New Pen In Town: In Which Dr. Inkenstein Goes With The Flow

So there are a couple new Chinese pens being talked about that Dr. Inkenstein has had the misfortune, err, good luck, to stumble upon.  After swearing off pen purchases.

You can see just how long THAT lasted.

Here's the Jinhao 992 with a quick test using Noodler's 41 Brown and absolutely no flushing of the pen, which is how we do things around here.  I also forgot the model number of this pen. It's not written anywhere that I noticed.

On this paper, with this ink, it writes a wet medium-fine line that was almost too thick for sketching. By contrast, the Delikes I also just got, which are Chinese homages to the Sailor Sapporo, write a needle-fine line.



The 992 is a good size, light in weight, and posts well.  Ideal for Dr. Inkenstein's particular needs.  

The second Jinhao 992 is blue, and I filled it with Dromgoole's dark-dark-gray USS Texas.  Which is apparently a very wet ink, and as these are very wet pens, the result was like an oil spill.  USS Texas was quickly decanted, and the pen refilled with my very dry custom mix of Minato-no-Burushii.  

(A possible head-to-head with this blue 992 and one of the Delikes is bewing.)

Dr. Inkenstein likes these! Maybe I should have gotten more.  

We Coulda Had a V-8! In Which Dr. Inkenstein Plays With Zebras

Behold!  Yet another cheap little pen that Dr. Inkenstein just HAD to have. 

We have played happily with many Zebra pens before.  The Zebra Sarasa retractible gel pen is one of our go-to models when we're not using fountain pens or drafting pencils.  Zebra's (now-discontinued) Super Marble gel pens, which my kind friend Susan managed to attain for me, are amazing writers, with a rainbow of color swirls in each pen.

Thus we were excited to note that Zebra was producing a fountain pen, at the cost of a whole three dollars! 

In an attempt to write a more, er, ORGANIZED review of a pen, Dr. Inkenstein followed some suggestions on FPN.

The doctor has discovered that this is not at all our style.  No, our style is far more slapdash and impressionistic.  And full of lolz.


But anyway, we present this handwritten review:

Dr. Inkenstein should amend that last written sentence.  

We liked the Preppy's SECTION better.  But only initially!   The more we write with this cute little stainless-steel Zebra cylinder, the more we like it.   The ink flow improves, we are better adapted to manipulating the admittedly-odd section, and it's just plain fun to work with such a cheap pen that also has a cool mecha name.

The proprietary carts can probably be refilled with bottled ink.  It should prove interesting to see how it likes its first refill, but it's nowhere near that stage yet.

Having written with this Zebra V-301 for a couple of weeks, we liked it so much that we took it out and played with it at a recent BBQ, where it was much admired. 

We had also passed a couple of extra Zebra V-301s along to other fountain pen aficionados.  We got ours at  Jetpens , but we hear your local office supply store might carry them. 

A fountain pen!  For three dollars!   In this day and age!  Don't miss out! 

That Old Blue Baoer Pen! In Which Dr. Inkenstein Admires A Gift

Pen pal 'KP' recently sent Dr. Inkenstein a beautiful blue Baoer pen.  Here it is, pictured above, on a nest of pocket notebooks (reviewed previously).

Dr. Inkenstein likes it very much.  It is a pretty little number, silver-trimmed and with a blue-wave motif to the rather shiny, heavy body.  In contrast, it writes in a light, delicate line. 


The clip is interesting, to say the least, with a lot of detail where it attaches to the cap.  The clip also follows a wave-ish design motif.   Since I don't know the name or model number of the pen, I will probably call it Mizuno Ami, AKA Sailor Mercury.


Because I can.


Behold!   Here below, some notes on the pen and its performance, scrawled with PR 'Avacado' Green.   Dr. Inkenstein almost said, Levenger Gemstone Green, for thus it looks on the monitor.

In all, a nice addition to the Pen Farm, with many thanks to KP!