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I have noticed that you often receive Hero 616 pens that do not appear to work. How common is it to receive pens with a defect right out of the packet? I presently have pens from 3 different sellers in red, teal and black. Only the red one slurped up ink in the normal manner you would expect of a proper Parker. With the other two pressing on the bar does not properly squeeze the sac. If you take the aluminium sleeve off and directly squeeze the sac with one's fingers the pen fills properly. At least the defective two were not really DOA. I just had a play with them before throwing them away.

Does the Jinhao 599 take a standard #5 nib?

Picasso 903 Sweden King on Top With any Chinese fountain pen you are going to get a confusing name. For this review I am going to refer to it as the Picasso 903. I was a fan of this pen right from the start. I received it in a beautiful box; far better than some boxes of more expensive pens. I have never used a fountain pen from a Chinese Manufacturer that I absolutely loved... until this pen. It has one of the smoothest nibs I have ever used.

I bump into a few much younger chaps today at our regular hangout ( aka the local stationary store ) and as usual the topic turn to fountain pens and while they sample some of my Chinese pens , a young lady pop the question " what's your favorite vintage models " to be frank I am caught off guarded, I almost spell out " Hero 100 of course " but then I realize Hero 100 is still cataloged and manufactured and there were so many variation of this particular pen that it might be over generalized to just say " Hero 100 " some discussion and the group finally figure might be the Q should be split into 2 or may be 3 or 4, basically the young ladies ( and guys too ) figure the Q. should be : - what's your favorite vintage Chinese hooded nib fountain pen - what's your favorite vintage Chinese open nib fountain pen - what's your favorite vintage Chinese special nib fountain pen and of course - what's your favorite vintage Chinese fountain pen Interesting discussion ensue and needless to say I have not really made up a definite answer but I do have some candidate ; so for academic and discussion, what's your take on these questions

Who actually makes the ink that Jinhao sell in those long cartridges? As far as I know there is only the blue and black, and I was wondering about the blue ink. There are quite a few makers of ink in China, so is it one of the bigger players that supplies the ink?

I made a post a long time ago about the $6 Kaigelu 220. Summary of my former opinion of the Kaigelu 220: Pros: beautiful aesthetics made of metal, feels durablenot too unbalanced when postedcheap. $6 with free shipping for those who live in USA. UK buyers probably won't find this ebay dealcame with a good converter (easily disassembled and reassembled, no leaking), accepts international ink cartridgesCons: a little heavysomewhat scratchy nib (I was able to smooth it with a little grinding)stiff nib (this isn't always a BAD thing, but those who like line variation should not buy this pen)stiff clip (not springy at all)----- Here is the new review. some details about the pen: price is between $5 and $10 on ebaybarrel and cap are made of metalsteel nib, some gold decoration but I dunno if it's real gold (looks beautiful though)pull off capaccepts cartridges, comes with a screw converter that works very well and holds a day's worth of ink-- For this review, the K220 was inked with a Montblanc Toffee Brown ink cartridge. It's a nice well behaved ink that does everything well (from flow to shading) except survive the slightest bit of water contact. Onwards to the pen's blurry photoshoot! If you look closely at the clip, you'll notice the Kaigelu kangaroo engraving. http://24.media.tumblr.com/6145d09515cd41fe5b7661c77bbb4b08/tumblr_mnuk0xd47R1r4c920o1_500.jpg The pen is about 6.5 inches long when posted. A little less than 5 inches when unposted. http://24.media.tumblr.com/1b1c7ce6144daa75ed77e938a00b8344/tumblr_mnuk0xd47R1r4c920o2_1280.jpg More kangaroos! I thought the nib section would be slippery since it's made of metal, but the engravings provide all the grip I need to write comfortably. http://25.media.tumblr.com/c751cf3877eef088d19e4bdfcda03ab1/tumblr_mnuk0xd47R1r4c920o3_1280.jpg Here is the pen when it's disassembled. It's really easy to clean. The converter comes fully apart with a little effort, but I wouldn't recommend disassembling it a lot since it feels a bit flimsy. http://25.media.tumblr.com/9d8f03c963e7beeb3d5b62c4fc3ce64a/tumblr_mnuk0xd47R1r4c920o4_1280.jpg Writing Sample: Lots of pressure needs to be applied to get some line variation out of this pen. Without pressure, you get a little line variation between vertical and horizontal strokes. http://24.media.tumblr.com/2f980cd61e2b79c1942758b36b13d80a/tumblr_mnuk0xd47R1r4c920o5_1280.jpg This pen advertised as a medium nib. Like a lot of other Asian nibs, the Asian medium is pretty equivalent to a "Western" fine nib. http://25.media.tumblr.com/58519936e9559222553b3f13d45f7ba5/tumblr_mnuk0xd47R1r4c920o6_1280.jpg The fast writing part of this review suggests that the K220 won't keep up with extremely fast writing. Either the feed won't keep up or the writer has to pay close attention to how the pen is held. I thought some of the skipping on upstrokes was due to the feed until I paid attention to my hand position. When holding the pen in proper position, I would get a skip after writing several cursive f's and e's. http://25.media.tumblr.com/98ea1f3fdd21751718112ae0888f3f50/tumblr_mnuk0xd47R1r4c920o7_1280.jpg I did some more fast scribbling and had less skipping when I was holding the pen properly. This pen isn't exactly friendly to shaky or wobbling hands. http://25.media.tumblr.com/9572f88cfd90386832f8b6045160cfe9/tumblr_mnuk0xd47R1r4c920o8_1280.jpg Verdict: This is a good pen for its price, but I have mixed feelings whether this is a good pen when price isn't an included factor. The pen seems to skip a bit on upstrokes, but again I cannot fully tell whether this is due to my posture or the feed. To be fair, I just reclaimed this pen (temporarily) from my girlfriend so that I may give it a long (several weeks) overdue cleaning. This pen wrote away just fine until I got to the fast writing section of the writing sample. I'll come back with one more update on this pen's fast writing capabilities after it has been cleaned. Buy this pen if you're not afraid of having to do a little nib smoothing. It's a remarkably smooth and durable knockaround pen for the measly price of $6. For now, it seems to me that its ability to handle quickly-written upstrokes is limited by either a lagging feed or its somewhat limiting writing posture.