Nemosine Singularity

[requiescat]

  On 5/18/2012 at 4:44 PM, Flounder said:

 Could I trouble someone to measure  the length of the section alone, and the diameter of the section at its narrowest, please? I don't use my Baoer 388 much due to these dimensions forcing my fingers to cramp together too much. 

 

Just the section, not including the nib, is very close to 2 cm. The diameter of the section at its narrowest appears to be 0.9 cm or 1.0 cm. I hope this helps!

[Flounder]

My thanks, that's not so bad. Hopefully these will hit the UK soon, judging by their popularity

[Cynergy]

Please tell me why should I prefer this pen from a Parker Frontier? I mean is the same range of money etc.

 

I am asking this because I have recently bought a very cheap Frontier and I am very very happy with the performance of a 15 euro pen.

 

 

[Flounder]

At this price point, I think it's just down to whimsy? Quite tasteful, nice colours, nice shape, a screw cap, there's a lot of charm here for the budget.

[danahn17]

I got mine in the other day.... I'll post a more detailed review later but the Spark Notes version is that it's the real deal and lived up to the hype for me. Actually, the nib was wonderfully smooth.

 

These would make great gifts to beginning fountain pen users (dare I say even more than the Ahab or Safari)!

Edited May 20, 2012 by danahn17

[Osmaroid]

I've been out of the loop a few days as I ended up in hospital, but on the question of smoothness, I bought a third and had the same excellent results. A fourth is waiting testing (not easy in hospital!). However, I am not surprised that Fabienne did not find it smooth - I AM surprised that all 3 of mine were. I have found variability to be the rule except with a few exceptional manufacturers. For example, I always found Cross pens remarkably smooth straight out of the box,even the low end Solo (now the same $14.95 at the Cross outlet, by the way!). I could rely on them and didn't immediately dip test them. The other day I bought one of their more expensive 18kt gold nib models - it wrote, but was by no means what I would call a smooth writer. Does this mean all Cross pens are now not smooth? Of course not - the big question is, what is the percentage of great writers? So far for me, that percentage has been impressive for the Neosine.

Edited May 23, 2012 by Osmaroid

[watch_art]

Please do post more reviews, guys and gals. Nemosine is in the index now.

[rwilsonedn]

  On 5/23/2012 at 2:33 PM, watch_art said:

Please do post more reviews, guys and gals. Nemosine is in the index now.

By the way, Watch Art, a really big but far too belated thanks for picking up the index and bringing it up to date. It's an enormous help!

ron

[watch_art]

I'm glad to be able to help.

[tdeecy]

You can, to some degree, feel how smooth or rough a nib is by writing with it dry. If it's not smooth, and you get good at judging after a time, write heavily and dry on a heavy-stock brown paper bag until it smooths out. After all, whether a nib is smooth or rough isn't magic. It's very likely the texture of the tip. Lot easier than returning the pen, IMO.

[KrazyIvan]

Just placed my order for this and applied my Amazon points so it came out to $10. I ordered the granite.

[irish_monk]

I have three of these pens, Two were pretty decent. The black granite/marble pen posts low so it is a bit shorter that the plain grey one. Both were hesitant starters until I opened the nib slit a little more. I left one a fine nib and I reground the other to a XF. I also ordered a Cardinal red one. It arrived with cracks under the cap band. I emailed the company and they responded a couple of days later. They sent a replacement cap (in a padded envelope) and it arrived after several days (a long trip from Pittsburgh to Cleveland apparently) and it too had cracks under the cap band. I sent an email on Monday and have not heard a response. I just sent another with pics of the cap cracks and am waiting to hear back. The international sized convertors can be finicky depending on what ink I'm using. They both dry out if left unused upright after 2 or 3 days. A good "intro pen for new fountain pen users"? I don't think so due to the start up issues and hit and miss convertor flow. If the nib is tweaked a little and the convertor flows properly I think it would be a good no-nosnse intro pen. Based on the slow communication with the seller I don't think I'd offer a ringing endorsement. If you want to learn how to grind nibs they are a serviceable and reasonably priced guinea pigs.

 

[Flounder]

Oh dear, thanks for flagging this up brother Seamus. I am surprised about the fast dry out for a screwcap fp.

[cvac]

Maybe I just got lucky because it seems reasonable that their might be QC inconsistencies in a product like this, but mine continues to perform very well after a few weeks of having it.

 

I have the blueberry model only and none of the other colors. I've used three inks in it: Diamine Sapphire Blue, Diamine Turquoise, and now Noodler's La Reine Mauve. No real problems with any of the inks and I don't use mine everyday either...I'm not finding that the nib dries out excessively fast at all. I just let mine sit unused for over 2 days, nib up and it started immediately when I pulled it out. Zero flow issues with the converter, and the nib is smoother than the similarly priced Pilot 78g and Ohto F-Spirit. No cracking anywhere that I can see and the cap posts fine.

 

It's really too bad that some of them seem to be sub-par because I thought about buying some more, and yes, I had my eye on the red one too. I may or may not try another one of these pens...but I'll continue to enjoy the one I have as long as it continues to perform well.

Edited June 15, 2012 by cvac

[Osmaroid]

  On 6/15/2012 at 10:02 PM, cvac said:

Maybe I just got lucky because it seems reasonable that their might be QC inconsistencies in a product like this, but mine continues to perform very well after a few weeks of having it.

 

I have the blueberry model only and none of the other colors. I've used three inks in it: Diamine Sapphire Blue, Diamine Turquoise, and now Noodler's La Reine Mauve. No real problems with any of the inks and I don't use mine everyday either...I'm not finding that the nib dries out excessively fast at all. I just let mine sit unused for over 2 days, nib up and it started immediately when I pulled it out. Zero flow issues with the converter, and the nib is smoother than the similarly priced Pilot 78g and Ohto F-Spirit. No cracking anywhere that I can see and the cap posts fine.

 

It's really too bad that some of them seem to be sub-par because I thought about buying some more, and yes, I had my eye on the red one too. I may or may not try another one of these pens...but I'll continue to enjoy the one I have as long as it continues to perform well.

 

If its any help in your decision, I have bought six of these now. I dip tested them all and five of them were essentially the same, and as the 5 included the two in my review, that was pretty good. I later thought one of the five, an ivory, was maybe not quite as good and about 30 seconds of polishing on 9000 grit film (the technical version of a brown paper bag!) and it was great. I have to say the sixth, a demonstrator, was not as good. It caught slightly on left hand lateral strokes and inspection showed that the tines needed gentle adjustment to bring them in line. I then used courser abrasive film (2500 grit) and polishing film (9000 grit) for a total of maybe a minute and had a performer that was up there with the rest. I am also using my first red one with its converter with no problems, and am about to fill the demonstrator and to send the second red one to the UK as a gift.

 

To put all this in perspective, last week I bought a new Pilot Prera and it had almost identical characteristics to the Nemosine Demonstrator - a left hand catch. It took quite a bit more work on that nib to get the performance up to the level of the Nemosines - so a respected pen at four times the price has just the same sort of variability (assuming that mine was a "bad" one and there are better ones out there). I suppose the lesson is that if you get a poorish performer of any pen, don't assume that all are the same. I did not write the review until I bought a second Nemosine because of the inverse - I could not assume that this was a good pen on the basis of a single one, especially at the price.

Edited June 15, 2012 by Osmaroid

[KrazyIvan]

I received my granite version yesterday. I filled it with Pelikan Brilliant Green ad am happy with it so far. No cracks in the cap. I like the nib, wrote fine right out of the box.

[JOBPM]

I've got a couple demonstrators that I've ED'd. They both perform pretty well, very smooth. Didn't have any o-rings on hand so I went without and greased them thoroughly. I've had them for a couple weeks with no problems.

[Miles R.]

My Nemonsine Singularity demonstrator arrived today. Enclosed with it was a little packet of six cartridges. They are of the standard short international size, but, as I have not used cartridges for years, I was struck by how dinky they looked. But I then reflected that their capacity is no smaller than that of the convertors that I use in all my pens. The convertor itself is bigger, of course, but only because half its length is taken up by the piston mechanism: what I was seeing before me was just a reminder of how meager the capacity of a convertor is. That gave me the idea of looking into my store of cartridges---I have some that I bought many years ago and others that have come with pens---to see if a longer and more capacious one would fit into the pen. Sure enough, it turned out that a Waterman cartridge is of almost identical dimensions to those of the convertor and seemed to fit into the barrel with the top at just the right point. When I inserted the cartridge into the nib section, I found that it could be inserted into---and also removed from---the barrel without difficulty.

 

Here is the pen, with its convertor and a couple of old cartridges (depleted by evaporation, apparently) alongside it:

 

 

I have never made a pen into an eyedropper-filler, and I hesitate to do so, for fear of doing something wrong and making an inky mess. But, since I already have one of those syringes for fountain pen ink, which hitherto I have used only for refilling convertors, I am thinking that, after I have exhausted this cartridge, I might see if I can rinse it out and refill it with bottled ink (which is apparently the main purpose for which those syringes are sold anyway!).

 

Oh, by the way, I love the smoothness of the nib. Unfortunately, I am never entirely comfortable with a lightweight pen, but this one has such a good nib, and so far seems to be a facile starter, that I expect to make frequent use of it for shorter writing tasks. Also, I discovered that Waterman Blue is a rather nice-looking ink.

Edited June 30, 2012 by Miles R.

[KrazyIvan]

I am leary of making it an ED. The way the threads are done, it is too easy to accidentally unscrew the barrel instead of the cap. Happened to me once already so no ED for me.

[Miles R.]

  On 7/2/2012 at 3:55 PM, KrazyIvan said:

I am leary of making it an ED. The way the threads are done, it is too easy to accidentally unscrew the barrel instead of the cap. Happened to me once already so no ED for me.

It seems to me that one could only do that if one had the cap screwed on to the section more tightly than one had the section screwed into the barrel. Screwing the cap on tightly is a bad idea in any case with this pen, as, to judge from earlier posts in this thread, it runs the risk of cracking the base of the barrel. (It seems to be a weak point in the pen's construction that the metal ring was placed just above the base of the cap rather than on it.) I have been taking care to go easy in replacing the cap on mine, although, as I said, for the time being I am only using a long cartridge rather than filling the barrel itself.

 

By the way, Ivan, your use of "ED" as an abbreviation of "eyedropper" is not the signification with which I am accustomed to seeing that abbreviation used.