Doing the resurrection shuffle – or how to breathe new life into pens (and maybe this blog too)

August 3, 2021August 5, 2021 / slightlyunnerved / 7 Comments

(I considered putting what follows at the end of this post. That way anyone who only wants to read about pens doesn’t have to read it. In the end I decided to leave it where it is because the act of writing it has helped me a little towards processing some of what has been going on for the last year or so. Nothing major or dramatic, but realisation that MY normality has been disrupted, that some of the consequences of that disruption are still being felt and I need to acknowledge this in order to help myself get back to ‘normal’, or whatever passes for normal these days.)

I’ve never been the most prolific or regular of posters, but to anyone who has stopped by my blog it will have been apparent that not much has changed in a while. I haven’t been anywhere, I simply haven’t felt like writing.

Of course, the past 16 or 17 months haven’t been ‘normal’ for any of us, but I found getting through all that the pandemic brought (lockdowns, enforced home-working, home-schooling, home-schooling while home-working, social isolation etc.) quite tough. I don’t want to start making comparisons because everyone’s experiences have been different, and in many ways I have a lot to be thankful for. You could argue that things began to improve a few months ago. I had my Covid vaccinations, a major project that had dominated my work life for the past two and a half years came to an end and my kids were back in school on a regular basis.

Instead of a sense of relief and freedom, I felt empty. Empty and tired. Where did my interest in pens fit in? Could/would stationery save me? Turns out – not really. The ability to indulge in some retail therapy seemed to help at the time and I managed to acquire some nice pens and some interesting inks, but my pen use declined and I certainly didn’t feel any desire to write pen/stationery reviews.

One of my pen purchases (Bungubox Fujiyama Blue) and some Dinosaur Jr lyrics that sum up how me and stationery have been getting along

So why (re-)start now?

I had begun to assemble some thoughts for this post anyway, but I stumbled across Brad Dowdy’s guest appearance on the Nib Section podcast from back in April of this year. We all know that Brad is an all-round good guy, but to hear him espouse the Pen Addict philosophy and his support for others in the pen community so eloquently made me think ‘maybe I can do this’. Indeed, ‘maybe I SHOULD do this.’ (That episode is well worth a listen BTW.)

If you’re still reading, thanks for sticking with me. The idea for the pen part of this post has been around longer than the decision to write it and to give it some context. As I mulled it over, I couldn’t help noticing the irony of piggybacking a piece about my challenges of whether to keep the blog going on to a post about bringing afflicted pens back from the dead. Has anyone seen Lazarus recently?

I’m pleased to say that the majority of the pens that I have owned have written straight out of the box. I’ve had examples where nibs have been unusable or have written but have been dull and lifeless, but luckily these have been relatively few. As my knowledge and confidence have grown I’ve been able to recognise sub-par performance, and, on cheaper pens I’ve even had the courage to tweak nibs to try to get them working better. In this case, the resolution was realising that the way to fix a rubbish pen experience was a nib transplant, rather than persevering with the original.

This is most evident on two Moonman pens that I bought last year – the M8 and T1. I liked the M8 because of the sparkly inclusions in the resin that could be mistaken for cut-price raden (in a dimly-lit room) and the T1 looked like the intriguing by-product of leaving a TWSBI Eco and Kaweco Sport together in a desk drawer for a while.

Both pens cost less than £30. Not exactly major cash, but enough for you to expect a half-decent writing experience. Which was precisely what I didn’t get. One wrote, but was dull and lifeless, while the other was scratchy as hell and hard-started like it was going out of fashion. Rather than engage with a non-UK vendor on a major online retail platform that shares a name with a large South American river, I decided to see if I could improve things by myself. After all, how hard could it be and what was the worst that could happen?

One of the reasons that people like pens like the T1 is the ability to switch in all kinds of nibs. The M8 and T1 take a size 6 nib, but use a different housing to Bock or JoWo so I tried keeping the feed and housing, but switching nibs. That got me something of an improvement until the M8 rebelled by the housing self-destructing. So far, not so good…

Meanwhile, another of my pen purchases of the last year or so was a Narwhal Schuylkill (the Porpita Navy). Among other plaudits, Narwhal have been praised for the quality of their nibs and the fact that they are made in-house. I can’t verify the in-house part, but my experience backs up the quality angle.

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SavedPreview(opens in a new tab)Add titleDoing the resurrection shuffle – or how to breathe new life into pens (and maybe this blog too)

Instead of a sense of relief and freedom, I felt empty. Empty and tired. Where did my interest in pens fit in? Could/would stationery help turn things around? Turns out – not really. The ability to indulge in some retail therapy seemed to help at the time and I managed to acquire some nice pens and some interesting inks, but my pen use declined and I certainly didn’t feel any desire to write pen/stationery reviews.

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The Narwhal Schuylkill – hard to spell, even harder to pronounce. Despite that, it’s an excellent pen with a lot to recommend it.

When I was cleaning my Narwhal I was struck by how similar the nib unit looked to the Moonman one. A small experiment later and I was able to confirm that the Narwhal nib unit fitted the Moonman. I duly ordered two Narwhal nib units from Hamilton Pens and now both Moonmans (Moonmen?) are a) functional and b) nice to write with.

Aside from being functional, the Narwhal imprint adds some interest. Bet you can’t tell which nib is ‘fine’ and which one is ‘medium’

My other nib swap story concerns the Kaweco Dia2. I’m a sucker for art deco styling and always liked the look of the Dia2, but I was deterred by the relatively small size of the nib. It’s the same unit (Bock 060) that you find on the Kaweco Sport and Liliput pens. Several years ago I was swayed by positive reviews into buying a Dia2, but after a promising start my use tailed off. I couldn’t reconcile the presence of the diminutive nib in this context and the pen languished for a couple of years.

If the nib isn’t far away, it must be very small

Not quite serious nibbage, but definitely a step in the right direction

By chance I happened across a couple of references to the Dia2 taking a larger nib. Still a size 5, but one more in proportion to the overall size of the pen. As it turns out, a Bock 076 nib unit has the same size housing and feed as the Bock 060 that comes as standard and so can be swapped. This information didn’t exactly seem top secret, but I’m not sure it’s that widely known either. Either way, I gave Beaufort Inks £10.50 plus shipping and they sent me the nib. While it won’t fundamentally change the way the Dia2 writes, at least the nib no longer looks malnourished and ever so slightly silly. You can also have some fun switching in a stub or even a titanium nib if you want.

Everything has its place, and the place for a Bock 060 nib is not in a Kaweco Dia2…

Of course, all of this nib switcheroo came with a price tag and not a trivial one relative to the selling price of the pens. There may have been other ways to resolve my Moonman troubles, but to be honest I’m so impressed with Narwhal nibs that I’m glad I made the switch. With the Dia2, I feel a little more of this sits at Kaweco’s door. I don’t see the small nib as a ‘feature’. It has always looked out of place to me and as it turns out there was an alternative available. It smacks more of laziness and cutting corners. After all the retail price of both nib units is the same (I can’t believe that the wholesale price is much different either), so cost of manufacture must be similar. The larger nib fits inside the cap without any issues as well, so Kaweco could install the larger nib without any need for re-design or re-tooling. Why they don’t is anyone’s guess, but at least there is an aftermarket route to a greater sense of proportion.

Thanks for reading this far. I can’t claim it’s the best piece of writing ever, but at least I got back on the horse.

P.S. Now more than ever, please find a little time to be kind both to yourself and to others.

Fountain pen review – Moonman M2

April 16, 2018 / slightlyunnerved / 9 Comments

If you believed, they put a man on the moon

The Moonman M2 eyedropper fountain pen has been attracting quite a bit of interest recently, so I thought I’d join the bandwagon and find out what the fuss was about. In trying to write this post, it has has turned into a bit of a hybrid of a review and an account of my first encounter with the world of eyedropper pens. Please read on to find out how I got on with it.

My Chinese pen history

Chinese fountain pens are cheap and widely available. I own a number of them. Aside from the amazingly bonkers Snake pen, made by Jinhao, most of mine are copies or derivatives of western pens. Despite being fuelled by naive optimism, none of them have had much merit beyond being cheap to buy. To give one example I brought a Baoer copy of a Starwalker. The nib is reasonable enough, but sadly it’s more Mont Clonk than Mont Blanc, requiring a prodigious amount of plumber’s PTFE tape to make the section and barrel fit together. Of the other Chinese pens that I own, all of them have needed a tweak or two to make work well. At the prices you pay for these pens, you’re not going to get much in the way of quality control, but the flip side is that it’s a real lottery as to whether you get a good ‘un or a dud.

Thankfully that might be starting to change. Frank Underwater has done some great work to highlight and introduce a new wave of Chinese pens that seem to be challenging stereotypes and injecting design and quality along the way. The Moonman M2 is one such of these…

Eyedroppers

In case you didn’t already know it, an eyedropper is a pen that has no filling mechansim. The barrel itself holds the ink, giving you a much higher ink capacity than a pen that fills by a piston or converter. Ever since I came across the concept, I’ve been slightly unnerved about trying one. Most seem to be conversions of standard fountain pens and depend on how well you can seal the joint between the section and barrel. In the same vein, I’ve never understood why you’d want to do this with a pen where you can’t see the ink. Fine if your pen is transparent or translucent, but otherwise, why bother? Surely part of the point is to be able to see your ink of choice sloshing about (and know when it’s about to run dry)?

Is it a demonstrator if there’s no filling mechanism to ‘demonstrate’?

I’m also very fickle and like to switch inks around on a regular basis. Having a huge ink capacity is not necessarily a bonus – it just means I have to write a lot more before I can change ink.

The ‘open-plan’ approach also means that while you can vastly increase ink capacity, failure of the seal means a lot of spilt ink! Thankfully there seem to be more pens coming out that are intended to be eyedroppers from the outset. As a result these come equiped for the purpose. The Moonman M2 falls into this category, being made of transparent acrylic and set up to be an eyedropper from the outset.

On to the pen itself.

Presentation

In keeping with the clean and simple design of the pen, it comes with a perfectly presentable cardboard sleeve which sports the Moonman logo. It contains a case made of similar plastic to the one that you get with a TWSBI Eco. The box contains a striking red foam insert into which are cut slots for the pen and a glass eyedropper. The pen fits snugly, meaning it can be a bit of a struggle to extract, but that’s no big deal. If you’re anything like me, that’s the last time the pen will see the box anyway.

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I was too keen to try the pen out and forgot the unboxing shot until after I’d filled the pen. I hope you like red.

Size and shape

The Moonman M2 is basically a classic, pointy-ended torpedo shape. Absence of a clip enhances the clean lines. I’d call it medium-sized in terms of length and diameter, coming in at around 14cm long when capped and 13mm in diameter, with a screw cap (no clip). Being made of plastic, it’s not too heavy. My not-very-accurate kitchen scales tell me that it weighs in at 14 grammes. To put it in a more real-world context, it’s similar in proportion to a Lamy 2000, just a lot pointier.

The nib is a fairly standard looking gold-esque #5, stamped with the immortal words “Iridium Point Germany”. It’s probably meant to inspire confidence that you’re getting a certain level of quality, but it always makes me think someone is trying too hard to make the point.

Look and feel

I really like the clean, sleek looks of the M2. Coupled with the way the acrylic has been milled, it looks very smart. In place of finials and end caps you get tapered, polished acrylic, which catches the light nicely.

Catching some rays with Diamine Firefly

The other thing of note in the appearance of the Moonman M2 is a bright red anodised ring which bears the company’s name. This won’t be to everyone’s taste, and some will argue that it interferes with the overall clean look of the pen. I quite like it and certainly don’t find it offensive. This marks the step-down from the barrel to the section. Because of the overall proportions of the pen, this is quite moderate and the threads for the cap are also fairly unobtrusive. I’ve had no issues of discomfort when holding the M2.

It’s a Moonman, in case you were wondering

Filling

Not surprisingly, filling this pen is pretty straightforward. Put some ink in the barrel and that’s about it. The key thing to remember is that everything needs to be done ‘upside down’ to avoid messy accidents and spills. Keep things ‘nib up’ until the whole thing is assembled. I haven’t tried the glass pipette (eyedropper) that came with the pen, preferring to use a syringe. I’ve no reason to doubt that the eyedropper works, but I prefer the control you get with a syringe.

You can get a good 2.5ml of ink into this pen without any trouble, although there’s probably a little bit more headroom to be had. The top of the section protrudes into the barrel when you assemble the pen, so if you’re over-enthusiastic with the filling you may find yourself re-acquainting yourself with the principles of Archimedes and with ink everywhere! I’ve erred on the side of caution and managed to avoid that so far.

It’s probably the right point to talk about Leak Prevention System. OK, there isn’t a system as such, but the Moonman M2 does come with two silicone O-rings installed to keep the ink where it’s meant to be. One is around the top of the section, where it screws into the barrel and the other at the top of the nib unit.

The second O-ring is very fine, so you will need to keep a particularly close eye on it if you remove it for any reason. I took it off mine and put it on a piece of kitchen paper (white, textured background – brilliant thinking). I then spent several minutes trying to work out where I’d put it!

Spot the O-rings. (If I had remembered to draw in some arrows, they’d be easier to see!)

In use

I wasn’t certain whether the O-rings would be enough to seal the pen, so my first fill of the M2 was with water. I left the pen nib-down overnight and was pleased to find that there was no hint of any leakage. Buoyed up by this, I took the plunge and inked the M2 with Sailor Jentle Yama-dori. It didn’t take much more than a couple of inversions and gravity to prime the feed and start the pen writing.

The Moonman M2 is available with two choices of nib size – 0.38 or 0.5mm. These sizes equate roughly to extra fine or fine. Given how much nib sizes vary in reality, I love the aspiration that nibs can be produced to this level of precision.

I chose the 0.5mm option and it’s a pretty solid fine. It’s not the smoothest nib I’ve ever used, but I wouldn’t say mine was scratchy either. I might try smoothing it out a little at some point, but for now I’m happy enough the way it is. I’ve had no issues at all with skipping or hard starts, so all good there. Opinion seems to be generally favourable about the quality of the nibs on the M2, and my experience backs that up.

I’ve written a fair number of pages now on Tomoe River, Clairefontaine and TWSBI paper and the M2 has performed pretty well on all of them.

Testing the Moonman M2 – Sailor Jentle Yama-dori on Tomoe River

Cleaning

One potential concern about a pen like this is whether it will be easy to clean and how likely it is to stain. So far, no problems. I cleaned out the Yama-dori I first inked the M2 with and the barrel cleaned up with no issues at all. The nib and feed took a bit more work, but came out with a clean bill of health. A bulb syringe is a helpful tool for this. Ditto the section, although the O-ring on this could have a tendency to trap ink, so might need particular attention. I’ve since filled the M2 with Diamine Firefly and again the pen cleaned up after this without issue. I’ve currently got it inked with Diamine ASA Blue and all looks good so far.

Price and availability

The M2 cost me £12.98 on eBay including shipping from China. The US price is just shy of $16, so pretty comparable. There are some being re-sold from the UK, but at around twice the price I paid. Delivery took just over a week, which was more than acceptable.

Overall impressions

The Moonman M2 is a great pen in its own right, and wipes the floor with all the other Chinese pens I’ve tried. Factor in the price and it’s an absolute bargain. I love the design, materials and the quality of the finish. As a first choice for an eyedropper I certainly could have done a lot worse. I don’t really need a pen that can hold this much ink, but I’ve enjoyed being distracted by the sight of ink sloshing around in it. The way the acrylic refracts/reflects light, really adds to the overall effect. As a bonus, it’s certainly helped overcome my concerns about using eyedroppers. All I have to do now is remember to handle it differently to all my other pens!

Gratuitous ink shot

	Fountain Pen Quest T… on Doing the resurrection shuffle…
	Priti on Doing the resurrection shuffle…
	slightlyunnerved on Doing the resurrection shuffle…
	Priti on Doing the resurrection shuffle…
	Paul Godden on Doing the resurrection shuffle…

Slightly unnerved

A blog about pens, paper and ink.

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