::James->Blog()

Pilot Custom Heritage 92 Fountain Pen Review

Written on: 01 Mar 2016

Tags: fountainpens review

Pilot Custom Heritage 92

Read more & discussion


Sailor 1911 Standard Promenade - Shining Blue Review

Written on: 12 Feb 2016

Tags: fountainpens review

Sailor 1911S Promenade Shining Blue
Sailor 1911S Promenade in Shining Blue

This is my first Sailor pen, the Sailor 1911 Standard Promenade, in Shining Blue. Sailor is a brand that is associated with some high-level quality, and perhaps to some, diehard fans. The brand is a love it – or hate it, with most people falling into the “love it” side, I believe. Furthermore, Sailor does do a lot of work outside their own brand, making exclusive inks for Japanese stationery stores such as Bung Box, or even pens for Western companies such as Classic Pens Inc. LB5 model. If you check out those links, you will realize how expensive those products are, $40 for a bottle of ink, and a $1,500 MSRP pen. Wow. However, it’s not like Sailor only works in the high end, with their pens like the High Ace Neo and ProColor 500 against the Pilot Prera but they aren’t really known for their low end products. It’s all about the gold, baby. I believe Sailor is the only company that uses 21K gold nibs on their pens (the full-size line and above).

Read more & discussion


TWSBI Diamond 580 Review

Written on: 02 Feb 2016

Tags: fountainpens review

TWSBI Diamond 580 Finial
The lovely TWSBI logo

Finally, I’ve reached the second pen I acquired in 2015. Writing reviews takes a lot of time, even though I have very little time to do so… I did end up taking some more pictures of pens for future reviews but writing the actual text blog takes a while to get going.

Read more & discussion


A Cool Fountain Pen Review: Platinum Cool

Written on: 16 Jan 2016

Tags: fountainpens review

Yes I know I am picking some low hanging fruit but get used to it because I am going to run it into the ground. This was my third pen I acquired, though I actually got 3 pens on the same day so that fact is up for debate. Platinum is a Japanese company founded in 1919, under the name Nakaya but soon changed to Platinum Pen Company in 1924. Thus, Platinum was founded the latest of the big 3 fountain pen companies in Japan: Sailor, Pilot (Namiki) and Platinum (Nakaya). I put Nakaya with Platinum, but actually Nakaya is another company founded in 1999 by the grandson of the founder of Platinum, who ended up becoming the president of Platinum too. Basically, Nakaya employs retired craftsmen from Platinum and they end up making handcrafted pens, and thus the Nakaya company creates the high-end works of art compared to the mass-produced Platinum pens. However, the pen parts from both companies are compatible (probably I don’t own a Nakaya pen) with each other. They share the same nib size, feed and converter as a result.

Read more & discussion


Site Changes, Comments Added and Reasoning

Written on: 10 Jan 2016

Tags: announcement

Other than my one reader, I don’t think there is anyone actually visiting my blog. There has been a number of small and big changes to my blog, built with Jekyll and hosted with Github Pages. A few more stylistic changes are in the pipe but nothing is confirmed yet. I wanted to talk a bit about the changes, my philosophy and why I was hesitant on adding commenting to the website.

Read more & discussion