an ideal solution. It's still held firmly in place, and I haven't had any issues with it running dry in this configuration yet, so it seems like it still has enough of a connection to the feed. And... well, that's it, those are my only complaints and none of them are deal-breakers. I've heard some worries that the exposed piston knob might be easily turned by accident, but after having used it for a few weeks I've found that it's not something I worry about any more than I do with other piston fillers. There's enough resistance that it takes intentional effort to turn it, so although it is possible, I think it's unlikely to be an issue.
I like the Captiva a lot, much more than the Creator, and I think Endless have done a really nice job in bringing us a more "normal" pen. For £60-65 depending on the colourway & nib choice, it's more expensive than the Creator's £40 price tag, but I do believe it's worth the extra cash, especially if you get it with a non-standard nib grind. This is a pen I can see myself using a great deal, & I'm excited to see what they have in store for us next!
Credit to the always awesome Brad from the Pen Addict for the idea. If for some reason you're not already, you should absolutely follow him on Twitch & Mastodon.
A few years ago, I decided I could do with a new mechanical pencil. I had a few old ones from 20 years ago, like a Staedtler Mars Micro 775 and a Pentel Technika-X—both solid pencils in their own rights—but I wanted something a bit sturdier and with a metal grip. As I was perusing the Amazon results, one in particular stood out to me. Not so much for its looks, but for its name: The Uni Kuru Toga Roulette. How could I not go for it when it carries my name? Thankfully, it turned out to be a pretty great mechanical pencil!
If you're unfamiliar with the Kuru Toga series, they have a mechanism that rotates the lead as you write so that you always have a nice, uniform point without having to keep rotating the pencil itself. This is one of those things that's always bugged me about pencils, but you put up with it because it's just the reality of using an implement that wears down as it's used. So it was a pleasant surprise to find uniball had come up with a solution to this that actually works.
The 0.5mm Roulette is styled along the lines of a draughting pencil, with a metal grip and plastic barrel. The bottom half of the grip has some very grippy knurling, but if you hold your pencils higher up, the matte metal is still grippy enough that I don't feel like it would slip out of my hand. There's a small circular window at the bottom of the grip that allows you to see part of the Kuru Toga mechanism turning as you use it. The mechanism works via a clutch and a series of gears that incrementally rotates the lead each time you press the pencil onto the page & lift it again, taking ~40 presses to fully rotate on this model. This does mean that it doesn't work as well with English cursive writing, since you don't lift the pencil as often. But for print and languages like Japanese it's pretty effective. It would be nice if the entire pencil was metal, but having the body made from plastic keeps the rear light so that you have a front-balanced, easy to control pencil. My only complaints with this model are that 1) the grip is quite thin at 9¾mm, so it quickly becomes painful for me to use in longer writing sessions, and 2) it doesn't have an automatic lead advance mechanism. I can live with the latter, but the former relegates this pencil to quick notes or light sketching & detail work only.
Fast-forward a few years and uniball released the Kuru Toga Dive—a 0.5mm mechanical pencil with a cap! It's not the first to try this—the Pentel Sharp Kerry has been around for a while & is highly regarded—but it's still a rarity among mechanical pencils. The Dive was a huge hit & remained in high demand long after it sold out. Unfortunately, because uniball weren't making any new ones the scalpers started listing them for astronomical prices. Eventually, uniball decided that they needed to do something about these scalpers, so they made more available & became the scalpers themselves, selling them for more than twice the initial price. This was already a fairly expensive pencil at ~£30, but re-releasing them for ~£70 caused quite the commotion in the stationery world. Despite this high price, they quickly sold out again. I would have liked to have picked one up at the time, but because of the steep price I put it out of my mind. Until February, when I realised there was a model with a colour shifting paint job. I loooooooove colour shifting products—be it pens, pencils, even guitars—so I knew I had to track one down. This wasn't easy, but I eventually found one in a Taiwanese store for a pretty decent price.
This model has an adjustable automatic lead advance mechanism along with a thicker 11mm grip, solving both issues I had with the Roulette. The packaging states it has a new Kuru Toga mechanism that rotates the lead faster, but I can only assume this is compared to much older models, as—just like the Roulette—it also takes ~40 presses to rotate the lead a full 360º. The colour-shifting matte paint job looks gorgeous, ranging from a dark forest green through to a sumptuous dark purple depending on the direction that light hits it. The cap has a satisfying magnetic closure, with small wedges on the pencil body that guide the cap into position as it closes, meaning that the facets will always line up. Uncapping also activates the lead advance mechanism, so the pencil will always be ready to write when you are. The grip is rubberised with some small raised nodules to help keep your fingers in place. I do much prefer the knurling of the Roulette, but the thicker grip section on the Dive stays comfortable for longer. The Kuru Toga mechanism window is in the middle of the body this time, and is fairly deeply recessed, making it quite a bit more difficult to observe it in action than on the Roulette.
I tested this pencil with 3 different grades of Pentel Ain 0.5mm leads to see how well the auto lead advance mechanism works: 2H, HB, & 4B. There was a lead from uniball designed specifically for the Kuru Toga pencils that had a hard core & softer outer shell, but I couldn't find it for sale anywhere so I had to settle for one of the best leads on the market. I found it couldn't quite keep up with how quickly the 4B lead wears down even on the highest setting. I'd say 2B would probably be the softest it could cope with if you never want to have to manually press the lead advance. Both 2H and HB worked perfectly, never requiring me to manually advance it. Which is just as well, because—unlike with the Pentel Kerry—when you have the cap posted you can't press the cap down to activate the button. I was initially a little surprised by this, but in reality there wouldn't be much point in adding that feature when the pencils entire shtick is the lead auto-advance. I'm not usually one to post my pen caps, but in this case I think it looks and feels best with the cap posted. It uses the same magnetic system to keep the cap securely posted as it does when you cap it, so there's no chance of it accidentally coming loose. It does affect the balance a smidge, moving it from slightly front-weighted to almost exactly centre-balanced, but it wasn't enough for me to notice much of a difference while using it.
I really love these pencils, especially the Dive, but would I recommend them? For the Roulette, there's no question. It's a great pencil at a good price, but it's just a bit too thin for me. The Dive I'd recommend with a Mariana Trench-sized caveat. It's a fantastic pencil, but it's way, way too expensive. If you need something thicker than the Roulette, then either the Advance or Alpha-Gel Kuru Toga's would serve you better at a fraction of the price. If you desperately need a capped mechanical pencil, then the aforementioned Pentel Sharp Kerry would be a much cheaper option.
This concludes my legaly mandated review of the pencils that carry my name. Or is it me that carries their name? 🤷♂️ What are your favourite mechanical pencils?
I'm a big fan of modern Kaweco's pens—especially the raw metal models of the Sport—but one of its biggest downsides is ink capacity. If you want to use bottled ink, you have 2 options, both of which have drawbacks. You can either use the mini converter, or refill an empty cartridge. The mini converter is the most convenient option, but it holds a small amount of ink (~0.5ml). Refilling empty cartridges gives you more ink (~0.75ml), but you need to use a syringe to fill it up. For a long time, this is the choice you had to make as a Sport user. But now we have a new option. One that is as convenient as the mini converter, while having greater capacity than a cartridge.
We've been asking for a piston filler for a long, long time. The original Kaweco made a number of these in a few different styles, but for whatever reason when the brand was purchased & resurrected in the mid-90's the piston never showed back up. I'm happy to see that this wrong has finally be righted.
Capped, Uncapped, Capped with no clip, and close up of the clip
Before we start on what makes this Sport different, we need to have a chat about something. Kaweco Sports tend to have a specific naming convention, with the "Sport" part coming last, e.g. Kaweco STEEL Sport, Kaweco EBONIT Sport, Kaweco ART Sport, etc. So it would stand to reason that the correct name for the Piston model is Kaweco PISTON Sport, right? Nope! It's Kaweco Sport Piston Filler. Because why be consistent? Now that's out of the way, on with the review.
Design-wise, this looks much like any other Sport—at least while capped—but there are a few differences. It's very close in design to the fairly unknown Sport Luxe from ~2014, with a gold band between the blind cap and body, plus a built-in clip like the most recent Art Sports. If you're not a fan of the clip, it can be easily removed by unscrewing the cap finial. It does leave a slight gap, but it's not bad. Unlike the glossy black plastic Luxe, this one is made from aluminium with a lovely matte black finish. The body and the cap are roughly the same size as other Sports with just slight differences in dimensions, but when it's capped it's ~3mm shorter. I can only assume that the cap threads slightly deeper onto the body. The cap will fit comfortably onto other Sport bodies, but one thing that isn't interchangeable is the nib unit. This pen uses the 190 nib unit instead of the 060 unit that the other metal Sports use. The feed & housing have a different design to fit with the different filling system. The 190 housing is 1.5mm shorter than the standard 060 housing, and the feed is 3mm shorter. You can still freely swap the nibs, just not the feed or housing. Be careful when removing the nib housing from this pen, as the o-ring is fairly loose and will happily play hide & seek at any opportunity.
The body is where we see most of the differences. Unlike normal Sports, the section doesn't unscrew since you don't need access for cartridges, but this does make cleaning a bit more difficult. You can still get decent access by taking out the nib unit, though. There is a clear ink window just behind the section that helps you check the ink levels, and the blind cap comes off to reveal the piston knob. I was pleasantly surprised by how far up the body the piston sits. I had expected it to be just above the ink window, but it sits ~13mm beyond it. This gives you an decent ink capacity of a little over 1ml. The piston knob functions well. It's easy to both grip and turn, and the gold Kaweco logo on the end gives it a classy, premium look. However, I do have one problem with it. I can't see any way to service it should the piston require re-lubricated. This isn't something that needs to be done very often, but it's a standard feature on all other piston-filling pens that I'm aware of. Perhaps there is a way to do this, but I haven't been able to figure out how. It looks like the piston has a slot for a screwdriver accessible when you remove the nib unit, but I'm not too keen on trying to disassemble it that way right now.
Piston knob, EF steel nib, cap finial, & piston window with piston visible
These differences aside, it writes and feels like any other Sport—as long as you received a decent nib. I've been exceptionally lucky with my Kaweco nibs, but YMMV. In my opinion, nibs on pens at this price point should be good out of the box, but modern Kaweco is known for its spotty nib QC. Hopefully they've put in a bit more effort for this release, but I really can't say. Mine was okay, but I'll be swapping it out for the specially ground Dentist (Soft Architect) nib from Galen Leather. That brings us to our final matter—the price. At £130, this is an expensive Sport. Not the most expensive—the Ebonit & Bronze Sports beat it out—but still more than double the standard cartridge/converter version of the matte black AL Sport. Is it worth the steep price? If you like Sports, you only ever use bottled ink, and you need a little more ink capacity than you can normally get, I'd say it is. It's easily the classiest looking Sport I have. I did decide to fill in the "Kaweco Sport" logo on the cap with a white timber crayon, as I think it completes the look. So don't expect the logo to be white on your copy if you buy one. I think the Steel Sport is still my favourite, but this is a close second. Hopefully this pen will do well so that we'll see more of these in different colours and materials.
What's your favourite Kaweco Sport? Let me know in the comments!
There are pens, and then there are PENS. Pens so huge that they verge on comically large. I've recently become much more aware of my preference for BIG pens when I'm doing longer writing sessions. I do adore small pocket pens—especially for quick notes—but the thinner & smaller a pen is, the more painful it starts to becomes for my lanky arthritic hands to use for extended periods. Larger pens significantly remedy this, which is why I enjoy Jinhao's X159 & Dadao 9019 models so much. Unfortunately, it's often the case that the larger & girthier a pen gets, the more organs I need to sell to afford it (Granted, my organs aren't worth much these days, but you get the point). At least, that was what I initially thought. There have been a few I've discovered recently that have bucked that trend. We're looking at one such pen today—the Kanwrite Mammoth. But what makes a pen Big-with-a-capital-B?
In my entirely unofficial opinion, If it can't fit in my 155mm callipers, it's in the running. However, just being long isn't enough, otherwise pens like the Lamy Joy, Platinum Carbon desk pen, and Pilot Parallel would fall under this category. There also needs to be some girth to them to make them feel substantial in the hand. Again, girth alone does not a Big pen make, as that would then include pens like the short but stout Moonman Q1. Weight doesn't play into my requirements all that much. A heavier pen can help add to the experience, but a lighter pen will be more comfortable to use for longer. This combination of qualifications are what exclude pens like the aforementioned X159 & 9019. They're big pens, for sure, but not Big pens.
Piston knob, EF steel nib, cap finial, & piston window with piston visible
My first example is right on the cusp of being a Big pen. The Wing Sung 590 is the OG Big Chinese pen from the mid 90's. It's 159mm long, 14mm wide, & weighs in at a mere 25.5g. It's verging on being too narrow, but I'd say it just about qualifies. The #6-ish sized Medium nib is decent enough. It writes fairly nicely, but it's a product of its age made from very thin material & easily sprung. The clip also feels like it would snap off if I so much as looked at it wrong. These foibles aside, it does the job by being comfortable to hold & write with for long sessions.
The Pilot Custom Uru... wait, no, it's the JD Big Pen
My next example is much more modern & easily qualifies: The aptly named JD Big Pen (also found under the Montefiore name)—a pen modelled after the ridiculously huge—and ridiculously expensive—Pilot Custom Urushi. It turns out it's actually slightly larger than the Custom Urushi at 156mm long, 16mm wide, & weighs in at a whopping 70g, but I feel they really missed a trick by fitting it with a #6 nib. It looks strangely small on such a large pen, far moreso than the Wing Sung thanks to it's thinner barrel & longer nib. I really feel this pen would benefit from a #8 nib, as there's more than enough room in the cap and it would look far more proportionally appropriate. That being said, it's a decent enough nib & writes well. I like this pen a great deal. It looks fantastic, and although it's heavy, it's very comfortable to use. I didn't think I'd ever come across anything bigger than this pen. Until I heard the rumblings of a true behemoth.
I can't remember exactly where I first came across the Mammoth, but during my "No-Buy January" I heard whispers of an exceptionally large pen from the Indian company Kanwrite. A huge pen, made of ebonite, with a giant #9 nib, for less than £75? Seems too good to be true, right? Well, to an extent, it was. Trying to find someone selling these was incredibly difficult. I eventually tracked down an Indian store called The Pen World who had one left and was willing to ship to the UK, but it was still January at that point, so I couldn't purchase it yet without breaking my pledge. It was an agonising wait, checking their page each day to make sure it was still in stock. As soon as the clock struck midnight & we passed over into February 1st, I hit buy. Thankfully they still had one, although it wasn't the solid black ebonite I'd originally wanted. Instead, it was the red swirl ebonite model that I wasn't particularly fussed on, as I'm not at all a fan of ebonite with the wood-effect striation. But, considering how difficult it had been to find this pen anywhere at all, the red swirl would do.
It took quite some time for the pen to get to me, mainly because of issues with the paperwork to get it on a plane, causing it to get sent back to the seller. We eventually got this sorted, and it arrived safely on the 26th. I'm used to waiting weeks—even months—for orders from China, so I wasn't too bothered about the delays.
The Swirly Mammoth
The pen comes in a nice canvas-covered presentation box, and the first thing that hits you when you open the lid is just how gargantuan this pen really is. It completely lives up to its namesake. It was hard to get a true sense of the scale of this pen from the pictures I'd seen, so even though I expected it to be big, it still took me by surprise. Along with the pen, you get a giant converter that makes even the Jinhao Dadao 9019's chonky converter look small, along with a large & cleverly designed resealable cartridge. The cartridge has a little blue screw cap that seals it when not in use, and then screws onto the back of the cartridge when installed in the pen, making it ideal for taking with you as a spare. Both of these are proprietary for fairly obvious reasons. It wouldn't make any sense to hamper a pen with a nib as wet and large as this with the comparatively measly amount of ink & small opening a standard international cartridge or converter would give you. The cartridge holds a generous 2.5ml of ink, while the converter—despite its massive size—holds a fairly mediocre 1ml. Granted, as this is an ebonite pen you could probably get away with eyedroppering it if you add an o-ring, but I'd say 90% of the time you're better off just using the empty cartridge. The nib is so large that there are few ink bottles that can accommodate filling it the normal way with the converter in situ. You can't fill it by dipping the converter directly into the bottle either. Because the opening of the converter is around the same size as your average Sarlacc pit, there is zero surface tension to keep the ink in there, so as soon as the converter is even slightly tilted, the ink is dumped straight out. The only reliable way to fill it is by using a syringe, at which point you may as well just use the larger capacity cartridge. This is probably my main complaint with the pen, but it kinda comes with the territory with pens of this size.
Size comparisons of various pens. JD Big Pen, Kanwrite Mammoth, Wing Sung 590 | Jinhao X159, Kanwrite Mammoth, Jinhao Dadao 9019 | TWSBI Eco, Kanwrite Mammoth, Kawweco Steel Sport
Speaking of size, here are the details: It measures just shy of 180mm long, the body is a little over 17.5mm wide, and the whole pen (including the fully inked converter) weighs just over 41g. I mentioned earlier that I wasn't initially keen on the red swirl model, but I am so glad that this was the only one left. It's gorgeous! I think I'm okay with this style because it doesn't look like it's imitating wood the way many ebonite pens do. It's much more akin to swirly acrylic, and it makes it far more visually interesting than the plain black. The pen is predominately a straight rod that slightly tapers down to rounded ends. The end of the body taper's gently to 14mm before rounding off, but the cap has a steeper taper with an elongated finial dipping down to 12mm before rounding off. A difference of 2mm doesn't sound like much, but it completely throws off the visual balance of the pen. I'm not sure why the cap finial is elongated like that, as it's not needed to accommodate the nib tip. It's an odd decision, to be sure, but one I can ultimately live with. The section has a slight taper from 15mm down to 14mm, with a rounded finger-stop at the end so that your fingers don't slip onto the ludicrously large nib. The cap takes 3.5 turns to remove, which normally would be a downside for me. However, because of the sheer size of this pen, I find myself slowing down when I use it. I'm enjoying the entire process of uncapping, writing, then recapping again. Even my grip is significantly relaxed to the point that it almost becomes standard! It's an exceptionally comfortable pen to use. Because it's made from ebonite, the pen is lighter than you might expect a pen of this size to be. Not so much that it feels cheap, but enough for it to be comfortable over prolonged periods. The material has the signature ebonite warmth to it, and the glossy, polished finish is grippy enough that my fingers never slipped while using the pen.
The giant #9 nib & ebonite feed, a comparison of my largest & smallest pen (Filcao Classico Micro), & a comparison of various nib sizes (#5, #6, #8, #9)
There's one last part of the pen that I haven't really talked about much yet, and it's arguably the most unique and important part of this pen: The #9 steel nib. Yes, you read that correctly, a #9 nib. Kanwrite specialise in nibs, being the largest nib manufacturer in India, so it's no surprise that it's fantastic. The nib I got is a medium, but it produces a line closer to a broad, or even double broad. I tend to have pretty small handwriting, so this has been forcing me to write larger than usual. Despite that, I still love writing with it every opportunity I get. It's wonderfully smooth without feeling glassy, and because of its size it's also fairly soft, so you can get a touch of line variation with only a little pressure. This is not a flex nib, though, so don't try to push it. It also does a decent job with reverse writing, getting you a line width akin to a fine nib. The ebonite feed channels a huge amount of ink to the nib, so it's a wet writer without quite becoming a gusher. I chose Diamine Oxblood for this pen, as it's an almost exact match to the burgandy swirls in the ebonite. Visually, the nib looks perfectly proportioned for this pen, to the point that I often forget that it's significantly bigger than #8 nibs. It's only when I put them side-by-side that it really hits home.
So, do I recommend this pen? If you're a fan of large pens, then absolutely. I really can't over-emphasize how much I enjoy even just the simple act of uncapping it. I find the entire process of using this pen to be grounding, slowing me down and letting me savour the experience and the time I spend using it. That sounds horribly pretentious, but it's true. I haven't experienced that with any other pen I've ever used. It's well worth the money, provided you can find it. Thankfully, that should be a bit easier now that Fountain Pen Revolution have started stocking them, albeit a bit more expensive at £107. I still feel it's worth the higher price, though, and you do get more nib choices with FPR. On the other hand, if you find pens like the X159 are uncomfortably big, then this isn't the pen for you. And that's okay. It's a niche pen, after all. But for those of you who enjoy pens on the larger size, I'm sure you'll fall in love with it, too.
