Well I hope you all had a great New Years eve last night! I'm ashamed to admit I wasn't able to make it awake till 12:00. I fell asleep around 10:00, and to be honest, I think I feel a little better for it. :)Today's post is not a full on review, but just a "first look" at a new pen I got recently. I have not yet had a lot of time to play around with it, so my initial thoughts will be very subjective, until I can get a full review up.
The pen in the spotlight today is the all new Stipula Passporto, Fountain Pen Network LE, special edition pen! My first Italian pen, my first Stipula, and my first Passporto, all in one delightful package. Let's dig right in:
Initial impressions on opening the box:
"Wow! It's so tiny, and cute! I rarely use the word cute, but this pen deserves it if any. When capped, this pen is a meager (approx.) 3.5" long. That's pretty darn small! The amazing part however, is how comfortable the pen is for writing. By simple allowing the cap to screw on to the back of the pen, it extends to a very nice 5", the same size as an Esterbrook J. I find this size ideal for a pocket pen. Because it caps so tiny, it can be tossed literally anywhere, without you even noticing it's there. It wold make a great purse pen for ladies.
After trying it out a little bit:
Well, I did have some initial start-up issues with the nib. I'll touch on this more in the review, but for now I'll give a quick breakdown:
- Nib was dry. I find this the case with about 80% of new nibs I try...
- Nib would barely deliver ink, and occasionally skip.
- A little scratchy.
Now, these are all issues I can easily fix, being a repairman. But I was expecting just a little more from such an expensive LE.
The dryness was a quick 5sec. fix. The nib not delivering ink was also an easy fix. Apparently this is a common problem, but since the fix is so easy, I hardly consider it a problem. All you need do is just wash the nib and feed in soapy water. Fixed the issue 100% for me and took about 2 minutes!
Lastly, a little smoothing went a LONG way. This is now a beautiful writer with just a little smoothing job.
Overall, for now:
For the time being, I am very pleased with this pen! It's a pretty little thing, and I love having the FPN LE imprint on it. Makes me happy to knowing that some of the money goes to supporting FPN.
These are pretty much all sold out now, being a limited LE, but trust me, you'll start seeing them pop up onthe FPN marketplace real soon. There will be buyers who bought it without thinking, and end up not liking the size, or whatever.
I got mine in chrome trim, with a 1.1mm stub. I'll be sure to get a writing sample of it for the review. I did tweak the nib a little to get more variation out of it, but as a stock nib it was still very good.
Here are some pictures!
Very nice faux leather box with a magnetic closure.
There's the pen! I got mine with chrome trim. I much prefer silver color over gold...
Comes with all the goodies you would expect from an LE.
The pen has a very nice swirled coloration to it. I wasn't expecting it to look this nice actually. :)
Like this article? Subscribe to my blog for more like it!
No comments:
Post a Comment