There has been a fairly recent review of the Serenite that was very well done. So I don't plan to try to duplicate what was already said....and the pictures in the previous review were stellar. What I do want to do is give anyone who's interested in this pen something to go one about how it writes and what it's like to hold. Please pardon any misspellings, punctuation errors, and scratch outs in my sample.



What you can't tell in the sample is that I find the pen to be well balanced. Normally, I don't' post the cap on my pens, but I feel confident to do that with the serenite. It doesn't make it too top heavy, plus it snaps onto a recessed spot on the top of the pen so I don't worry about scratches.

The pen is a statement in style. I find it's simplicity to be classy. The nib is rather spartan and squat...in keeping with the style theme. It looks perfectly like something one would tie onto the end of a stick....in keeping with the arrow/spear theme it appears the pen is trying to emulate. How in the world they came up with the name serenite when the pen is supposed to emulate a stylized arrow....I don't know. Seems ironic to me.

The pen is smaller in diameter than my danitrio tamenuri, but the decorative grip section is flared out where you actually hold the pen. Therefore, I find the serenite to be the same gripping diameter as the tamenuri (non-ED sized pen) and you can probably see the same thing in these two rather blase pictures. The stylized finger grip allows for a nice touch when unscrewing the main section for refilling the converter or popping in another cart. I don't know how to describe it, but the mechanism is a nice touch. Anyway...here's the size pix.

Here's the serenite


And here's the Dani-trio tamenuri


I'm very happy with this purchase and intend to use this in my daily cycle of pens. I liked the concept of a stylized pen, plus I heard that they planned to drop the black version from production. The new blue serenite just didn't appeal to me the same way, so I figured I'd better pony up and get a black one while I could.

BTW...in my pix, you can see (blurry) our campground here on the Oregon coast. A storm is set to come in tonight....50-60mph winds. Right now, all is quiet. But I'm set. The slides are in on the rig and we're ready for the blowin. I've got popcorn. Bring it on!

Ceci

Thanks for the review. Just a note about the paper though: it has been a long time since I have used a Cambridge pad, but from what I recall, I have not been very fond of them. For Staples style office supply store paper, you may be happier with Ampad Gold Fibre pads.

I don't know if they changed their paper process. ??? But I was shocked at how good the cambridge paper is working for me. The back of the paper my writing sample is on is totally white...no bleed through at all....not even at the scratch out. This serenite writes WET too. I also never have a feathering issue with the mead cambridge paper. I even use an italic nib on occasion...still no feathering.

I'm still "testing" though. Right now my only cambridge notebook is a small one for miscellaneous jottings....not for journaling. I am seriously considering it for my next journal when I finish the one I'm writing in now.

Ceci

Great job, Ceci!

Boy, there's a wet feed and beautifully consistent writing that TNS could get his teeth into.

I, too, had no idea that the Cambridge pads were so good with ink. Have to check them out next time I make the 25 mile trek to Tucson.

Keep on enjoying.

Thanks for the review. Always good to get multiple views on pens. It's certainly unique. Enjoy!!!

Thanks for the review. Nice handwriting, compared to mine. I didn't know those pads were so good.

Forgot to mention that, as I was reading various posts, I was writing some study notes for an exam with a fairly wet writing medium nibbed Aurora Ipsilon filled with Noodlers Black on . . . . you guessed it, a Cambridge Limited pad from Staples. Works great and, as Ceci said, no bleed through on mine. I have two - one in 11.5" x 8.5" and one 9" x 6", both reporter style (easier for us lefties - the binding on regular spiral notebooks gets in the way too much).

Hi,

Now that is one nice pen!! Not one pen I could use though because of its girth.

Dillon

Nice review Ceci. Glad to see a new Sérénité convert

Pam Braun is a wonderful business person. I've bought many pens from her. I don't mean to slight other pen sellers in any way, but when you cited your source, I just felt compelled to toss that in.

Ok...I'm slow...how do you get the accent marks over the es in serenite?

Thanks.....BTW....it's your "fault" I have my new pen. Your review of it and the accompanying pictures pushed me over the edge.

Ceci

I admit...I just took a chance when I bought my tamenuri from Kevin. Due to the light weight, it's no problem to write with...the serenite is the same in that regard. The danitrio pens are so hot (as in popular) right now, there should be little risk in buying one if you wanted to. Just sell it if it doens't work out.

FWIW...I do find my serenity nib a tad bit smoother than my tamenuri's. But smoothness is an easy touch up....well at least for you it would be. On the other hand, the tamenuri is flexy feeling...nice feedback as you write.

Ceci

Hi,

My maximum size of grip is that of the Pelikan M200. It is impossible for me to use anything bigger. I already gave my Phileas to Slush and traded my Stypen with Gerry. I would have to hold the nib if I were to use those pens. Weight is not really a problem since I use pens that are 0.7 OZ (As measured in the post office). I just run out of control on fatter pens.

That Serenite looks nice. Is the nib gold and the feed ebonite?

Dillon

Yeah...18K gold nib (but plated with that silver stuff...what is it...rhodium?) and ebonite feed... Too bad about the grip diameter. I have several M200s and the grip is definitely larger than them.

Ceci

I love fat pens. Bic stic hurts!

Hi Ceci,

I decline any financial liability

To get the é, I have a little toolbar under Linux Fedora with a customized list of special characters. I have sometimes copied and pasted from web pages also. But under windows, you can use the ASCII codes (<Alt> + code, keep <Alt> pressed, and the code for the é is 130).

I'm curious about the ebonite feed does it look to be hand carved or injection molded? I ask this because all of my Waterman's look to have molded feeds.

Kurt H

Hi,

Ebonite feeds will look like they were cut or milled to shape.

Dillon

That's what I implied as you can't injection mold ebonite but it must be machined.


Kurt H

Interesting....it may be my being new to pendom. But to me the feed from my serenite looks like a block that got carved. Then again...it may just be how I "see things" and not reality at all. I tend to view most all objects as sculpted. I just can't wrap my head around molded/poured. Denis may have to chime in an correct me. So...sorry that I can't answer the question accurately. I'll await further clarification.

<edit>

I stand corrected. I dried my feed off and noticed a F on the underside. (it was too wet to see it earlier) I seriously doubt a carved/milled block of ebonite would sport this "feature"

live and learn

Ceci

Ceci, to get anny accent, you can follow Denis' wise advise, or if you are super lazy like me, you just first do a google search, then copy and paste the properly accented word

I tried holding the alt key and using 130...but it didn't do anything but make a thonk sound at me. I guess I should just open up another tab with a google search in it from now on so I can copy-paste. Or...I can continue to do what I do presently and just assume everyone "knows what I mean". Ah well.....I"m feeling kinda slow lately and making lots of mistakes too. Something weird must be in the water. But at least I still remember how to tie my shoes!

Ceci

Ceci - You must have NumLock active for it to work. Hit your NumLock key one time, then try the Alt 130 again.

Come to think of it, that's what I usually do anway (quel horreur!). I am lazier than I thought

For accents, I adopted the US international keyboard. Over 60% of my writing is in English. All French and Spanish accented letters are easily available. The only small annoyance is the quotes. This provides me with a faily complete keyboard, with no need to remember letter values. The only missing characters are the opening ? and ! for spanish, which I do without.

Yes, I forgot to precise that the numbers have to be typed on the numeric pad.

For those with Gnome, here is a pic of the little toolbar applet that lets you define any set of special characters. Click on one, and it is stored in the clipboard. Just need to paste where needed.

I was at Office Depot yesterday and they had quite a few different styles of Mead Cambridge. When you talk about a 'pad' of this paper, can you be a bit more descriptive of what you mean? If you have one handy, please post the model number.

Thanks.

Hi,

Mead Cambridge paper is always very thick and nice to write on. I believe it comes in Ivory and White. I remember seeing the pads, but I don't know what size or paper color will suit your taste.

Dillon

Hi,
I felt that I needed to link this all together
Denis Richard's Question
http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/in...p?showtopic=921
Denis Richard's Review
http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/in...?showtopic=2006
Sharyn's Announcement--With Denis' replies
http://www.ramblingsnail.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1318

Dillon

Really nice review, ceci! I love the close-up photos of the pens "in hand". That blurry background effect lends a nice "artistic" touch, too

Actually the word pad was a bit of a generic one. In our local staples store, they have a mead cambridge "system" if you will. There's an executive cover that accepts spiral refills of the cambridge paper. I'm still twirling around with the idea of what to get for my next journal and was contemplating using this instead of a leather bound (much more expensive) one. Another cambridge notebook I'm using as a generic smaller one called cambridge city. I'm using it for general jotting down of notes and to do's throughout the day. I'll take some pix later to clarify.

From what I can tell though....if it's mead paper with the cambride label on it, it'll take FP ink well. So buy whatever form factor suits. As far as the composition pads that mead makes (the stapled pads); they don't say cambridge, but the paper *feels* similar. It would probably be worth the experiement since the cambridge papers work well.

Hope this helped,
Ceci

Ahhh, that's what's up. I'm using a laptop...no numeric keypad. :doh:

Ceci

Hi Ceci,

Looks like I missed your written review earlier... Thanks for sharing that with us. I do like the pictures with pen in hand as well. It provides a nice reference for the size in my opinion, and the blurry background doesn't detract. Very nice.

Regarding the paper: I found that some papers make the lines come out much fatter/wetter than other papers. At work I normally use fountain pen friendly paper, and this presents the line width in its true size, IMO at least , but occasionally, the stationery cabinet runs out (they stock it on my request ). In that case I have to use "premium grade quality" notepads, and as far paper quality goes, that is true. Very smooth, for fountain pens as well, but somehow it makes the line width almost twice as wide... As a result I am not too fond of it. Is this maybe the case with this paper? I am wondering, because I did write a few times with a Sérénité in the past, with F nibs, and they didn't look like mediums to me, like your sample does. Have you tried different paper? If so, what were the results with that/those?

Warm regards, Wim

Wim,

I think my problem with the line width might have had something to do with the ink. For some reason my serenite wants to bleed out noodler's black when I cap the pen. So much has come out that when I've pulled off the cap, the entire top surface of the nib is covered and there's even been ink in the cap a few times. At first I attributed this to some extreme barometric changes that were happening yesterday due to a storm with 70mph winds in it. But I changed the ink out...it did it again. I put in PR fiesta red...the ink still came out the sides of the feed and bled onto the top of the nib. It wasn't as bad as the noodler's, but it was still too much. Oddly enough...my first fill with noodler's black leaked out onto the nib top, but after a day or so, it stopped leaking...then it started to get dry writing! That's why I changed the ink the first time...*and* what made me think that the pen was flowing weird due to barometric pressure probs. Since the pen was bleeding out ink...just sitting, there's no doubt that it was writing WAY too wet.

Anyway, I gave up and pulled out one of the waterman ink carts that came with the pen. So far it's performing well. It does have a few drops of ink on the top of the nib, but nothing like the other inks displayed.

So for some reason, my primary inks (noodlers and PR) seem to run out of this pen like it's a sieve. I plan to try some of the other ink colors I have when I finish this waterman cart. (I have noodlers gulfstream, verdun, deviled red, and PR dcshow blue, sherwood, and fiesta) I hope to be able to find some ink that's not so wet of a flow with this pen.

I'll include a writing sample later today with the florida blue in the serenite versus the noodler's black in my other pens. I have an xf dani and an xxf flex plus an italic you can compare it to. If you can, please let me know if it appears to be making too fat a line.

Thanks,
Ceci

Ok...here's the writing sample of the serenite with florida blue ink compared to a danitrio XF, a pelikan m200 with a 0.7mm italic and an xf flex nib both by Richard Binder. FWIW, I call the xf flex an XXF. You'll be able to tell why from the sample. FWIW, the flex strokes aren't the best, I made them to fit *inside* the lines of a college ruled paper so you could see how fine the XF flex writes.

BTW...the papers are both mead cambridge business notebooks. The first is in "ivory" (just looks unbleached to me) while the second is their "limited" cambrige notebook.

Both photos show how horrible my little pocket camera is. Sorry 'bout that. My scanner is no longer being recognized by my XP laptop...yeah...I've uninstalled and reinstalled, cleaned the registry...etc. I give up. Anyway...the pix. Hope this clears things up.






Ceci

Could something be wrong with the converter?

It would be interesting to try putting Noodler's Black (or something similar) into an empty Waterman cartridge and see how it performs.

Just a thought... and most of my thoughts aren't very good ones...

Bill

I don't know what it could have been either. It's writing extrememly well and consistently over the past day and a half with the cartridge. I'm really surprised at how much I'm liking "basic" florida blue.

Here on the coast of Oregon, we can get storm front after storm front coming ashore...sometimes with only a few hours between them. That means you can literally watch a barometer change right in front of your eyes. I don't know if there's any connection...and I did change over to the waterman cart before the storms were completely through the area.

Ah well, it's a mystery. The only noodler's ink I tried was the black. I'll try another one when the cartridge is done. Despite all this I'm really enjoying this pen. I *love* the way it feels when I write. It arcs like a quill and it looks like some classical writing instrument.