Brief Overview: The Sailor "Charmer"

October 24, 2007

A few months ago I spotted an interesting modern Sailor short-long fountain pen on a Japanese website, but as the model name was unclear, I didn't look into it further - until recently. I sent the lovely Taki a little picture of the pen, and with her generous and kind assistance I found out all the details, and also that I was able to buy the pen from the Ujuku Shop!

The pen is the Sailor Charmer (pronounced sha-ru-mey), a relatively inexpensive little steel-nibbed pen, seemingly aimed at the female buyer. Here is the Charmer with a 1970's Pilot Elite:

http://www.ciar-roisin.net/photos/sailor/Charmer-01.jpg

With the cap off, you can see that it is not technically a short-long, because the decorative, wide center band is not part of the cap. (This means the Charmer isn't quite as long as a traditional short-long pen when posted.) When capped the Charmer is 120mm (4.7") long, and when posted it is 135mm (5.3") long. The posted length is about 10mm shorter when compared to similar vintage Sailor / Pilot / Platinum pens.

http://www.ciar-roisin.net/photos/sailor/Charmer-03.jpg

The steel nib is an "F-4" Fine, and is very firm. The nib is also very smooth, and the flow is a little generous - like most modern Sailor nibs. The Charmer section is a little chunkier than its predecessors, so it's quite comfortable to hold. The Charmer takes a standard Sailor cartridge or piston-converter.

http://www.ciar-roisin.net/photos/sailor/Charmer-02.jpg

Because I have about a dozen original Japanese short pens, I just had to get a look at Sailor's modern version and add it to my collection. The Charmer is a nice little pen - nothing really special - but it's well made with a nice lacquered aluminium body, and it feels good in the hand.

A real cutie!

October 24, 2007

Nice! Do they make one for us big manly men?

October 24, 2007

Very nice. I have a sleek black Pilot short-long pen---NOS, I believe. Unfortunately, the nib is ultra-fine, too much so for me. I think that the Pilots only came with fine nibs. Do the Sailor versions come in different nib sizes or also only fine? I like that they take piston-fill converters. The Pilot pen is aerometric, another aspect of it that I dislike.