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I'm new to fountain pens, and this is the first post for my account; an incredibly bad review of the less popular Faber-Castell School+ that I bought earlier today. My handwriting is seriously bad and I cannot write in cursive at all. Please forgive me. I'm working on remedying that, but it'll take a while. More shots, including various shots of the pen, and a close-up of the nib. One aspect I forgot to mention (but was addressed in the other reviews around the net) was that the nib is curved down and juts out less compared to many other pens' nibs. It's also around the same size as a Loom, and by extension is also significantly smaller than a Jinhao X750.

Hi, I have recently bought (on a small brick-and-mortar) a very inexpensive plastic FP marked Walker (both in the cap clip and in the nib). It looks like it is NOS (the white plastic is a bit yellowed). It is white with grey and black triangles printed on all the body, and has a golden-colour clip and golden-colour nib. I have looked for information online, but cannot find anything on the Walker brand (nor on its fountain pens). Any information? Thanks! - FP Lady -

Hi! I am a 30-something from Portugal and in the last months I have revived my love for fountain pens. I am presently into cheap pens to use daily with little worry that I will lose them and am pleasantly surprised with them as writing implements.Not only writing is more pleasant but my handwriting looks better as well. I was writing my history with fountain pens here (from childhood fascination from afar to finally using them daily in the last few months), but it got so long that I removed it for a later post Glad to be here! - FP Lady -

Someone recently posted an interesting question about why one would buy an expensive fountain pen when some of the cheap pens work very well, which precipitated an array of answers and discussion. This made me wonder the reverse. For those of us who have (what we consider) expensive fountain pens...why are we drawn to buy cheap fountain pens, especially after the need to have a few pens to take to work or leave in bags without being overly distressed if they are lost or suffer a few scratches is satisfied? I'm not talking about buying some fantastic vintage gold overlay wet noodle for $12 but getting inexpensive Chinese pens, or perhaps the 4th Kaweco sport, or second Safari....

I recently acquired a Hero 308 fountain pen and 10 Hero 616. These pens are very risky, they are both from the same company but one is comparatively more expensive (308) than the other (616) by about 30 times. I just wanted to show that cheap pens sometimes can outperform noticeably and can make for a better starter. The 308 has a very cool looking nib, it writes OK and feels very expensive. However upon inspection, not so good. The nib and feed on mine is noticeably misaligned. The tines on the nib aren't parallel, the right tine is slightly bending up. The cap loosened after a few weeks and I had to put stickers in the cap so that the body wouldn't fall out. The metal piece connecting the two pieces of the cap already lost its grip. The piece of steel on the tail of the pen isn't soldered at the right angle so its lopsided. However, it didn't fall apart yet. The 616 on the other hand varies extremely from pen to pen. The feed and actual nib on all 10 of mine are misaligned horribly, but can be fixed in seconds. The build is plastic, so extremely light, a good transition from ballpoints to FP. The squeeze converter contains about 2 ml of ink (a lot). The flow is excellent. But if you are going to get this pen, buy at least 5, I find only 2 or 3 in my collection of 616 that actually feels extremely smooth. So my point is. Maybe get several cheap pens like the 616 instead of investing on a nice display piece.