This is for all of you who thought that Ballograf is only famous for their ball point pens. Here is one of their fountain pens! I tried to search the Internet but found no information about their fountain pens so I think they are no longer making them. At least their online catalogue includes none. I bought this pen in Finland in 1995 or 1996. It must be some sort of special model. The pen was relatively inexpensive; I was just a schoolboy back then in 1995, so it was still quite a lot of money for me: about 150 Finnish marks (something like € 25 in today's money).

The pen looks really cool from a distance, but when you touch it, it feels much cheaper. It is definitely not golden, I don't know if it's gold electroplated or not, but looks like such. The nib size is fine, finer than my Waterman Phileas F. The pen takes international standard (small) cartridges and the nib has a beautiful engraving on it. I haven't tried a converter yet. It is a very smooth writer, starts well and does never skip. It spent several years unused in my drawer and the all the ink had evaporated from the cartridge. The pen was so dirty that I thought it must be wrecked but then I cleaned it, changed a new cartridge and it started writing just fine.

Here are some photos of the peb and a sample of my terrible-looking handwriting. Please don't blame the pen, it's all my fault!


Ballograf capped


Ballograf FP nib


A Ballograf writing sample

Hi LapsangS!

Thanks for your review of this rarely-seen (well, in Canada anyway! ) fountain pen. I think I asked you to post a picture or two of it when you introduced yourself in another FPN forum, so thanks very much! I don't have a Ballograf ® fountain pen but I have a ballpoint and it is a good writer.

Cheers,
~Maja

I used to have a very similar pen, which I bought i Luleå, Sweden, in 1989. I do not remember what I paid for it, but around SEK 200 seems reasonable, which puts it in the same price bracket as yours. Mine had a brushed chrome finish, black section and what seemed to be a gold-plated steel nib. The pen came with one cartridge of blue ink. When that ran out, I went to my local book/stationery store, only to find that, while they had cardridges of the right size, all colours were out of stock except Pelikan Red. Thus, a lot of my notes from my last year high school ("gymnasium", for those of you familiar with the Swedish school system) are in red... The pen eventually met its demise during my first year in college (1990), when I opened my bag at a lecture and found that the section had snapped off just below the threads.

It has been a while since I had that pen, but I remember it as very smooth and generally nice to write with. It had one of those gold plated metal rings at the lower (nib) end of the section that some people hate, and indeed, this ring started showing some rather ugly wear even in the relatively short time that I used the pen.

Thanks for posting! I only knew Ballograf as a quality ballpoint maker of the sixties and seventies (my memory doesn’t go back much further...), but I’ve never seen a fountain pen of that brand; I even thought its very name would exclude that possibility!

I've seen other pens without the little breather hole and I wonder if they write well?

I picked my Ballograf while on vacation in Vienna, Austria a couple of years ago. It was the size and shape I wanted, not expensive but apparently well-made. I wrote alternatively on a fine abrasive and paper for no more than a minute to make it feel well-broken into, and used it heavily ever since. Have a look...

That's a gorgeous pen! Thanks for posting that picture. It is so unfortunate that they don't make these gems anymore. They are good and smooth everyday writers!

Yup, quite a lot of modern pens don't have a breather hole, and work fine: many Watermans, some fairly recent MBs to name the most obvious. I *think* the point of the hole is more to relieve stress and prevent cracks, which means it would be more important with flex nibs rather than the superb nails that Waterman specializes in.

Best

Michael

I didn't even know that such holes exist... I would be scared if I found a hole in one of my pens. (They are all modern, I have no vintage ones).

Hi LapsangS!

I didn't know that ballograf made FP's and now you mention that they are not made any more.

I have a ballpen and a pencil which was given to me a long time ago by an uncle who is a Swede.

Would NOS of Ballograf FP's be available anywhere in Scandanavia?