I find it quite difficult to use, to my great surprise! I’ve recently written a long letter with it and every top of the page it behaved well, wrote smoothly, great line variation. Then by the bottom of every page it would start scratching and skipping. Clearly I somehow must be rotating the pen as I move my hand down the lines but it must be tiny movements because I don’t see any difference myself! Anyway, the stub is much less tolerant to changing angles and rotation compared to a regular round nib.
Replying again after my order arrived. It’s heavy in the hand, but feels good for short scribbles. It’s a good shape for my small hands and four-finger grip. I’ll have to test it for a longer time to be sure, though. Ink capacity with the built-in converter looks very small, so be warned.
I’m guessing you already searched FPN (Fountain Pen Network). Back when I used to be on Reddit, there was a u/willvintage from Redeem Pens that specializes in restoring vintage pens. You can search for his site and social media. He can probably give you guidance.
@Valdair Try Procolor or Somiko (Young Profit) for steel nib and Sapporo for 14k gold nib. For me the best one is Sapporo MF, and F and M are also good. Their nibs are a bit on a dry side, but it can be tuned. You may also try 21k, but it's much more expensive considering the difference with 14k in writing experience.
It's worth noting that almost all Sailor nibs are not flexy at all. Even Pilot Custom 74 F gives more flex.
Since the 21K is what Sailor is known for, I don't think I will bother if not for a 21K nib. It sounds like the pricing in the USA is indeed unreasonable and this has been well documented for a while - the prices I see buying from e.g. Japan make much more sense for a mid-range production C/C pen with gold nib.
Where did you buy it, and what kind of ink are you using? Metropolitans are really reliable, so it’s be very surprised to see a dud unless it wasn’t a real Metropolitan or the ink was India ink or iron gall ink. There are Lamy Safari fakes and other similar pens sold on Amazon. I’ve had better luck buying at pen shows and from trusted retailers.
I did buy it on Amazon, but it was shipped and sold by them so I trusted that it was legit. The ink cartridge was included with the pen. After fussing with it some more and reading all the responses here I’ve decided to return it for a refund. Guess this is a lesson to stick with more trusted retailers, I’ve been lucky to never receive an Amazon fake but I guess there’s a first time for everything.
The problem with Amazon is that they sometimes just combine all of a single item, say the pilot metropolitan, from all sellers, including Amazon, together in one place in the warehouse. If some sellers send fakes and others genuine product, when you order, you can get a dud from a reputable seller and genuine product from the counterfeit seller.
I went with the fine nib cause I wanted it small but was afraid extra fine would feel a little scratchy. after trying it and it felt like writing with butter I kinda wanna try a extra fine sometime 😅 ordered mine online so i couldn’t try them out but i am very happy with it! kinda feel bad my other pens get so little use now 😁
Nice! If you actually need help figuring out how to get it working, check out this video from Goulet.
I would suggest doing a quick pen clean first. Some Jinhaos come with a bit of ink in them for testing or some oils from the factory. This doesn’t have to be anything fancy - it’s a $9 pen! Here are some tips but don’t feel the need to get distilled water or anything like that. Just push any ink out, pull up some water with the converter out of a cup, and repeat a few times until any ink that was in there at first is gone. Then dry the nib by holding a paper towel or cloth against it until all of the water is sucked out. Then ink it up!
Especially with these cheaper pens, I try not to be super precious about cleaning them. People get really fussy about it. But the pens are meant to be used and if a few drops of ink are left, it doesn’t really matter. You might see that the ink is a slightly different color at first due to ink mixing, but oh well! It’ll work itself out.
Just use the pen, and if you aren’t going to use it for a while, remove the ink and rinse it out so that it’s not drying inside.
Thanks for the tips! It took a bit of fussing, but once I got how it worked, the converter was pretty intuitive. Overall, it was a lot simpler than I expected. I plan on making pretty heavy use of this, but I’ll keep your advice for storage in mind.
Great! If ink dries in it, just get what you can out then soak it in water for a few hours / overnight. If you’re like the rest of us, you’ll have more pens than you can keep inked & working soon enough!
I’ve had this happen with cheap pens before, it’s definitely corrosion. It doesn’t harm the pen function but if you don’t like the look you can replace it with a nylon screw which won’t react to ink.
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