Sailor Poll

[Aurko]

Sorry for all of these polls. I hope that nobody minds them. I wasn't sure if this was ever done before in this format, but I was wondering about other people's experiences with Sailor nibs. I've had a great experience with them, but I've also heard of many bad ones. I would rather not have this degenerate into Sailor is the best or Sailor is overrated or so and so is much better than Sailor, but discussion is of course welcome.

 

Feel free to say what you chose for the poll and what pen/which pens you've had experience with?

 

I apologize for the length of the poll! I hope it's not too tedious. I'm curious as to how what I like compares to the rest of FPN as a whole, so I've been posting a lot of polls lately.

Edited May 23, 2014 by Aurko

[brunico]

I've had a great experience with them, but I've also heard of many bad ones.

 

The same with every other brand on this forum! I ignore both good and bad experiences unless they're reported by someone I judge, through my familiarity with their postings, to be competent and objective, or unless there's nearly a consensus one way or the other. Some bad experiences with any brand may well be down to technique - I sense this a lot when reading about people's difficulties with italic nibs - and I gather Sailor nibs aren't particularly accommodating to people who hold their pens funny.

 

I rate Sailor pens very highly, but I wouldn't fight to the death to defend them on an internet board. That honour goes to their peerless inks.

[Keyless Works]

I have done a good amount of research related to their specialty nibs, I haven't tried one, but from what I have been able to gather they are mostly gimmicky...interesting but gimmicky.

[fledermaus89]

I initially liked my 1911M EF nib, but comparing this to the $7 Pilot 78G's F nib, the fineness is about that same while the Sailor nib is noticeably more scratchy. I really like the elegant design of the pen and the nib which I'm 99% sure copied directly from MB. I might get a Pro Gear someday; they look pretty too.

 

And yes, some of the specialty nibs look downright insane, but I'd love to try all of them.

[Aurko]

 

The same with every other brand on this forum! I ignore both good and bad experiences unless they're reported by someone I judge, through my familiarity with their postings, to be competent and objective, or unless there's nearly a consensus one way or the other. Some bad experiences with any brand may well be down to technique - I sense this a lot when reading about people's difficulties with italic nibs - and I gather Sailor nibs aren't particularly accommodating to people who hold their pens funny.

 

I rate Sailor pens very highly, but I wouldn't fight to the death to defend them on an internet board. That honour goes to their peerless inks.

 

I do admit that Sailor's finer nibs do have some relatively small sweet spots, but I find them fairly easy to adjust to. Most of my friends and the people around me love Sailor pens after I took a gamble and bought my first one, completely uninformed. That's why the controversy initially took me by surprise. Their inks are indeed wonderful!

 

I initially liked my 1911M EF nib, but comparing this to the $7 Pilot 78G's F nib, the fineness is about that same while the Sailor nib is noticeably more scratchy. I really like the elegant design of the pen and the nib which I'm 99% sure copied directly from MB. I might get a Pro Gear someday; they look pretty too.

 

And yes, some of the specialty nibs look downright insane, but I'd love to try all of them.

That's interesting! I have about 8 Pilot 78Gs and I own one extra fine and tried two others, and all of them have been much smoother than the 78Gs! I do admit that the 78G run a little dry and are about as fine as the Sailor XF.

[ArchiMark]

Had used Sailor Pro Gear with M nib....great pen.....

 

And now I have King of Pen with Naginata Togi B nib.....phenomenal pen.....and I've had a LOT of different pens the past 5 years.......

 

Thumbs up for Sailor!

 

[PatientType]

Sailor is a good brand; even a very good brand overall. Sailor ink feeds are pretty much converter and Sailors don't offer the "sparkle" of Italian or some English fountain pens. So, I tend to see the Sailor brand as more utilitarian than "fun" but I'd not fault their products as writing instruments and they seem to have very good quality control. I don't happen to prefer extremely smooth, stiff, even-writing nibs and that's primarily what Sailor sells. So, at present I have only two Sailor pens, one of which I've not yet inked. That isn't Sailor's fault. What they do they seem to do very well.

Edited May 23, 2014 by PatientType

[oldmatekev]

I have a zoom nib in a 1911.

 

The pen is nice enough, nice weight, nice design, even a nice converter. But the nib is underwhelming.

 

Fairly smooth, but only if held at exactly the right angle.

Variable line width, but only if held at awkward and unnatural pitches.

Wet, maybe too wet (shock!) the effect is more like a texta than a pen.

 

I like a wet, broad nib, but this just doesn't move me at all

Really, the el-cheapo Jinhao fude nib does what the Sailor zoom does, only much better.

 

I don't want to trash Sailor, I think the pen would be nice with a round, or maybe music nib. I chose the zoom, and I chose wrong.

[FloatingFountain]

The Medium 14K nib on my Sapporo, which is perfectly aligned, is just good. The steel nib on my Sonnet was smoother, or at least, had less feedback. My self-adjusted Esterbrook 9956 was also smoother; glassy even.

 

Nothing bad about the 14K nib, it writes perfectly, but it doesn't make the Sailor name of 'smoothest nibs ever created' true.

 

I actually became used to it so much that I now dislike exceptionally smooth nib and paper combos that have no feedback at all.

Edited May 23, 2014 by FloatingFountain

[Aurko]

I have a zoom nib in a 1911.

 

The pen is nice enough, nice weight, nice design, even a nice converter. But the nib is underwhelming.

 

Fairly smooth, but only if held at exactly the right angle.

Variable line width, but only if held at awkward and unnatural pitches.

Wet, maybe too wet (shock!) the effect is more like a texta than a pen.

 

I like a wet, broad nib, but this just doesn't move me at all

Really, the el-cheapo Jinhao fude nib does what the Sailor zoom does, only much better.

 

I don't want to trash Sailor, I think the pen would be nice with a round, or maybe music nib. I chose the zoom, and I chose wrong.

 

I've never had a chance to try the zoom nib really, but their other specialty nibs are actually kind of fun. Some of them still require unnatural angles, but if you can get used to them, they can be very versatile.

 

 

The Medium 14K nib on my Sapporo, which is perfectly aligned, is just good. The steel nib on my Sonnet was smoother, or at least, had less feedback. My self-adjusted Esterbrook 9956 was also smoother; glassy even.

 

Nothing bad about the 14K nib, it writes perfectly, but it doesn't make the Sailor name of 'smoothest nibs ever created' true.

 

I actually became used to it so much that I now dislike exceptionally smooth nib and paper combos that have no feedback at all.

 

Though I generally don't use mediums, I have friends with a Sailor medium nib (which is practically without feedback and honestly glassy smooth) and another with a Sonnet that has a fairly smooth nib, but still with a touch of feedback (the bigger issue with that sonnet and the other two that I've tried is that they are hard starters! I've tried three sonnets and not a single one of them worked properly). I admit that I have some vintage nibs that are about as smooth as my Sailor nibs, but very few that I can say are smoother than them.

 

Are you sure it's not an issue with the sweet spot of the pen and how you're holding it? I have a friend who returned his Sailor because he could not get used to the sweet spot of the pen (he was left handed and the pen was a fine).

 

I'm proud to say that I have gotten most of my close friends and a lot of my peers into fountain pens. It may have something to do with living in NYC.

[FloatingFountain]

It could be the sweet spot. With my Sapporo, it seems to be very small indeed. Rotate the pen somewhat left or right and it gets scratchy.

Edited May 24, 2014 by FloatingFountain

[Tinjapan]

Sailor makes great pens, IMHO, however I have few. Every time I go to buy a Sailor I end up buying a Pilot instead! Recently, I decided I wanted more Platinums and ended up buying Sailors. Of the four I do have, two are quite unusual, one being a very limited production the other the mahagany desk pen with a naginata togi nib. I am not a big fan of the cigar shaped pens, prefering the flat top style, of which Sailor has few. The Sailors I do have are not the cigar shaped ones and all write well. I am looking forward to adding more to my collection.

[lehrer07]

I absolutely love my Sailor Pro Gear Imperial Black [F]. I bought it from Engeika and couldn't be happier. My go-to inks for it are Iroshizuku Kosumosu and Sailor Sei-boku.

[Wolverine1]

I have 2 Sailor 1911 full-size, in the Realo version. I think they are superbly made pens. One has a almost Medium nib, and one a soft, Fine nib. Both are a delight to write with.

Also, I think I have seen a lot of people trashing certain pens or certain nibs, when it is not the pen, but user error is the reason why the pens or nibs dont work well. They either grip the pen wrong, hold the pen at an extreme angle, or press down too hard,, try to get extreme amounts of flex. I therefore talk a lot of comments about pens not working or being unreliable with more than a grain of salt.

[Bigeddie]

I hope no one minds me recycling this:

 

Sailor Pens by Bigeddie100, on Flickr

 

The red Pro Gear Slim / Sapporo has been sold off now. Of the bunch the 1911 sterling silver (NT nib), 1911 large (M nib) and 1911 Realo (M nib) see the most use.

Edited May 30, 2014 by Bigeddie

[Lyander0012]

My only Sailor to date is a 1911 Full-Size with a MF Naginata Emperor nib. It wrote MUCH too broadly at first, and was excessively wet. Sailor said that it'd make for a good brush replacement, and they weren't kidding. It was smooth like blades on an ice rink, though, so that was nice. A few weeks down the line, I got tired of having to replenish the converter after half a day of writing (this made the pen dead weight by noon whenever I took it to school), so I tightened up the tines to dry out the flow. That worked well for a while, but then it started skipping and whatnot.

 

Eventually, I took inspiration from their Concord nib and (*gasp*) bent the tip of the nib downwards. It was designed to be used at a high writing angle anyway, so all I did was adjust it so that my normal 40-degree-or-so (never really bothered measuring it) writing angle. The smaller writing surface also allowed me to open up the tines to wetten the flow a bit, meaning that I could finally see shading and sheen again with this pen. Also, it effectively eliminated skipping and hard starts.

 

So while it took a lot of tweaking on my part to get the pen writing perfectly, I still love this pen. It isn't really Sailor's fault that I bought a nib that was explicitly made for a higher writing angle when I don't really do much kanji calligraphy. On the whole, it's a great pen with an excellent nib.

 

I also got to try a regular broad and medium Sailor nib, and found that they really were smooth as butter on glass (regardless of writing angle) to write with. I may be adding a H-M or H-F Sailor to my stable soon. But then again, I've taken an interest in the Platinum President as well


Cheers!

Kevin