VHS Notebook by Peleg Design

So in March last year the UK went into it’s first Covid lockdown. On my fucking birthday. Which was the first day of a week off work. I’d planned to go out to museums, exhibitions and see films at the cinema. Instead I couldn’t even walk in my local park.

So the next day I decided to start a journal. I’d always thought I’d start one if I lived in “interesting times”. And it’s a good excuse to use a notebook. Especially one I’d been saving for a good reason like the Peleg Design VHS notebook.

Now I’ve almost filled it after 13 months it’s a good time to do the review. Over the past year I’ve kept track of key events (lockdowns, Covid news, losing my job, getting a new job), things I’ve been doing and how I’ve been feeling.

One thing I found straight way is that fountain pens bled through the paper. Rollerballs like the Pilot HiTechpoint V-7 were okay. So I curated a little pot of gel pens and a pencil to mix up the ink colours for different days. Oh, and a Sakura Pigma Micron RN fibre tip pen. The paper is okay to write on, not totally smooth but perfectly usable.

The book has 7mm lined pages with a larger gap on the top line. There is no numbering or other ornamentation. It doesn’t say how many pages there are but the paper section is about 15mm thick. The covers are hard and feel strong. I’ve not been carrying it about but after a year’s use the cover is like new.

There are no little extras like back cover pockets, book mark ribbons or closure elastic or fastenings.

I adore the level of detail on the book. It even came with a sheet of stickers with little icons like actual tapes did. I used the spine and front stickers for the title.

Overall I like this book a lot, even if I can’t use FPs in it. It was a gift many years ago and it’s been great to get to use it. I wonder if I’ll ever look back on it, maybe many years into the future. Here in the UK we’re coming out of our third national lockdown and have vaccines being issued. I never expected to still be writing about it in my book 13 months later and am now looking at my paper stash for what I use next. I hope I’m not writing about the pandemic and how sad and anxious it makes me much longer.

Stuck at home with pens

So, I’ve not been in the office since mid-March. And I’ve not been working since the end of March. And as of the end of July I will no longer be employed.

I went back to clear my desk a month ago, but hadn’t left much stationary there. The fountain pens I had loaded are at home and being used a little. I don’t write as much as I do at work. I started a journal but the nice book I chose is not FP friendly. Still, I’m enjoying using lots of gel, fiber tip pens and a pencil in it.

I’m in a good position in that I have some savings to live on. But I’m curbing my spending including new stationery, apart from dirt cheap Chinese pens and cheap pencils. I’m trying to use and enjoy what I have. I’m finding it hard bug plan to do some reviews soon.

But that’s my state. How are you all doing? Writing more or less? Finally cleaning all your FPs?

Uni Kuru Toga mechanical pencil

A few years back the introduction of the Kuru Toga caused a stir in the stationery community. It has a novelty ratchet mechanism in the tip which rotates the lead a few degrees every time it is lifted and placed back on he paper. If you write continuously for any length of time with a regular pencil you need to rotate it often as the point starts to wear into a flat plane at the angle of the paper. The Kuru Toga seeks to removes these manual adjustments.I bought myself the basic model. It has a plastic body (I chose the silver, but there are many colours and special editions). The plastic grip section has rolling ridges for grip and is transparent to show the mechanism at work. This appeals to me the same way demonstrator fountain pens do. There is a simple plastic pocket clip with “uni KURU TOGA 0.5” on it. On the barrel is “KURU TOGA ENGINE” for nerd bonus points. The push button at the top which progresses the lead out is a transparent plastic cap. Under that is a basic eraser which erases with a bit of effort.

There are other more premium models available. In fact a wide range of choice up to executive/professional looking all metal models.Popping the eraser out reveals the hole for feeding in fresh leads. It takes the most common 0.5mm refills. The supplied lead is perfectly reasonable and smooth for writing and Kuru Toga lead refills are available.

When I initially bought it I was a bit underwhelmed. But at the end of last year I took it to work to give it the old college try and see if it converted me. Writing a lot with it revealed why it didn’t make me love it; the rotating mechanism only really works when the pencil is held at a more vertical angle. Using fountain pens has me writing at around 45 degrees out of habit and this isn’t steep enough to actuate the mechanism. So I need to manually rotate the body as I write like any other mechanical pencil.

I suppose the rotating mechanism could be a superfluous addition which adds extra mechanical complexity that can fail. I’ve never heard of the mechanism breaking though and if it did you’d still have a mechanical pencil you’d rotate in your hand.

I’ve heard at least one opinion that the mechanism is less useful if you write cursive as the tip will spend more time one one continuous line, with breaks to dot or cross letters. As Japanese characters have more individual strokes this makes some sense in my opinion.

Like most mech pencils it has a fixed, exposed lead pipe. This is the only mech pencil I have that doesn’t retract or have a protective pipe cover. I prefer to keep the fragile seeming feed pipe protected when not in use. This is something that puts me off most mech pencils and the reason I took the Kuru Toga to work as a desk pencil. If a pencil will be spending time in a pocket or in a pouch with role playing dice it needs some level of resilience.

Overall it’s a well made bit piece of kit that costs less than a fiver online. If you like to write a lot with pencils and hold your utensil steeply it’s worth giving a try.

Dux 240 Fountain Pen

After enjoying the Dollar pen (still to be reviewed) so much I was curious about other Pakistani pens. After seeing it mentioned in the comments of a video I tracked down a Dux 240 on ebay for the princely sum of £2.99. It arrived without any packaging apart from a cellophane sleeve and I got it washed out, dried and inked up. And oh dear, it doesn’t do well. I usually wait ages to review a pen, putting it through its paces with may reloads. But this one I’m getting done well early on the first inking…

The pen is an aerometric style filler. The sack is in a metal tube which can be wiggled off. Compressing the sack with the pressure bar many times did not get much ink in. I can see the breather tube in the sack so it’s not a simple bladder filler but the system does not work well. There is an ink window before the section but it’s not very clear and obscured by the threading for the barrel to attach to the section (the window is not visible when the barrel is attached).

The pen body and section are burgundy plastic with a silver metal ring at the end which balances nicely with the metal cap and the metal ring at the back of the section. The cap is a friction fit which starts to grip the section about a centimetre before fully shut. This means it is pretty secure. The cap has the Dux logo painted on with a dotted line around the base and a plain end finial. The metal clip has the Dux logo on it and instead of bending actually pivots at the end connected to the cap.

The nib is a a triangular semi-hooded design which is bent at an angle lengthwise to add rigidity to the thin metal. The Dux logo is badly stamped across it.

The grip is most curious. There is an inlaid metal teardrop on the top, which is nice. But what is not are the two facets on the top of the section. They are so ‘high’ on the section they cannot act like Safari-esque finger guides. What they feel like is that there is bodywork missing on top and my thumb and first finger have less surface area to hold on to. It’s usable, but not comfortable.

So I loaded it up with Cult Pens Deep, Dark Red from Diamine. And oh dear, the nib was not a happy component. Not scratchy, more scrapey. It got jammed up with paper fibres. Looking with my loupe showed tines aligned but with rough surfaces on the tipping. So I got out my multi-grit emery board and got to work on it. As it was so bad it didn’t take much effort to improve a lot but after two polishing sessions it still has a lot of feedback when laying down its medium width line.

I also noticed a lot of red ink on my fingers. It seems the ink accumulates at the edge of the nib where it protrudes from the section and even though I don’t touch the nib itself letting my fingers near the end of the grip gets them stained.

Another issue more specific to this pen was a line of faint ‘dots’ along the barrel. It looks like the plastic had been dragged over something harder, marring the surface.

Amusingly I’ve seen Hero 240’s online, the same pen with Hero branding. Maybe one company makes the pen for the other? Maybe one company has cloned the other? Who knows?

Overall I can’t recommend it when you can buy a Hero 616 at half the price without the problems.

Namisu Nova Ebonite

It’s funny to review the Namisu Nova Ebonite after the Ixion. I missed the original metal Nova kickstarter as I didn’t find the design quite as original as the Nexus. But they released the ebonite version which tempted me, but by the time I chose to make the purchase they had sold out! To make it worse when the first reviews of the model came out I experienced major FOMO. Fortunately they made a second run so I jumped on in buying the £100 pen with an extra £40 to upgrade to a titanium Bock nib from the base steel.

It arrived in a Namisu branded box. I bought a Namisu leather sleeve to go with it which is very nice with the brand name on it. However it also came with a nice felt slip which I’ve been using for my other Namisu pens.

What strikes you first is the smell of burning tires. Ebonite is heat hardened rubber and boy, did it smell like it. But the smell wears off after a few weeks.

The pen feels great in the hand, with the ebonite section and barrel not cold to the touch and giving the pen a retro-futuristic feel. The titanium finials look like jet engine intakes in my imagination. The cap comes off in one turn and can post, but I’d worry about marking the barrel surface. It has no clip, so clearly like the Nexus will roll off your desk every bastard chance it has; another advantage of the leather slip.

The pen is a cartridge converter and came with a Shmidt converter. It’s in reloading the pen a small error becomes apparent; the metal threading section in the back of the section has sometimes unscrewed from the section, not the barrel. Making sure it was attached tightly seems to have rectified this. With the metal barrel finial secured with a screw this is not suitable for eye dropper filling.

The nib is lots of fun. It’s quite bouncy and flexes a bit on any writing with no pressure. In fairness it does skip a little when writing fast and not watching the force I’m using. As you can see in the photo the matte finish has a habit of staining with ink, but it washes clean easily.

Overall I’m very happy with the ebonite Nova. It has a classic style, interesting materials and writes differently to anything else in my collection but is still practical enough for the office.

PaperMate Mirado Black Warrior HB Pencil

In the low cost addiction of pencils it’s easy to pick up a lot of different things quickly for very little. However when writing this review I decided to double check what I paid for a dozen Mirado Black Warriors. I recall it being not very much. But consulting my Amazon history in October 2015 I paid £5.55 for a box of a dozen.

TL;DR – way overpriced.

The Mirado brand has a couple of variants but the Black Warrior has the best branding. Matt black round barrel, blood red stripe on the brass ferrule. Only the pink eraser betrays its decidedly conventional school pencil origins. Unsharpened they are a respectable 19cm long, but their diameter feels decidedly thin in the fingers. I was surprised when the micrometer measured a whole 7mm in diameter. I guess the extra corners on the hex pencils make them feel a bit heftier. The barrel has the name, ‘2’ and ‘HB’, and the two hearts PaperMate logo in gold foil. But these wear off fast and the blood red band on the ferrule does too.

I’ve had one on the go in my roleplaying dice bag for a while, using it on character sheets and to make notes about our scenarios. And writing is where it falls down. While the line is black enough there is a distinct friction on the page so not really smooth. It’s usable, but no better than no brand pencils. The eraser lasts well by not working very efficiently and often leaves a clear outline on the paper. Generally I prefer a plain or capped end and have a separate eraser anyway.

Overall they are nothing but average, and not cheap average at that.

Staedtler Tradition 2B

So after teasing for a dog’s age here’s the first pencil review (ignoring the joke one).

I’ve been using my sizeable pencil horde for my roleplaying gaming but I’ve also been using them at work in the mix with fountain pens and other writing instruments. I found this particular Tradition 2B in an abandoned desk drawer when I moved desk about a year ago. It’s mercifully free of bite marks so I adopted it and it has been in the regular mix for about 6 months.

 

The Tradition, along with the yellow striped Norris, is a pencil I always associate with my school days. Albeit that version would have been a HB grade. The distinctive red and black stripes down the semi-hex barrel (hexagonal with blunt corners) are a common sight in British schoolrooms. There is an eraser version available but I like this version with the black and white end cap. The gold lettering has visibly lasted quite well, including the name, brand, “MADE IN GERMANY” and the hardness. On the opposite facet in white is the bar code and model number.

I find it sharpens okay. The cheap, no-brand sharpener at work can create jagged, uneven shavings. The Tradition 2B I have at home does better with a quality sharpener. The alternating black and red paint makes a jolly wood shaving.

While most of my writing has been with HB grades this 2B is pretty smooth and dark, as you’d expect. I don’t sharpen it to a pin head point as while it rarely crumbles it wears down quickly to a more stable rounded end. I get about a page of A4 notes before I really need to resharpen. I don’t erase mistakes when writing, instead just scrawling out like in pen (as seen in my photo). So I don’t care about erasers on the pencil so much (different when roleplaying, but then I’ll have a rubber in my dice bag anyway).

My digital callipers say the barrel width is 6.8mm. This will be a useful reference point as I like fatter shafts (Oooh, matron!) and dislike skinny ones. This is what I would term ‘average’.

Does it match my standards I use for the ‘Good’ pens that I can recommend? Yes. It does the job well, is affordable and available in supermarkets and newsagents across the UK. I’m glad I started my pencil writing with a pencil deeply embedded in British culture, although the HB version would have been a better standard for a pencil benchmark going forward.

Zebra-G calligraphy nib

So calligraphy isn’t something I’m interested in. I had a cheap calligraphy pen a while back and didn’t care for it. But I do like flex nib pens. So I grew curious about Zebra-G nibs. These are carbon steel (so not corrosion resistant) dip pen nibs that can be fitted onto fountain pens with feeds. I was curious about them and with single nibs available for just £2.50 on Ebay I decided to have a go.

The nib is immediately impressive; long, slender, coming to a pin sharp point. This has no tipping material and is bare steel. There are three slots across the midpoint, the side ones having cut outs on the outside to allow for more flex.

Following some online instructions I mounted it in a Jinhao x450 pen. My pen has a slightly insecure cap, so I was happy to treat it as expendable for the project. I seated the nib deep on the feed as advised and with some finger force got it back in the section.

I used a converter to load with Noodlers Bulletproof black. It flowed okay from the nib but initial testing showed the Zebra-G impractical for everyday writing. While pulling down worked fine and had a lot of flex (lines about 2mm wide at full stretch) other directions have issues. Sideways line have a deep scrape on the paper and any attempt to push upwards just stabs into the paper, making ‘o’ and ‘u’ use problematic.

It was simply not a nice experience to write with. On top of that there were flow issues, although probably not helped by my choice of ink. I had to prime the nib a couple of times.

Halfway through the day at work I gave up and switched to a black rollerball. That evening I cleaned the pen and swapped the original nib back. Extracting the Zebra nib required more effort than getting it in, which is common I’m led to believe.

In fairness this was an experiment, and a cheap one at that. If you want a cheap flex nib this is not a way to that. If you use your fountain pen for art or calligraphy then this may be an interesting tool for you.

Namisu Ixion

Having backed other Namisu Kickstarter projects (Nexus, X01 rollerball (to be reviewed!)) and buying an ebonite Nova (also to be reviewed, some day) I was first in line to back the Ixion project. Hoever it was a problematic project, running late with component issues and many thought an insufficient level of contact from Namisu. Personally having had good experiences with them before and having been on even worse projects I was willing to wait out the issues.

I went for the entry level version with a steel nib in aluminium, for a total of £34 with delivery. Brass and titanium with other nib options are available. The Ixion is a clipless fountain pen with a faceted cap (10 facets, I counted). The cap is wider than the barrel so the facets help stop it from rolling (a perpetual issue with the Nexus). It looks a bit like a metal Kaweco Perkeo.  I went for the blue body and cap options. I wonder if time will wear the finish on the sharp edges of the facets; there is already visible metal in the cap mouth and barrel threads from capping. The barrel and cap have raw aluminium end finials affixed with internal screws (other options were available). I love the balance this brings to the pen overall. With the cap off the polished aluminium section keeps the balance (Like my ebonite Nova, also to review one day). I find it comfortable to hold. It does not cap securely and frankly I wouldn’t want to risk damaging the barrel finish. Plus when I tried it put the cap end uncomfortably on my knuckle. The pen has a little heft but not enough for me to subjectively call it heavy.

It comes with a Bock nib (fine if I recall, it’s not marked) and since most every Kickstarter pen uses these I won’t bother with a writing sample. Mine had the tines noticeably misaligned which I found upon use. Using a bit of fingernail pressure I got them sorted but I don’t think it’s quite right. I wonder if they rushed the installations to get the pens delivered? I’ve been using it with Waterman Serenity Blue and it has worked mostly fine; it has occasionally railroaded.

The Ixion did not come with a converter or cartridge, which is fine. It did come with a branded nylon pouch which is really neat. The blue lining matches the pen and gives me a great way to carry it to work and keep it unscratched in my desk drawer.

Overall the Ixion is a nice pen at a reasonable price. I’m happy with the options I chose.

 

Jinhao Shark Pen

Sharrrrrk pennnnnnnnn!

Well, that’s what it felt like when Jinhao introduced this novelty pen on to the market. And like many in FP fandom I just couldn’t say no. Especially at its Ebay price of just 99p.

It comes in many colours; I went for a green. The grip section is transparent and tinted to match the barrel. It has two facets for the first finger and thumb of the traditional tripod grip. The cap screws on in three rotations. It has a shark shape (the face looks a bit unamused to me) with a dorsal fin acting as a roll stop in absence  of a clip. On the bottom is moulded Jinhao and the logo, but with little definition. The tapered barrel is plan and unadorned. The pen comes with the standard Jinhao converter, which has been fine in the models I’ve used it in. Actually the barrel seems airtight and with all plastic construction this would be a good candidate for eye dropper conversion.

The nib seems to be a standard model. It has some decorative etching, the Jinhao name and logo. It’s marked ‘F’ and like other Jinhao nibs is an average stiff writer with reasonable feedback. The feed is black plastic, not transparent like some other Chinese pens. I’ve been using Noodlers Sequoia Green in it and for one converter full it has had no issues feeding.

Yes, it’s a novelty pen. But it’s cheap, fun and works well. And If you feel the need to shout “Shark pen!” and hum the theme from ‘Jaws’ this is very much a pen for you.