I think I've expressed before my love for Kinokuniya, the Japanese bookstore/stationary store attached to Uwajimaya in downtown Seattle. Well they also have stores in New York and San Francisco, and also in Palo Alto near where we were staying when we were in San Francisco in April (although that one is called Mai Do).

I found this pen at Mai Do. I don't know if it has a name but the Pilot site has it listed as the FP-50R, so that's what I'll go with.

The first thing I noticed about this pen is that it looks like a cross between the Lamy Safari and the Rotring Art Pen. Very slick, I thought.





The second thing I noticed was damn did this thing have an extra, extra fine nib. And for $8, I was convinced.



So for style points it's a winner, but how would it write?

Well, as it turns out, that extra fine nib might be a bit too fine as it's a bit scratchy to write with and the ink flow is fairly dry. So it's probably not a pen I would take on a trip to journal with, but it works well for writing in my every day catch all moleskine as there is no bleed through at all.

This pen takes the proprietary Pilot cartridges and I have to say this annoys me a little. Not just with this pen, but any pen that has special cartridges, I mean, why not just use the international standard. I mostly use cartridges and I resent being confined to the colors offered by the pen manufacturer, which are often limited to the standard red, blue, black, and, if you're lucky, blue-black.



So would I recommend this pen? Well, perhaps for the person looking for the type of fine point that you really can't find on American and European pens, but otherwise, try something with a little bit larger nib. Like maybe the Pilot Pettit1, which is a very fine writer for the money. I really will have to do a review of that one sometime soon.

Labels: fountain_pens, reviews

Carkeek park,sunset, 6/23/06.

Labels: moblog, photos

I will get back to posting my meeting notes on a regular basis, but I need to do some scanning first.

In the meantime, here is a sketch I did on Wednesday (July 21, 2006) that I colored up today just for fun.

This was done straight in ink then scanned and colored in Photoshop.

Sunset from my window.

Labels: moblog, photos

Just testing my new phone.

Labels: moblog, photos

I like Lamy pens. They may not be the flashiest pens on the market, but I like their designs. So far I have three Lamy writing instruments: a Red Safari fountain pen, and a Black Scribble mechanical pencil. There are a couple of more Lamy fountain pens on my wish list, however, and some day they will be mine.

I began checking Ebay for Lamys and saw this pen listed for $5 and decided it would be mine.



I tried to do a little research on the 99 but was unable to find any useful information. There were some other 99s for sale on ebay for a lot more, but they didn't look like this one. This one is marked 99b on the body, so maybe it's a different iteration in the 99 line. But I figured, what the hell, it's only $5 ($11 with shipping).

So two things about this pen:

1. Even though it's marked F on the body, it's more like a fat medium.

and

2. It's a hell of a writer. Smooth and skip free.

This pen is a piston loader with a large reservoir. It is loaded by unscrewing the back end, which reveals the piston, and dipping the nib into the ink.



Stylistically it's a pretty basic pen with a couple of unexpected surprises. First, the nib is partially hooded, and second there are little round porthole-like windows on the grip that show the ink level.







So I'm pretty happy with this pen. It's in great condition (some light tarnish on the nib and a small scratch on the cap) and writes beautifully. For $5 it was a great bargain.

Like I said, I was unable to find out anything about this pen, so if anybody has any information they can share, I would very much appreciate it.

Labels: fountain_pens, reviews