What Chinese Pens Are You Using Today?

[Miles R.]

I am using this Knox Galileo, which I believe to be Chinese-made, apart from the German-made nib:

 

[51ISH]

Terrible boring I know, but the K316 I modified to replace the nib & barrel finial is now an EDC pen.

 

Regards,

 

Richard

 

I really must 'ink up' my K316 again and give it another chance...I didn't like the weight and or the balance....

 

Nearly forgot, been using my Dolce Vita Naranja ...again.....now that really is.... boring...a little dry for some folks tastes, but I love it, no matter which ink I throw at it...

[richardandtracy]

Ta Da.

Not using the K316 today.

It's my Jinhao Century Mk2 instead.

 

Regards,

 

Richard.

[columela]

I am using today the Baoer 79 (MB starwalker lookalike) . I am surprised about the pen. It is solid but not too heavy, writes very smoothly and has a fine nib, which suits very well my small handwriting. One of the best chinese pens that I have tried, pity about the guilty feeling I get each time I look at it.

[Inkydinkydog]

Jinhao X450. I can't believe how much I enjoy this pen--I was braced for a disappointment when I "risked" an entire $9.90 to buy one (LOL), but it's delightful. I've got another one on the way, and I will order at least one more within a week (despite already having a dozen fountain pens--I couldn't resist the beautiful colors).

[kharma]

Jinhao 159 with J.Herbin Perle Noire. It's a wonderful pen. I never tire of it

[LWJ2]

Yesterday I used my HRE9010, with Diamine Imperial Purple. It doesn't have much shading with IP, but lays down a lovely smooth wet line. The nib is fairly stiff, about like an Esterbrook accounting nib, and medium-ish.

 

Today -- who knows, I'm still on my first cup of coffee.

[Weirdo]

I've got 4 Chinese pens that I got on ebay, 3 with piston converters and 1 with the rubber-pressy-thingy ink filler that takes so much time and wastes so much ink in the process and still manages to suck only about 1 page worth of ink that I put it away. That left 3 pens.

 

These pens all suffer from the same problems: terrible converters that have a weird spring inside that reduces the amount of ink you can draw in to about half the converter, and it's already smaller capacity than any other converter I have for other pens.They are terrible writers, scratchy, skippy, and have awful flow that dries out in the middle of a page and I have to twist the piston down to push some ink out once every 1.5 pages.

 

They're all beautiful, however, if not well made. It seems to me that the Chinese manufs went with form over function, and they didn't even manage that. One of the pens is actually quite well made, heavy and stays well in the hand(but not postable as the cap will fall off after the first 2 seconds of writing), but its tiny, tiny ink capacity makes it, as all the others, a complete waste of time.

 

These pens were all inexpensive(< $10 including shipping) so big loss. Perhaps I should try them with a different ink.

 

Two months ago I ordered an eyedropper pen from India. It cost about the same as the Chinese pens + $4 shipping, came with a F nib and of the inexpensive pens I own, is by far the best pen and I've been very happy with it. Solidly built, it writes extremely well, once I learnt how to use a F nib, having used only M before.

 

I suppose I could order the more expensive Chinese pens to give them a try, but I'm just not willing to pay Customs and Import.

 

And that's my Chinese pen story.

[richardandtracy]

Weirdo,

 

The 'springy things' in the c/c's are there for a reason, they break the surface tension and allow the ink to flow out more easily. With some of the larger Jinhao nibs I find the feed is not able to keep up with the demand and an air lock builds up. There doesn't seem much one can do about that unless it is to increase the feed channel width a lot to allow air back into the c/c.

 

Many, many pens need their nibs tweaking when new. It is a bit more of a lottery with cheap Chinese pens than with many. I always assume I am going to have to align the tines, spread them apart a little and smooth the nib. That way, if I do not, it's nice. This also applies with my Western made pens - my Parker Sonnet wrote worse than any of my Chinese pens have before I fiddled with it.

 

Regards,

 

Richard

[Sailor Kenshin]

I've got 4 Chinese pens that I got on ebay, 3 with piston converters and 1 with the rubber-pressy-thingy ink filler that takes so much time and wastes so much ink in the process and still manages to suck only about 1 page worth of ink that I put it away. That left 3 pens.

 

These pens all suffer from the same problems: terrible converters that have a weird spring inside that reduces the amount of ink you can draw in to about half the converter, and it's already smaller capacity than any other converter I have for other pens.They are terrible writers, scratchy, skippy, and have awful flow that dries out in the middle of a page and I have to twist the piston down to push some ink out once every 1.5 pages.

 

They're all beautiful, however, if not well made. It seems to me that the Chinese manufs went with form over function, and they didn't even manage that. One of the pens is actually quite well made, heavy and stays well in the hand(but not postable as the cap will fall off after the first 2 seconds of writing), but its tiny, tiny ink capacity makes it, as all the others, a complete waste of time.

 

These pens were all inexpensive(< $10 including shipping) so big loss. Perhaps I should try them with a different ink.

 

Two months ago I ordered an eyedropper pen from India. It cost about the same as the Chinese pens + $4 shipping, came with a F nib and of the inexpensive pens I own, is by far the best pen and I've been very happy with it. Solidly built, it writes extremely well, once I learnt how to use a F nib, having used only M before.

 

I suppose I could order the more expensive Chinese pens to give them a try, but I'm just not willing to pay Customs and Import.

 

And that's my Chinese pen story.

If you can ease off the metal sleeve covering that type of converter, you should find a clear bulb or sac.

 

This clear sac becomes MUCH easier to fill, with the added benefit of making your ink supply visible. Since I learned of this, I shucked my pens like oysters and they are a joy to fill.

 

The other type of converter can be great or problematical. Try a cart with those pens with an ink you KNOW works....and good luck.

[Weirdo]

Oh, I realized eventually that's what they're for, but that's the funny thing about those surface tension breakers: they don't actually do anything useful. They stay connected to the piston and the converter itself only draws in about half its visible capacity so I can get at most 3 pages out of these giant, heavy pens. It's just not worth the effort.

 

As for using cartridges in them, well, then I'd have a harder time getting ink out of them when the feed dries up during writing. For about the same money, I got an Indian pen that wrote beautifully out of the box. So far I'm 0 for 4 on Chinese pens, 2 for 2 on French, 1 for 1 on Japanese and 1 for 1 on Germany and also India.

[maksim]

Jinhao x500 - J Herbin Bleu Nuit

[oneill]

Got a jinhao x750 couple day ago but it skip and dry out often. I like the size and weight of the pen and it's quite nice in flat black.

 

Tried combination of removing breather tube, removing spring, moving the feed, deep cleaning of everything and it still skip and dry out. At least now it's more juicy than it was.

 

The nib is scratchy (left or right not down or up) too.

 

The worst part of these pen is the stupidly small converter in a quite large size pen but it seems to be common practice of many manufacturer not just chinese.

 

I have another x750 coming from xfountainpen with a set of nibs, will try to build one good x750 out of two. I find that if you flush out the convertor several times with a mixture of amonia and washing up soap mix that generally fixes things.I have a collection of some 40 different models of JINHAO and several 750's amongst them, let me know if that fixes the problem.Jinhao are one of the very best Chinese pens that you will get

[notimetoulouse]

Black Jinxing 26 f (but on the way to m) nib and Sailor Sei Boku..... a dream combination, just like writing with blue black butter - no feedback whatsoever, just gliiiiidddddes across the page. The lip on the section is a real boon, I can write for hours without fatigue, it really suits my hand.

This pen is well worth a look - (but not to be confused with the nearly identical, but smaller, Jinxing 28).

And Sei Boku? average through some nibs, yet glorious through others.

 

Aah....fountain pens and ink.....

[51ISH]

Black Jinxing 26 f (but on the way to m) nib and Sailor Sei Boku..... a dream combination, just like writing with blue black butter - no feedback whatsoever, just gliiiiidddddes across the page. The lip on the section is a real boon, I can write for hours without fatigue, it really suits my hand.

This pen is well worth a look - (but not to be confused with the nearly identical, but smaller, Jinxing 28).

And Sei Boku? average through some nibs, yet glorious through others.

 

Aah....fountain pens and ink.....

 

How much bigger is the Jinxing 26 compared to the 28? I have a 28 and like it very much...wouldn't mind looking at the 26....however, I'm a little concerned about reports of Import Duty and postage charges with stuff coming from the Far East since the Royal Mail became a serious profit machine....(basically, the day we sold it off.......

[notimetoulouse]

Hi 51ish - I've yet to suss out how to post photos here at FPN so I'm a bit frustrated that I have to use old fashioned words to try and help. I too have a 28, and the main differences are....

 

The 26a and b (Jinxing use a to describe chrome fittings and b for gilded) are the same basic design but with a slightly larger girth and about a quarter of an inch longer. Doesn't sound much, but it makes quite a difference to look at and hold.

 

The 26's are sac filled, but with a full length sac and no metalwork pressbar, unlike the 28 which has that what I call a 'half cover' over the sac that comes up from the section. And that's it really, other than I've fallen lucky with both my 26's as the nibs were perfect straight out of the packaging, whereas the 26 has had to be worked on slightly.

 

Postage wise, you've probably seen that I've been 'taken' lately by New Mail. I was miffed enough to go down to my local sorting office and 'ground't it with the duty Manager.

I ordered some pens from Engeilka in Japan. Not realising that he steadfastly puts the exact value of the pen on the packaging which then attracts the critical eye of Customs.

 

My pens came to £33 and postage added a further £8 to that. So I had to pay a further £9 VAT. Plus the admin fee for collecting that levied by Mail (I refuse to associate the word Royal with it any more).

 

The rule is, anything under £18 - including postage (which I think is both new and really naughty) - can attract VAT at source. They might let it go if it's £19 or £21, it all depends on the person on the day, but if they decide to levy VAT then there is an added £8.50 collection fee added by Mail. It's kept in the sorting office till you pay, and is returned to sender after 21 days if you don't collect.

 

My big beef was being charged £13.50 by NewMail, which is the admin fee for items over £100. This is now in dispute.

 

I suppose the good thing about buying pens from China is they always seem to put a standard $10 value on the declaration, and postage is normally free, so I'm still chipper about ordering from there at the moment, but I'm afraid my dreams of saving on a Sailor Profit from engielka are over for now - it's about as cheap buying one from Andys Pens here in the UK.

 

Sorry to bang on...I'll get my coat!

[lovemy51]

anyone here have a Jinhao 601 with the knurled section? it looks very interesting -the section, that is...

 

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Jinhao-601-Arrow-Clip-Silver-Color-Wave-Patter-Fountain-Pen-18KGP-M-Nib-J214-/171032742018?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27d2588882

 

http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/5/7/1/3/6/5/webimg/666339250_o.jpg

[richardandtracy]

I have slightly given up on metal finish pens from China. The plating looks gorgeous on day 1, but is starting to look tired by day 10, which is a real shame.

 

Today's pen is.. Oh, I seem to be back to the K316 because it's so darned good.

 

Regards,

 

Richard

[whoelse]

anyone here have a Jinhao 601 with the knurled section? it looks very interesting -the section, that is...

 

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Jinhao-601-Arrow-Clip-Silver-Color-Wave-Patter-Fountain-Pen-18KGP-M-Nib-J214-/171032742018?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27d2588882

 

http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/5/7/1/3/6/5/webimg/666339250_o.jpg

 

I have this pen

[whoelse]

Hero 892, a very well made and nice pen. Barrel have sparkling seashell (genuine abalone shell) coated with clear lacquer. Nib is interchangeable with Parker 45, I believe that is true for the section and cartridge converter. The nib is smooth, very pleasant to write with. Did I mention it's beautiful?