I’ve always loved using ink cartridge pens. Indeed, I’ve been using the same Parker pen since 1995. Yes, you read that right. The same Parker Vector stainless steel pen, which I’ve written with almost every day on poems, short stories, you name it. However lately I’ve been branching out and trying other pens, such as a Lamy, a Waterman pen, and recently, a Pilot pen. They’re all very good, though bizarrely the best pen, and certainly the most robust, has been the Jinhao Chinese pen with its chunky design and its metal shaft.
But the pen I’d always wanted was a Kaweco Sport, in particular, the grass version. It looked beautiful and there are plenty of videos on YouTube of people eulogising their Kaweco brass pens and saying how beautiful they looked. So last week I ordered one, paying much more than I normally would have done just for a pen.
And yes, it’s a thing of beauty. It arrives in a tin which reminds me of a sweet tin, or a tobacco tin. And when you first get your hands on them, they’re brassy and shiny and new looking. However within a few days of using them they become wonderfully tarnished and start to look both personal and antique, staining on the parts of the shaft where your fingers go most often.
How does it write? Well, this is where I made a slight error and accidentally ordered the extra wide nib version. It worked perfectly, but as a writer, the thick nib spread the ink too widely for my liking. So I paid ten pounds extra and ordered a medium nib. It was very easy to swap over as the metal casing allows the plastic nib to unscrew easily. And now it writes very well indeed.
The pen is short so that it fits easily into a pocket. You can buy an extra clip to attach it to one’s pocket, which I’ve done, though I admit that I rather like the aesthetic purity of the pen without the clip. It feels excellent to hold and to write with, and I’ve had no problems with ink flow.
So in short, it’s a remarkable pen, sturdy and good to look at!
Robert Garnham 