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Conid Kingsize Caiso Flaptop - Fpr


Out0Mind

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As a multi-time poster on FPN, it struck me today that I'd never taken the time to write a review of any of my favorite fountain pen examples. It's not that I hadn't figured that I should before; I've never felt moved or compelled by a writing instrument to take the time to write down my thoughts - ironic given my love for pens and writing.

 

That said, when I came home yesterday and saw a note on my door telling me that I'd missed a package from Antwerp, I was both so incredibly excited for the wait to be over, and so incredibly disappointed that I'd have to wait another day. So today, I went out, picked up my package from the post office, grabbed lunch, came home, set up my portable photo tent for when I'm out of my studio, and opened the package.

 

Firstly, the package. An beautifully crafted box, from the outer sleeve with its lovely embossing to the inner aluminum packaging. Everything down to the carving of the inner foam is on point and perfectly executed. It's a marvel to look at.

 

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Additionally, the nib stroke sheet is helpful and shows Conid's commitment to accuracy and consistency.

 

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Next up is the nib. I ordered a Fine titanium ground down to an Extra Fine titanium for my example. This is my second Conid, with a Slimline Titanium Fine stub as my first. I love the stub, although the edges can catch paper fibers and cause some scratching. That said, when it hits the sweet spot, it's very sweet. This example's EF is simply incredible. When I put the nib to the page, ink just started to flow. And flow. And continue to flow. This might be the most pleasantly wet and smoothe nib I own, literally gliding across the page. With some titanium nibs (I swapped, for example, my TWSBI Vac 700 and Diamond 580al steel nibs for Titanium Bock Fine nibs) and found them to be a little scratchy. With the CAISO, Fountainbell's nib work is outstanding, and I have to give him some serious kudos for his attention to detail and professional skill.

 

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Let's swing over to the barrel. Smoothe, with a lovely cool texture and beautiful titanium fittings, it looked beautiful, albeit a little utilitarian before, filling. Sharing a photo, I was told it looks "quite masculine," and I can understand, in many ways, why. That said, its image completely changes when filled with ink, maximizing the body and accentuating the curve throughout the center. It almost becomes a completely different pen with every fill.

 

In the hand, it feels just right: weighty, but not overly so, well balanced, cool, smoothe with some feedback, and just the right width to be comfortable. The (not so) blind cap is beautiful, sitting flush against the clear acrylic connecting to the machinery inside, while the titanium milled cap body and cap balances out the other end. Conid logo sits tucked into the cap made from acrylic. It's so well polished, you can't tell any separation between the acrylic from the logo and the titanium of the cap. Conid's attention to detail, as many has said, is outstanding, and I'm still blown away by how precise a job they've done.

 

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Then there's the most interesting part of the pen: the cap-actuated bulkfiller. At this point, the Bulkfiller mechanism is fairly well known. You write a syringe by turning the blind cap, pull it back, screw it into a plunger screwed into the back of the pen, press the syringe down, submerge into ink, draw ink into the pen, spin the syringe in the opposite direction until it unscrews from the plunger, and press the syringe back down into the pen. It's much easier to see than describe, so watch an animated video here:

 

 

Or watch Francis (fountainbell) filling a regular Bulkfiller here:

 

 

Most Bulkfillers seal when screwed all the way down, making flying, travel, and storage simple. This pen's mechanism is cap actuated. When you put the cap on, a plug in the cap depresses a needle in the feed, which seals the section from the main body of the pen. Ink is sealed away from passing into the feed, until you remove the cap again. For frequent travelers (who don't write as they fly, as removing the cap will open the feed to the main body of the pen again) this is a wonderful addition. Beyond that, from a technical perspective, it's quite the feat of precision engineering, and Francis has really outdone himself.

 

There's only one downside, as I can see it, to this system: the plunger in the cap covered in ink when it screws into the feed upon closing. For those of us with a minor obsession with keeping out pens clean, that can be a bit of a headache. That said, it's a tiny tradeoff for everything else this pen provides.

 

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Size wise, the pen is larger posted than the Montblanc 147, but smaller than the posted Visconti Homo Sapiens. Posted, it's slightly larger than the Conid Slimline, but feels much more substantial in the hand. That said, the Slimline holds 2ml, while the the Kingsize holds a whopping 3ml of ink, at a complete fill.

 

Size wise, it's almost exactly as long as the TWSBI Diamond 580 when capped. There is a significant weight difference, as well, given that the Diamond 580 holds significantly less ink. The pens also feel considerably different from a material perspective, as the Kingsize was CNC'd, I believe, from a solid piece of acrylic while the TWSBI's shape was injected into a mold. The quality difference is apparent as soon as you take the pen out of its case.

 

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I'm stunned by this pen. I have plenty of pens, from $3 Jinhao that write expertly to $7000 Montblanc that I'm not convinced I'd ever write with. That said, this has to be the single most well constructed and precision manufactured pen I've received, with what may be my favorite nib out of any pen I own. Yes, I know, I've been gushing this whole review (I never actually intended to write a review, but just post photos for folks who were curious), but as I said at the beginning, I was more moved to write this than anything. I have a feeling that this pen just made it to the top of my rotation, and will probably stay there for a while.

 

Now I just have to figure out how to order additional nibs, and I'll be all set.

 

For good measure I included a few photos of the Kingsize along with the Slimline.

 

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Edited by TheGreatRoe
With OP's permission I have included lower-res pictures (which are hyperlinked to the full-size images)
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Great photos and great review. Thank you for sharing. I hope you enjoy the pen for many years to come.

If you want less blah, blah, blah and more pictures, follow me on Instagram!

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Thanks for your thorough comparative review OutOMind, very interesting !

Glad reading you are happy with you EF nib, however not ground by myself .

I've trained Johan, a young motivated Conid engineer, in grounding nibs, and he has gradually taken over.

I've seen Johan evolving towards perfection in nib grounding , and I'm pretty sure he will surpass my work in time !

Francis

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Glad to see you are enjoying the CAISO. Between you and Brad7k the coverage has been excellent. By the way, I find if you form the habit of capping/uncapping the pen with nib up it partially drains the CAISO rod channel. This helps minimize ink on the cap plunger and in the cap. I could be wrong, but this is the impression I have.

 

One other different thing about the CAISO is that the rod channel holds a bit of ink that is difficult to flush during cleaning. A bit of old ink could seep from the channel after filling, and affect the first bit of writing in the new color. The old ink will soon be replaced as the rod seals and unseals so this is pretty trivial, or you could remove the nib and rinse the rod/channel before filling. Only of interest to compulsive types.

 

I enjoy the CAISO, and the best part is that the people at Conid are even better than their pens. Bravo.

Edited by cunim
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Thanks for your thorough comparative review OutOMind, very interesting !
Glad reading you are happy with you EF nib, however not ground by myself .
I've trained Johan, a young motivated Conid engineer, in grounding nibs, and he has gradually taken over.
I've seen Johan evolving towards perfection in nib grounding , and I'm pretty sure he will surpass my work in time !
Francis

 

 

Amazing! I'm looking forward to seeing more of his work as time goes on.

 

Francis, I give you a lot of credit; this is a truly well designed pen.

 

A quick question: what's the proper path to ordering extra nib units? Is this available on the website?

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Glad to see you are enjoying the CAISO. Between you and Brad7k the coverage has been excellent. By the way, I find if you form the habit of capping/uncapping the pen with nib up it partially drains the CAISO rod channel. This helps minimize ink on the cap plunger and in the cap. I could be wrong, but this is the impression I have.

 

One other different thing about the CAISO is that the rod channel holds a bit of ink that is difficult to flush during cleaning. A bit of old ink could seep from the channel after filling, and affect the first bit of writing in the new color. The old ink will soon be replaced as the rod seals and unseals so this is pretty trivial, or you could remove the nib and rinse the rod/channel before filling. Only of interest to compulsive types.

 

I enjoy the CAISO, and the best part is that the people at Conid are even better than their pens. Bravo.

 

Thanks so much for the tip. I'm assuming this is something that doesn't get cleaned out by standard flushing. I'll have to make a point during my first flush (3ml of ink is going to take a while to drain) of doing a thorough disassembly and cleaning. Additionally, it looks like I'll have to be going nib up during capping and uncapping from now on.

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Thank you Out0Mind, a great review and great pictures!

 

Not to nitpick but to clarify, is your white balance accurate? At least on my iPad screen it seems that the pen's titanium parts have a copperish / yellowish tint I do not recognize from my own pen which is more of a grey, see my photos in the Mall CAISO thread, post 256:

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/283524-new-caiso-bulkfiller-revealed/?p=3639490

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Amazing! I'm looking forward to seeing more of his work as time goes on.

 

Francis, I give you a lot of credit; this is a truly well designed pen.

 

A quick question: what's the proper path to ordering extra nib units? Is this available on the website?

Thanks for your kind words OutOMind !

Below a link to the Conid site on which you can order complementary nibs .

Unfortunately a complete nib unit can't be ordered using this procedure yet.

So the feed and screw-in housing have to be ordered separately, please contact Werner directly with E-mail for pricing .

I've already pointed out to Werner that it would be nice to adapt the site and offer the possibility for ordering complete nib units.

It may take some time, but I'm sure Werner will make this possible in the future.

Thanks a lot for confronting us with this ordering problem !

Francis

http://www.conidpen.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=webshop&idproduct=63&sli=0&cat=kingsize

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Thank you Out0Mind, a great review and great pictures!

 

Not to nitpick but to clarify, is your white balance accurate? At least on my iPad screen it seems that the pen's titanium parts have a copperish / yellowish tint I do not recognize from my own pen which is more of a grey, see my photos in the Mall CAISO thread, post 256:

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/283524-new-caiso-bulkfiller-revealed/?p=3639490

 

Yes and no. The light I used has a slight tint, forcing the titanium to come out with a weird coppery hue. I noticed this while the pens were in the tent looking at them outside the lens. When I tried to adjust the white-balance to what I considered to be more of a titanium tone, the entire image turned an unnatural blue, so I tried to step back from that. I can paint the images back to a more natural titanium tone in Phocus or Lightroom; it would just take a while, and I wanted to get some images up rather than edit them half to death.

 

As I mentioned above, these images were taken in an unideal portable light tent. I'll be taking more photos later on my studio and I'd be happy to upload with more accurate coloring.

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Thank you for the explanation. I think the most important part is that people reading this review thread recognize that the color representation on the titanium parts is a bit off.

 

If you have the time and energy to do more photos, of course pen pictures are always welcome! :)

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One day, one day . . .

Thanks for sharing your joy :)

I can't even begin to tell you how happy your profile image makes me.

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Great review! Bring the pen to the September BAPC meeting so we can all try it! Curious -- what kind of ink are you using and did you test flow through that EF with a range of inks before filling it?

Feel free to use my lighting equipment if you want to get a better image...

 

Tim

Tim

 timsvintagepens.com and @timsvintagepens

 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

After reading your fantastic review I decided to purchase the pen. I have found that of my many pens I use my MB 149s the most, and given the similar size it seemed only natural that I would love the kingsize bulkfiller. I own the regular size bulkfiller, but find that it is a bit too small for daily use. I received the pen yesterday and have been using it nonstop since then. I absolutely love the pen. I got a fine gold nib and it is absolutely perfect. And the CAISO System is an extra bonus. It works like a dream. I completely agree with everything you have said in your review and would recommend this pen to anyone who is considering adding it to your collection. Well done Francis and the team at Conid Pen.

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  • 2 weeks later...

This pen has been on my radar for a long time. Hmmmmmm....

 

“My tastes are simple: I am easily satisfied with the best.” - Winston Churchill

 

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