What pens am I carrying today? Find out here.

Pens on this page are part of my personal collection and are not for sale. Click the magnifying-glass symbol () next to any pen to view a zoomed image for more detail.

Hakase is one of the lesser known Japanese pen companies. It produces a broad line of pens at many price levels; but the best come from the hands of Harumi Tanaka, the company’s elder-statesman artisan. Tanaka-san builds one pen a day. This Tanaka pen, Hakase’s catalog number 24005, features “rippled red” celluloid ends (whcih look almost as if they were made of woodgrain hard rubber) and a barrel body of buffalo horn. No gimmicks: no urushi, no maki-e, no raw ebonite, just a functional — and beautiful — pen. The nib is a needlepoint. At 5¹⁷/32" capped and 6³/16" posted, this is a very nice-sized pen for my hand. And, although I don’t usually favor needlepoints, this one has a lot going for it.

Autopoint is an American company that was founded in 1919 to sell promotional ballpoints, pencils, and desk accessories. Sometime around the end of the 20th century the company tried to introduce fountain pens into this market, but the venture was unfortunately a flop. They were stuck with a potful of pens, in two models, This one is the larger of the two, called the Autopoint Big Cat. It’s a bargain-basement cartridge/converter pen. At 5⁷/32" capped and 6¹¹/32" posted, it’s a surprisingly nice pen! Made in Germany and featuring a high-quality Mutschler steel nib, it’s the kind of pen my friend Waco Johnny D refers to as a “horse show pen.” Johnny raises quarter horses, and he figures that a pen like this is so cheap that if you take it to a horse show and it falls out of your pocket to be trampled under a hoof, you don’t really care. He’s wrong, of course; a pen is a pen, and if it’s a nice one the price is irrelevant. I’d miss this sucker!

I know very little about Wality, an Indian brand, but what I do know is that this Model 69 “demonstrator” ED is a remarkably nice pen for the piddling price. (It goes in the U.S.A. for about $20.00; in India, it’s the equivalent of $1.00.) An Indian friend bought a box of these pens on a 2008 visit, and when he got back to the U.S. he gave me this one. It’s a large pen, 5⁷/32" capped and 6¹¹/32" posted, but for all that it writes surprisingly well since I tweaked it a little. And its huge ink capacity makes it the sort of pen you can carry all week and into next Tuesday.

My Wality Model 52 piston filler is also a pretty nice pen. It had a little problem with piston leakage, which I’ve fixed, and I’ve fitted this pen with a broad JoWo nib, made in Berlin, Germany, that I stubbed. It’s really sweet, and at 5¹³/32" capped and 6³/8" posted it’s a very comfortable size.

At 5³/8" capped and 5²⁵/32" posted, the Waterman Kultur is a “standard” size in the way people 50 years ago thought of it. Today many people consider it too small, but that’s their problem. It’s an excellent pen, and it would be a real bargain — if Waterman would deign to sell it to us in the U.S.A., that is. As things are, we don’t get it here, so we have to resort to spending a ridiculously small amount of money to get our Kulturs on eBay. The Kultur is mechanically the same as the Philéas, which we do get, except that there’s no extra brass weight shoved into the barrel of the Kultur to make it feel more “expensive.” And of course the Kultur lacks all those extra bits of fancy stuff that Waterman must think Americans like to see on their cars and on their pens. With a smooth fine nib, this is a keeper.

On the other hand, there’s something to be said for the upscale appearance of the Philéas. I’ve owned several, and sold them all. All but this black one, which looks so doggoned dignified — and writes so nicely — that I just can’t part with it.

That appellation is mine, but it coincides with the opinion of Russ Stutler, who lives in Japan and darn well ought to know. Compact, attractive, frighteningly durable, and as reliable as the sunset, that’s the Pilot Murex. Introduced in 1971 as the MYU, Pilot’s integral-nib pen morphed slightly in 1977 from its original long-short design to the all-over longer Murex that I prefer. The Murex MR-500SS here, which was made in December 1979, came into my hands by surprise — but I’m keepin’ it anyway! I like “smaller” pens — the Parker “51” is my ideal size — so the Murex is a great size for me, 5¹/4" capped, 5⁵/8" posted. When I got it, it had a badly flattened nib, but a little work restored an elegant Japanese fine point, and this altogether elegant pen has a permanent home in my collection.

A prelude is an introduction, and the Sheaffer Prelude is a great first pen. Its almost-bulletproof all-metal body gives it just enough heft to feel solid, and at 5¹/4" capped and 6" posted it’s a great size. The White Dot has been a symbol of Sheaffer quality since 1923, and it sits proudly atop the Prelude’s clip to tell you that this is one remarkably good pen. Mine is a prototype dressed in a rich cadmium yellow lacquer, and its medium nib came out of the box surprisingly nice for a pen in the Prelude’s price range. (It’s since been tuned to my hand, of course.) I acquired this pen free of charge; it was given to me by the head of repairs at Sheaffer’s factory in Fort Madison, Iowa, about a month before Sheaffer completed relocating its manufacturing facilities and closed that factory. Only five cadmium yellow Prelude fountain pens made it out of the factory before somebody had the brilliant idea to scrap the rest, and this pen is one of those five — that makes it one of the rarest Sheaffers in existence!

© 2008 Richard F. Binder

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