There’s no getting around it, the Pilot Plumix is one weird pen. Sold in big box department stores (I think I got mine at Target), the Plumix is a cheap, way entry-level pen. With its weird body and odd choice of nibs, though, it’s hard to know who the pen is intended for.

The Plumix’s body is long and tapered, like a paintbrush handle or dip-pen holder. There is no visible differentiation between the body — made of hard smoke-grey plastic on mine, but it comes in blue and purple, too, I think — and the writing section, although there are two Lamy Safari-style cutouts that guide where your fingers are meant to go. (People who hate this on the Lamy will hate it here, too.) The pen body isn’t quite straight, it has a kind of belly on the underside, just before the section. Most strangely, the screw-on cap only covers the nib, putting it all out of proportion with the rest of the pen. The tiny cap posts, at least, making it slightly less likely you’ll lose it (if you don’t mind that the pen looks ridiculous with the cap stuck up there…).

The Plumix comes with an italic nib, medium width. While some people love italics, it’s a strange choice for a mass market pen — the flat chisel tip and sharp-ish corners make the pen somewhat difficult to use and take a while to get used to. On smooth, ink-friendly paper it can be comfortable, but on the kind of paper most of us have around our homes and offices, the pen will drag and dig in, making for a pretty lousy experience.

The Plumix is a tough pen to love, but if you enjoy the nib and aren’t put off by the unforgiving hard plastic section and odd design, the writing works are well made. The nib and feed are removable and can be swapped with other pens in Pilot’s budget range, including the Metropolitan. The pen takes Pilot’s Namiki cartridges, or can be fitted with a CON-20 squeeze converter or CON-50 piston converter and loaded up with bottled ink. I’ve done both, and both work well (the hand-written review is with a Namiki cartridge). Because the nib/feed assembly is designed to be removable, it turns quite easily (just grab the nib with your fingers and twist somewhat hard) which makes it possible to adjust the angle relative to the finger cut-outs in the section. I prefer to write with the nib parallel to the paper, which technically isn’t really italic. Whatever — my pen, my rules!

In the end, the Plumix is a cheap oddball — if you find a use for it, great; if not, well, it’s only a few dollars lost. I can’t figure out what to do with mine — just writing this review has made my fingers sore, so it’s never going to be an everyday writer for me — but I keep not throwing it out or giving it away, so there’s SOMETHING about it that resonates with me. Maybe it’s just the fact that it’s such an ugly duckling that I feel sorry for it…

Shortly after I wrote my original review of the Pilot Metropolitan with a medium nib, I purchased one with the then-newly-available fine nib. This pen is from the “Animal Collection” — the White Tiger, RAWR! — but aside from the nib and finish, does not differ from the original line.

The White Tiger is, like other Metropolitans, a metal-bodied pen. Unlike the black, gold, and silver pens of the original line, the finish is less matter and more of a pearlized white. The glossy accent band of the solid color pens is replaced with a white-and-less-white tiger-striped band — the darker stripes are matte, so you can feel the patterns, though there is no actual raised design. I’ll admit it’s a dopey design element, but it’s the most restrained of the animal patterns in this line and I like the overall look of the pearl-white pen. (One drawback: the inevitable ink droplets that gather in the cap, especially if your ink tends towards nib creep, end up deposited on the other end when you post the cap. It wipes off easily enough, but as with all white things, you’ll have to resign yourself to a little extra upkeep if you choose the white Metropolitan.)

The nib is every bit as excellent as the medium nibs in this line — smooth even-flowing, well-behaved. If anything, I like it better than the medium nibs, though I still love those too. I inked this pen with Noodler’s Massachusetts 54th (replacing my medium-nibbed Metro’s ink with Apache Sunset). Since fine nibs doesn’t allow for much shading or line variation, the Massachusetts 54th, which doesn’t shade much and which flows quite freely, seemed like a great choice, and it is. (You get nib creep with the Massachusetts 54th, contributing to the barrel spotting mentioned above, but I can live with that).

All in all, the fine nib is a great addition to the Metro line and shows the same commitment to quality that’s already made this pen a popular favorite.

A few months ago now, Ron at Pen Chalet contacted me, asking if I’d like to review one of those Napking “inkless pens” that have been doing the rounds. Having owned a similar “inkless pen” in the past (which I’ll be reviewing here some time soon) and really hated it, I passed. There’s no point wasting my time and Pen Chalet’s money having me test a product that I’m pretty sure I’ll hate. Some people might like those pens, but they’re not for me.

Thinking that to be the end of it, I was surprised to hear back, asking if there was anything in particular I would like to review. After some back-and-forth, Ron offered to send me a Sailor 1911 with an extra-fine nib that had been returned as “too scratchy”. I was pretty sure it had been returned simply because the buyer had no experience with Japanese nibs, which run quite a bit thinner than non-Japanese nibs of the same size. Probably it was just too fine for the buyer, and no scratchy at all.

Well, a few days later, the pen arrived and you know what? It was scratchy. But we’ll come back to that in a few minutes.

Sailor is one of the three big Japanese fountain pen makers, along with Pilot and Platinum. The story goes that back in 1911, the company’s soon-to-be-founder met a British sailor whose fountain pen impressed the young engineer, and voila! a company was born. The Sailor 1911 commemorates that encounter as the company’s flagship pen.

Style-wise, the 1911 is nothing out of the ordinary — a traditional cigar-shaped barrel with a screw-on cap. Mine is black with gold furniture — honestly, my least-favorite combination, but most would call it “classic”. I was struck by how light and plasticky the pen felt — at first, it felt cheap and insubstantial. Incidentally, Sailor’s expertise in manufacturing plastic pens led it to create many innovations in injection molding and robotics, and today, it is a global leader in both — businesses I suspect generate far more revenue than fountain pens!

Inside, the pen uses either cartridges or an included screw-type converter. Since mine had already been opened, there was a cartridge already loaded, but after scribbling a few lines, I threw it out — I rarely enjoy the stock black or blue cartridges manufacturers include with their pens.

Let’s get back to that nib. Appearance-wise, it’s a really lovely piece of work. Well-sized for the 1911 barrel, with a ribbon of filigree around the brand markings, “1911” and the Sailor logo (an anchor). Towards the body, the nib is marked “14K” and “585”, with the company name in tiny script right up against the base. 14K is clearly the gold content; I have no idea what 585 is , though I presume it’s a stock number [NOTE: Derp, I figured it out later – 14k gold is 585/1000 pure gold]. On the left side, the nib is stamped “H-EF” — “EF” for extra-fine, and I assume “H” for “Hard”? It is hard, too — though you can squeeze some small amount of flex out of this nib, you have to press hard enough that I’d fear damaging the nib over time.

As I said, the nib was scratchy. Under a strong magnifying glass, everything looked ok — tines aligned, no visible blemishes — but it just felt “off” on paper. I thought it might be a little rough from the cutting of the nib slit, so I did some figure-8s on a piece of 12000-grit micromesh, and that helped some. But, I decided, the real issue is that the pen was running on the dry side, that not enough ink was pooling under the tip to let the pen glide smoothly along.

So I did two things. First, I swapped out the Noodler’s Black I typically use first in a new pen (especially ones with black bodies, like this one). Second, I did a trick I’d seen on YouTube to make the nib wetter. This involves resting the tip against something hard (the pen’s cap, in this case) and, with some pressure, running your thumbnail down the length of the ink slit, from breather hole to tip. I guess this opens the times ever-so-slightly, allowing more ink to flow.

Whether it was the new ink (Diamine Asa Blue, though I later switched to Sailor Jentle Blue-Black, the ink I’m using now with fine results) or the tine trick or the micromesh or all three, I don’t know, but the pen smoothed out considerably, and it’s now one of my favorite pens. The pen never skips, not have I had any hard starts, even after leaving it for 10 days while I was away, and even after an afternoon in my car in the Las Vegas heat. It just writes and writes, and the lightweight plastic body never feels too heavy or tiring. I keep it clipped to the edge of the outside pocket of my briefcase, and the strong clip doesn’t budge. The cap is threaded enough times that it never accidentally comes open, and as I mentioned, it doesn’t dry out.

In short, the pen has grown on me, becoming a pen I look for excuses to write with. I’d still prefer it in a different color and/or with chrome trim instead of gold, but that’s just my taste. I’d recommend it whole-heartedly to anyone who, like me, is looking to try out a premium pen with a gold nib.

This pen was provided to me at no cost by Pen Chalet for the purpose of producing a review. The opinion expressed here is my own and was not influenced by the retailer.

It’s hard to imagine an ink as hyped up and highly anticipated as this year’s entry into J. Herbin’s “1670” line: Emerald of Chivor. Launched in 2010 to celebrate the ink company’s 340th anniversary (340 years!), the 1670 line is known for the gold “sparkle” added to the inks. From 2010 to 2014 they released one every other year, but apparently the runaway success of last year’s Stormy Grey convince them to rethink that strategy. In the last year, J. Herbin re-formulated the gold flecks to better prevent blocking pens, added the flecks to the 2012 ink (which had originally been issued without), and launched a new color a year ahead of schedule.

And what a color it is!  As the name suggests, Emerald of Chivor is a rich, luxurious green ink, somewhere around deep teal on the spectrum. The ink flows quite wet, making it a lovely ink to write with in the several pens I tried it with, as well as on various papers. On absorbent office papers, the ink soaks in, swallowing most of the gold sparkle, but on smoother, less absorbent papers, the ink takes on a whole new life, not just sparkling with the suspended gold pigment, but also displaying, in oblique light, a powerful red sheen that can even hide the original green.

The handwritten review is slightly different from most of mine. In the interest of standardization, I generally use white Rhodia  paper and you cursive cursive. However, Emerald of Chivor  is not at its best on Rhodia paper, where the sheen is minimal and the ink shows a lot of bleedthrough (but no feathering). So the 1st page was on Rhodia, and the second and third pages were on Tomoe River paper, where the ink really shines. I’ve also had good luck with Southworth Linen business paper and Vergé de France cream paper.

I also switch pens, and between cursive and block letters, to show some of the ways the ink reacts to different kinds of writing. The first part of the review was written using a Pilot Custom 74 with a double-broad nib (which I will review soon). In general, a fat, juicy nib brings out the sparkle and red sheen very well, as both are strongest in places where the ink pools and dries slowly.

However, I noticed an interesting thing — the red sheen comes out like crazy using the quite fine point of my Noodler’s Nib Creaper. In fact, the sheen is so strong that little of the ink’s green base color is even visible. In a fine line, the sheen, coupled with the sparkle (which is barely visible in a fine line but which is still there) creates an almost metallic effect. It’s really quite lovely.

There are some drawbacks to this ink. In a medium pen, (such as the Pilot Metropolitan with M nib I switched to for the last part of the review), you get little sparkle and little sheen, though the color is still quite lovely. Sparkle or not, though, the color isn’t very business-friendly. As I mentioned, the ink is very wet and bleeds through most papers, though the Tomoe River paper has largely avoided bleed-through for all but the biggest, wettest blots. You also need to pay a little more attention when filling and using pens with Emerald of Chivor, as the gold flecks settle out quickly. The bottle needs to be shaken before inking your pen, and then the pen needs to be shaken (or, better, rolled between your hands) for a bit to distribute the gold before writing. This is not a practical ink, basically, but for special occasions, with the right paper and right nib, it’s really phenomenal.

Going through some old office supplies I’d packed last time I moved, I came across a Yafa Fountain Pen, dried out and abandoned for reasons I don’t remember. Yafa is about the only brand of fountain pen you find in the Office Depot (or Office Max, who can remember the difference?) except maybe a costly Monteverde or two (which are made by the same manufacturer). There were a couple of ink cartridges in the box, so I figured, let’s see how this works.

To be honest, for a cheap (and kind of ugly) pen, it writes pretty well! I can’t remember what I paid — under $20 for sure — but this is honestly a decent value pen. The barrel is plastic and not great plastic at that — it’s definitely lost some of its fresh-out-of-the-box sheen from being carried in my pocket years ago. The section is wrapped with a rubbery sleeve that cushions it a bit — I don’t love it, but it’s not bad, either. The cap is brushed metal with a decent enough clip, and it posts solidly.

I’m pretty sure the green ink cartridge I found with the pen came with it at purchase. Whatever its source, it’s a short international cartridge so it will be easy to refill once the ink runs out. I’m not sure if the barrel will accommodate a long international cartridge, as I don’t have one to try out.

The nib is nothing special. It’s marked “Iridium Point” so I’m guessing some generic German supplier (Yafa is an Italian company). It looks drab and utilitarian but writes quite well. Though unlabeled, I’d call it a medium point. Ink flows well, aside from a few skips when I miss the sweet spot by too wide a mark. The cartridge doesn’t seem to sit very firmly inside the barrel, but although it feels like its barely connected, ink flow is strong and steady and the cartridge does not rattle, even when you shake the pen. And the cap goes on firmly, so the nib doesn’t dry out — I’ve yet to have a hard start since inking this pen.

All in all, this is a pretty decent pen, which is surprising for a big box store fountain pen. It should just be a novelty, but it’s a nice-writing pen that wouldn’t look out of place in a business meeting or classroom, and which should hold up to extended use. I’d be wary of dropping it and cracking the barrel, since that seems to be the weak link, but other than that, I’d say this is is a pretty good choice if you can’t get your hands on a Pilot Metropolitan.

Why California Cedar? Apparently, as the stock of the old Blackwing dwindled, artists and writers in search of a replacement noticed that the closest thing to the Blackwing’s legendary smoothness and darkness was California Cedar’s “Palomino” line of drawing pencils, particularly the middle-of-the-scale HB.

I’ve never used the vintage Blackwings, so I don’t know first-hand how they compare, but I do know that the Palomino HB is an excellent pencil. Although intended as an artist’s tool (or maybe because of that), the Palomino HB is a great writing pencil, putting down a smooth, crisp, and dark line with minimal pressure.

Slightly shorter than most desk pencils, the Palomino line is clad in really beautiful orange lacquer that feels smooth and cool in the hand. The ones I have are from a recent design refresh — the older design had a metal cap, where these have a black lacquered tip, offset from the body with a white band. (They are also available in blue with a blue top, or with erasers, and there appear to be several special editions in the line, like the gold-lacquered Kum collaboration.)

The only downside, appearance-wise, is the barcode printed on the facet offset the logo. It’s practical — drawing pencils are often sold individually so artists can pick and choose the grades they want, and barcode stickers often leave bits of paper and sticky glue residue — but it’s not very attractive.

But I can live with the slight aesthetic blemish in an pencil that writes this well. As noted above, the Palomino HB writes beautifully — dark and just enough “skritch” to let you feel it. I don’t tend to like the waxy smoothness of the Palomino Blackwings on smoother papers like the Rhodia pad, but the HB I really enjoy using. There’s a trade-off for that soft, buttery line though — the point lays down a lot of lead and blunts pretty quick, even on the slick Rhodia paper. I got a page-and-a-quarter of this review written before resharpening, and that was me consciously going as long as I could stand it before I absolutely had to resharpen.

Frequent sharpenings aside, this is a fantastic pencil and is one of the ones I reach for over and over. If this is what the classic Blackwings were like, well… no wonder everyone loved them.

The Cedar Pointe is an unusual pencil, to be sure. The wood is entirely unfinished — no paint, no lacquer, no nothing — which gives the pencil an entirely unique feel in the hand. The raw wood practically clings to the skin. For people who especially enjoy the smell of incense cedar (which is, ironically, not the good-smelling cedar you make chests, hangars, and hamster nests from, but which some people really enjoy nonetheless), Cedar Pointe’s got your fix — this is a stick of raw cedar, wrapped around a lead.

Aesthetically, the cedar is the main attraction. One facet is stamped with the brand and grade (2HB), and the country of origin (U.S.A.), all in black. At the non-business end, a matte black ferrule holds a black eraser. Which is, by the way, a pretty good eraser — soft and effective. But essentially the pencil’s “furniture” is meant to attract as little attention as possible, leaving the gorgeous wood shaft to hog the spotlight.

Still, you can’t write with good looks. Fortunately, the Cedar Pointe delivers in the lead department. Although “HB” has come to mean just a space between the “hard” and “soft” ranges of a company’s line, in the Cedar Pointe it seems more like a blend of the best features of a hard and a soft pencil. The line is fairly dark and plenty smooth, like a B, but the lead has just enough “grit” to be felt. Plenty of folks have remarked on how loud the Cedar Pointe is — there’s a definite “skritch” factor. But the lead isn’t brittle or crumbly. It is, for me, just right, and my preferred pencil for smoother papers like the Rhodia pads have.

If I had to choose a favorite pencil, the Cedar Pointe would be it. I enjoy the way it feels, the way it looks, and most of all, the way it writes. Plus, the name makes me think of the movies Grosse Pointe Blank and Point Break, and that’s fun, right?

P.S. The unfinished body means the Cedar Pointe picks up a lot of marks, both oils and graphite (and other dirt) from your fingers and pencil case, and dings and dents from impacts. I consider it a feature.

I was digging through some old things recently and came across a fountain pen I’d bought some 16 years or so ago while visiting my ex at her university in Dijon, France. I was fascinated with the line+elongated grid paper and the fountain pens French students used, and before I returned to the US,we visited a Carrefour and picked up this pen.

Carrefour is a French supermarket chain — they call it a “hypermarket”, because they sell way more than just groceries. I couldn’t say what I paid for this pen, though as a starving graduate student at the time, with a girlfriend living in France (while I lived in the US), I didn’t have a lot of extra cash, so I can’t imagine it was more than a few Euros (actually, it was probably Francs still at that time). The pen is the epitome of cheap — plastic body with silver paint, badly dinged up by being carried in my pocket for some time. The nib is nothing special — it works, that’s all. Maybe a little draggy. The nib is marked “IRIDIUM” and “Carrefour”, with no size designation, though it’s pretty clearly a medium. The pen is loaded up right now with a short international cartridge, but it looks like it would take a long international if I had one. I’m using Foray ink, Office Depot’s house brand (or maybe it’s Office Max, who can tell?) and it’s fine — again, nothing special, it just works.

The pen came in a matching silver case, with space for several more cartridges (it came with a bunch of different colors, but I never used them and they all dried out). You can see from the picture that I’ve been pretty hard on the case…

Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with this pen, but I’ll probably put it away when I use up the cartridge, or maybe give it to my 12-year old nephew — that’s more or less it’s target audience, after all, although in the US students don’t really use fountain pens. For me, the whole point of using a fountain pen is the way it feels in my hand and on the page, and this one feels neither particularly good nor particularly bad, it’s just a generic everyday writing experience. It works fine, but there’s no reason I’d reach for this over my Metropolitan or even one of my cheap Chinese pens like the Jinhao x750.

Founded in 1972, the Montana-based Blackfeet Indian Writing Company was an economic development project of the Blackfeet nation. With selection as a favored vendor for federal government contracts and use as a popular fundraiser sale item by the Boy Scouts and other groups, the company grew quickly, employing 100 workers by 1980 and providing jobs and profits got the economically-depressed Blackfeet people.

I first heard of Blackfeet Indian pencils when I stumbled across a listing for a box of them on eBay. A little quick Internet research intrigued me for two reasons: 1) I had researched a similar economic development project on the Meskwaki Indian Settlement as part of my dissertation, and 2) the Blackfeet Indian pencils were apparently much beloved by their users, even spawning a Blackwing-like price spike a few years back. (Unlike the Blackwing, prices dropped after a while – the box I bought was around $15.

I’m not really sure how to explain the Blackwing Indian pencil’s enduring fandom. The pencil has all the hallmarks of a cheap pencil – poor imprinting, minimal design, and a hard and light lead. The clear-lacquered barrel is attractive, with its matte black ferrule, but the company name is stamped unevenly, and a “Kaiser Aluminum” stamp takes up two facets. (I’m not sure if Kaiser made the ferrule or if the pencil was made for Kaiser or what.) The reverse side is stamped “ONE PERSON CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE,” I assume in homage to the pencil company’s hopes for economic advance for the Blackfeet people.

I’m not sure how old my box is – the factory was sold in 1992 and closed a few years later, so at least 20 years. The eraser is not only still fairly soft but fully functional, so I tend to believe these were made closer to the end of the Blackfeet Indian Writing Company’s run than to the beginning.

Though the hard lead makes the Blackfeet Indian pencil a long-writing one, the light line and scratchiness make it a pencil I don’t use much. Still, it’s an interesting slice of history and I’m glad to have a box tucked away.