For many years Pilot pens used to be manufactured locally in India under license. The factory was located in the south Indian city of Madras (now Chennai). The Indian Pilot company closed shop sometime in the mid 70's.

The filling systems on all the Pilots made here was ED. Upto now I had come across only steel nibbed Indian Pilots, but on my recent visit to Chennai, I came across a few NOS examples of 14K Gold nibbed Pilots made here (of course I picked up the entire leftover stock...). There are two models that I came across, The first is called the G model. The second variant has no model name marked.

All information about these pens and their Japanese counterparts if any are welcome. It will also be very nice if more light can be thrown on the Pilot operations in India.

Pilot G

Capped:


Cap/Clip view; the clips are spring loaded:


Marking on the cap and Barrel:


Pens uncapped:


Nib detail; there seem to be two ways the nibs were marked...




Nib-feed with tipping, the nibs are very fine and somewhat springy:


The nib removed from pen, notice the 2 vents on the nib, what is the rear vent for?:


Nib underside with its surface roughened:


The feed is made of plastic and has a transparent insert whose function is unclear, explanations are welcome




The pen as I said is ED, but it had an O-ring to maintain leak tightness:


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This is the second variant with 14K nibs:

The pen capped:


Pen uncapped:


Legend Marking:


Nib detail:


Nib removed, what does <3> mean?


Nib with the plastic feed, the insert is missing in this variant...


O-ring on the section...


In addition to these gold nibbed pens, I also found a few varieties of steel nibbed Indian Pilots which I will be covering in a seperate post later.

Cheers,
Hari,
INDIA

Wow! Pilot ED fillers!

You are one lucky person.

WOW!

That's an incredible post! Most interesting.
Externally, they look like those made in Japan during the 1960s.

Some time ago I was able to purchase a few older Pilots from a customer in India. They included very typical 1950s style pens with the 'sword' clip, identical to those made in Japan. Only difference was that the nib said "Made In India." Would like to find more if I could.

Those anglular "double-vented" nibs are really interesting!

I'm guessing that's probably the nib size. Pilot pens have a range of nib sizes, labelled 3, 5, 10, and 15. Larger number is larger nib. When I say size here, I mean physical size of the whole nib, not the tip size.

Great find--thanks for posting such fabulous pictures, Hari!

There are some Pilot nibs featuring an extra vent. I've not seen one this big, though. Are they wet writers?

Thanks, I also thought so.




I have dipped one of the pens, and it looks like quite a wet writer

Regards,
Hari

As mentioned in my original post, I also got a chance to acquire some Indian made steel nibbed Pilots. These pens are shown in the following pictures.

I could distinguish three different models, however the model names/numbers are not marked on the pens. The clips on all pens are spring loaded.

The first two from the left seem to be identical to the pens available with gold nibs, differing only in the color of the plating on the caps. The gold nibbed pens had a pink/rose gold finish whereas these caps have a yellow gold color.

The third pen is slightly smaller in size (nib as well as body). The pens 4-6 are the all-plastic models with an open type #2 nib. I also found two Indian Pilot ballpoints whose refills were unavailable with the shopkeeper, it seems they take a proprietary size of refills and are no longer available here...

The pens capped; the platic pens are a little under 5 inches capped. The 6th pen from left is actually a nice shade of green which has come out as blue in the photos:


The pens uncapped; the 3rd pen from left is a pen I had bought 11 years earlier, it was old stock even then and I insisted on buying that pen even when the salesman told me that they were very old stock for display only.


Nibs at a glance:


Nib Detail of the all-plastic pens. Marked Hard Gilt, does it mean hard plating?


Nib underside of the same pen...


The same feed removed from pen; notice the absence of any fins, nevertheless, the pen writes like a champ.



Nibs of pens 1 and 5 from the Left (nibs at a glance picture).


Nib closeup of pen-7:


Same nib removed from pen, the engraving looks to be done with a scriber like tool?


Despite being humble steel nibbed cousins, these pens perform well, I have inked up the all plastic Black pen with the plain feed and the pen is an amazing writer with a nice XF line, no tweaking was required, in fact I did not even flush it... The best part is that the screw capped pens require only 1 1/2 turns for the cap to fit/remove fully.

Cheers,
Hari

Hari, its very good informative document! I had no idea that Pilot manufactured in India. In our part (West Bengal) people used to love Pilot pens but from Japan. Smuggled in through Nepal. My mother had one! Then Chinese manufactured pens took over!
Thanks for sharing! Your holiday was real fruitful!!
Abhik.

Hari,

Thank you very much for posting very interesting Pilots!!

Hi,

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing! I have seen Korean Pilots too.

Dillon

Thanks! I have seen some Made in Burma Pilots too.

Hi Hari:

I haven't seen this unitl now.

WOW! Great pens, very interreting, ¡Congratulations!

Julio