A Quick Rant On The Zebra V-301 Fountain Pen.

[PenFiz]

Hi all,

 

I'm new here, having been a fan of fountain pens for nearly 20 years I felt why not register and involve myself in the community.

 

What drove me to this was my experience with the Zebra V-301 fountain pen.

 

I was at Walgreens this afternoon to buy a card for my wife and noticed this pen on sale for what I consider a very reasonable price.

 

Thought I had to have it! So I bought it.

 

For whatever reason I was especially excited about the use of this pen, even with it's relatively low cost.

 

But to my absolute disappointment, it simply doesn't work at all. Taking into account my experience with many other fountain pens in the past, I was simply unable to ever get this pen to produce a single line of ink. ...well, I should say, writing with the nib upside down I was able to draw ink through the slit. But as soon as I turn the pen over and attempt to write as normal, it does nothing but scratch the paper.

 

Even taking it apart and cleaning it helped in no way whatsoever.

 

I'm very saddened by how poorly this product functions, to simply not work is ridiculous. It's in the trash now, where it belongs.

 

To anyone who might be tempted at this low price, DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY.

 

Thanks for reading.

[kernando]

Pull it out of the trash and fix it. My first guess is to make the slit narrower, or the nib and feed closer to each other.

[carlos.q]

It is a truly awful pen with an interesting feature: once the ink finally soaks the wick feed the pen will start up all the time. The ink is not very good and the cartridge is propietary.

 

I would not waste my time on this Zebra. Life is too short to use crappy pens.

[mhguda]

I found using a Parker converter or cartridge, and priming the feed once, to be enough for the pen to write perfectly and to start up every time. It's a very wet writer. Has been that way for close to two years now.

The ink in the proprietary cartridge is awful, and that is the secret to the failure of this pen, IMO. Swap it out for better ink, and all its problems go away.

The one issue I still have is that the Parker stuff is slightly too long for the Zebra. But it does close securely and is a perfect writer now.

[RMN]

Sometimes a new pen (feed) needs to be really primed. It does help to put your pen nib and feed down in a bottle of well behaved ink, like Waterman blue or blue black. (or Quinck Black as Ron Zorn advises)

 

Leave it stand for a couple of hours. that way the feed really saturates with ink. Then write it empty, flush well and fill with your ink of choice.

 

D.ick

[doggonecarl]

I had issues with the Zebra. But for the most part, it wrote, and I plan to fill the empty Zebra cartridge with another ink to see if any of the flow issues could be resolved that way.

 

As for Zebra Black, I bought refills to use in another pen (I'm going to extract the ink and fill an international short cartridge) because it is one of the "blackest" inks in my modest collection of blacks.

[Wolverine1]

Please post this in the Japanese pens sub-forum. Zebra is a Japanese brand.

[RMN]

Please post this in the Japanese pens sub-forum. Zebra is a Japanese brand.

It is according to their website an American based brand owned by a Japanese firm.

So I guess it could be in both sub forums.

 

D.ick

[ScienceChick]

Life is too short to use crappy pens.

 

This is my new motto!

[rwilsonedn]

Life is too short to use crappy pens.

 

Perhaps it's in the eye of the beholder. Some people see the Zebra as a total waste of a few dollars and half an hour. Other people see it as a puzzle that needs solving. And others take joy in trying to make a purse from a sow's ear.

In any case, it appears that the pen has real problems out of the box, that the supplied ink isn't great, but that it can be a fun writer with some work. Not for everyone, for sure.

ron

[Sailor Kenshin]

I have a black one downstairs for quick notes. No worries, no fuss, but the trick is, it takes forever to saturate that feed.

[Bibliophage]

If you're going to toss it in the trash anyway, you might try filling it with inkjet printer refill ink. I have three Pilot Varsity pens that I've been refilling with blue, green, black, and red for several years (using up old refill bottles I've had sitting around, and I don't do as much writing as I should) (blended the green and red myself).

 

I don't recommend using the inks in anything that isn't a plastic and stainless steel/chrome pen at all. There's no telling what will happen.

 

Personal experience is that with a Varsity with a medium nib, it writes a _very_ wet line. I only write on one side of the paper, so it isn't a hardship for me to see the writing through the back (not leaking through unless you leave your nib sitting, but very obvious that you wrote from the backside). With a Hero 616, it's a much finer line, but still obvious from the back. With something feeding as badly as reports say this one does, the cheaper dye based inkjet inks should flow through it a lot easier. (They _will_ fade over time, and yes, they are water soluble.)

 

I'm not saying to run out and buy one to try this. I'm just giving an alternative to trashing it.

 

For the disposable pens (and probably the Cello and Flair lines), you remove the feed and nib by using bent nosed pliers, grabbing either side, and pulling it out. It will splatter a bit, so do it over a sink, after you've rinsed the nib. When reseating, just push the feed back in, and once it's as far as you can go with fingers, set the tips of the bent nosed pliers into the plastic at the base of the nib, and push the feed in until it clicks. That's how I refill the varsity. Right now, I'm on a minimum of six fills on each one of the three.

 

bw

 

 

[Sailor Kenshin]

Just keep dipping into another ink until it finally writes. Once it writes, you can't kill it with a stick.

 

My problems with this model are it,s not all that comfortable for me to write with, but I suppose I could take it traveling anywhere and not worry too much if something happened to it.

[pararis]

Not the "rant" I expected. I bought one of these just for fun a month ago -- plugged in the cartridge and started writing same as any cartridge pen would. I've been using it uneventfully ever since. I wouldn't put it in the same league as my Platinum Preppys, but it's a decent performing pen.

[pensuponpens]

Not the "rant" I expected. I bought one of these just for fun a month ago -- plugged in the cartridge and started writing same as any cartridge pen would. I've been using it uneventfully ever since. I wouldn't put it in the same league as my Platinum Preppys, but it's a decent performing pen.

In recent months, there have been changes in the design of the pen, including the use of a semi-hooded nib on newer examples, that keep the ink from drying out as quickly and make the pen as a whole a lot more dependable.

[Sailor Kenshin]

I need to see this semi-hooded nib!

[larnivon]

This thread prompted me to pull my Zebra V-301 out of the pen cup at work, where it has been sitting undisturbed, nib up, since the last time people ranted about it last summer. At that time, it started right up, even though it hadn't been used in a year.

 

This time ... it started right up, even though it hadn't been used in a year.

[dkirchge]

Mine has been a great writer as well. I must have gotten one of the good ones; no muss, no fuss, just writes like a pen should. I would also love to see a picture of the new semi-hooded nib.

Edited June 8, 2016 by dkirchge

[pararis]

I thought there would be pictures online, but I couldn't find any, so I took these pictures of the one I bought a month or two ago...

 

 

 

[Sailor Kenshin]

Coooool! Thanks for the photo, pararis.