Search the Community

I have been after Mr GL Rao of Guider to make this pen for my child who uses double pens for school. A push cap is very convenient for daily use. In the 1907 catalog of Parker I saw a pen called the Bookkeeper’s special no 100. This is not a recreation of that but something similar. One end is brown to determine the ink color. Kanwrite no 4 nib. Kanwrite no 4 feed. L-R: Woodex 56, Guider, Mohi Panache. L-R: Woodex 56, Guider, Mohi Panache. Cheers Hari.

While I love giant jumbo fountain pens, the convenience of a pocket pen is unmatched. If you add to that the convenience of a push cap, the joy is doubled. Finally a seamless pen completely made of ebonite seals it. In order to fit easily in a shirt pocket, I need pens that are roughly 130mm capped. This is the golden size of many popular international pens as well. Guider is the only pen maker in India who offers pure ebonite push cap pens (probably even in the world) without using any additional clutch inserts etc. I requested Guider to make this pen for me. They agreed after a little bit of persuasion. The base selected was their “big” size with a Guider no. 8 (Indian size) nib friction fit on an ebonite feeder. Eyedropper filled. Additional requirement was that the pen should be postable and have a ball end clip. Guider delivered on all counts and here is the result. The dimensions are as under: Capped length 130mm Length of section+barrel: 100mm Nib exposed length:21mm Cap diameter: 16mm Barrel diameter: 14mm Narrowest section diameter 12mm Ink capacity 3.9ml The pen was delivered with a traditional Indian ebonite feeder with a guider nib as specified. I prefer BB nibs so I replaced the guider nib with a JoWo BB nib kindly supplied by Subbu and paired it with a Sheaffer ebonite feeder harvested from an old school pen. The Sheaffer feed is nicely finned and buffers quite a bit of ink, very essential in the eyedropper mode to prevent burping due to pressure variation ( temperature/altitude/ ink level induced). You may read more about how the Sheaffer feed manages to do that in the US Patent US2283333 The ball end clip. Glossy cap top. Comparison with the stock medium push cap. It’s quite long. The stock big push cap is even bigger but I don’t have a stock example to show. The big pocket push cap with some other well known pocket pens in my rotation. L-R: Pilot Capless, Guider, Sheaffer 727, Parker 45. There are no surprises in the performance. I have been using the pen for a few weeks now. The convenience is unmatched if slightly stout pocket pens with push caps are your thing. If you prefer only screw caps, they offer that too. Some background about the Guider pen company: The pen company is located in Rajahmundry, Andhra Pradesh, India. It was founded in 1946 by Mr G Subbarao. Mr Subbarao was a pen maker under the legendary Ratnam Brothers. Under the guidance of the Ratnam brothers this pen company was founded thus the name Guider. Today Mr G Lakshman Rao, son of the founder, runs the company. The pens are hand turned on a now vintage Grayson lathe part by part. The best way to order their pens is to contact the founder on WhatsApp. Details may be found on the internet. Links to some previous posts on Guider: Push caps part 1 Push caps part 2 Guider Jumbos.

Some pics of a push cap Guider purchased maybe a decade back. They made it in several colors and I bought all of them in a fit of fancy. This particular one was the only one that got inked. The stock tubular nib was no good but I found some replacement Hero nib with a fatter point from a shop here. The cap was vented like a sieve which was pretty tough to seal to prevent dryouts. Anyway. I did all that with this one pen. I have inked it up today again as a companion to my Deccan Five Star Super.

Guider pen works of Rajahmundry India are well known handmade pen makers. These push cap pens are probably the only fully ebonite push cap pens offered by anyone else in the market today. No clutch, nothing. And the caps are quite snug capped or posted. I opted for the eyedroper model. C/C versions are also available. ZIMBO PUSH CAP: Zimbo is the Guider word for Jumbo and they really mean it. Surprisingly a Prasad ( another now defunct pen company from Tenali) feeder has been supplied. The section ink hole is kept tiny. MEDIUM PUSH CAP: Even though this is medium sized. This pen is as large as an Airmail 71J. BIJALI clip. STAR NO 4 nib. A Guider sub brand of yore. Cheers Hari