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Hero 5028 Calligraphy Pen


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http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk94/saru_kage/HERO5028BLACK1.jpg

 

Having bought a few Hero pens over the last year or so, and being pretty consistently impressed with them, when I saw this one over at isellpens, I had to get it. I prefer italic nibs when I can find them, and for $12 I just couldn't bring myself to pass it up.

 

The set comes as pictured, plus converter. The nibs are marked 1.1, and 1.5, and the other one is unmarked but is presumably a 2.0 mm. It is a feather-weight, and fairly slim pen. It feels a little cheap, but for those of you familiar with Hero's lighter-weight plastic pens, this won't come as a shock. And if you like pens whose caps go on with a satisfying click, this one does that in spades. The cap actually goes on so tight, I thought there must be something lodged in the cap keeping it from going on the first time I went to cap it. I doubt there's any danger of this pen coming uncapped in pocket or purse.

 

The 1.1 and the 1.5 nibs seem to write very wet. No threat of skipping or stalling here.

 

The 2.0 nib writes a little drier, and seems to require a little more pressure than I'm used to applying to put down a good line. Probably a thorough cleaning will fix that.

 

I was going to pull out my Sheaffer calligraphy pen for comparison, but I just rearranged a bunch of stuff in my house and it apparently got misplaced in the shuffle, so I put my Al-star with a 1.1mm italic nib in there instead.

 

http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk94/saru_kage/Scan20054.jpg

 

Compared to my Sheaffer calligraphy pen, this one writes a whole order of magnitude more smoothly. With the two smaller nibs there is none of the skipping or stalling or hard starting that plagues the Sheaffer. The Sheaffer does tend to give me better line variation than the Hero though.

 

Compaired to Lamy's calligraphy pens (the Joy, or italic nibbed Safaris and Al-stars), Lamy is still by far the superior pen in my opinion. The Lamy writes a touch smoother, a little drier, has better ink flow, and is an all-around more solid pen, but the Hero comes in a not too distant second.

 

All in all, it's not a bad little pen, though it writes a little wetter than I would like. I'd say it's pretty solidly middle of the road for calligraphy sets under fifty or sixty dollars. I think the twelve dollars I paid for it was a pretty fair price for what it is. And for calligraphy sets under twenty dollars, I don't think you can find a better one than this.

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thanx for the review. i've seen these at isellpens.com in different colors. i don't own a calligraphy set yet and i was thinking on getting a sheaffer one. it's good to know they have other inexpensive calligraphy sets out there.

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Just picked up one of these Hero sets myself. And you are right about these nibs laying down a wet line. I also noticed that the nib grinds on these nibs are massive, so that the 1.1mm for example is more of a double broad than an Italic or Cursive Itlalic. As the pen cots $12 I do believe it may be the perfect candidate to try out some beginners grinding skills. The only problem is that the grind is so large an area on these nibs that if I grind them down to a crisp or slightly crisp Italic I might loose so much of the nib that the feed will touch the paper when I write with them. But it is just $12 and experimentation is about the only way to really learn.

 

I never really liked the Sheaffer, Parker or any of the other $15 to $30 calligraphy sets I've come across over the years. This Hero set has changed my mind somewhat as the nibs are pretty solid and much better for the price than any of the other pens in this price range. If only the grind on the nibs wasn't so huge as to make me worry about crisping up the nib a bit.

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Just picked up one of these Hero sets myself. And you are right about these nibs laying down a wet line. I also noticed that the nib grinds on these nibs are massive, so that the 1.1mm for example is more of a double broad than an Italic or Cursive Itlalic. As the pen cots $12 I do believe it may be the perfect candidate to try out some beginners grinding skills. The only problem is that the grind is so large an area on these nibs that if I grind them down to a crisp or slightly crisp Italic I might loose so much of the nib that the feed will touch the paper when I write with them. But it is just $12 and experimentation is about the only way to really learn.

 

I never really liked the Sheaffer, Parker or any of the other $15 to $30 calligraphy sets I've come across over the years. This Hero set has changed my mind somewhat as the nibs are pretty solid and much better for the price than any of the other pens in this price range. If only the grind on the nibs wasn't so huge as to make me worry about crisping up the nib a bit.

 

 

I was thinking this pen would be a good candidate for guinea pig too, but I was thinking about tinkering with the airflow rather than the nib. I noticed after playing with it some more that if I write big and fast it starts behaving like an italic nib should. I have a suspicion that it writes like a double broad because the line is just that wet, and if I could find a way to restrict the air returning to the ink reservoir just a touch, I think I would start seeing that nice line variation I generally expect from a calligraphy pen.

 

I'm hardly an authority on nib grinding, but I am a machinist who has done a fair amount of precision cutting. Under my loupe, it looks like just a little bit at the right angle should do it if all you're trying to do is crispen it up a little bit. There may well be some nuances to nib grinding that I'm unaware of which complicate things, but it looks to me like you have miles of room for error before you have to worry about the feed contacting the paper.

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  • 6 years later...

http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk94/saru_kage/HERO5028BLACK1.jpg

 

Having bought a few Hero pens over the last year or so, and being pretty consistently impressed with them, when I saw this one over at isellpens, I had to get it. I prefer italic nibs when I can find them, and for $12 I just couldn't bring myself to pass it up.

 

The set comes as pictured, plus converter. The nibs are marked 1.1, and 1.5, and the other one is unmarked but is presumably a 2.0 mm. It is a feather-weight, and fairly slim pen. It feels a little cheap, but for those of you familiar with Hero's lighter-weight plastic pens, this won't come as a shock. And if you like pens whose caps go on with a satisfying click, this one does that in spades. The cap actually goes on so tight, I thought there must be something lodged in the cap keeping it from going on the first time I went to cap it. I doubt there's any danger of this pen coming uncapped in pocket or purse.

 

The 1.1 and the 1.5 nibs seem to write very wet. No threat of skipping or stalling here.

 

The 2.0 nib writes a little drier, and seems to require a little more pressure than I'm used to applying to put down a good line. Probably a thorough cleaning will fix that.

 

I was going to pull out my Sheaffer calligraphy pen for comparison, but I just rearranged a bunch of stuff in my house and it apparently got misplaced in the shuffle, so I put my Al-star with a 1.1mm italic nib in there instead.

 

http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk94/saru_kage/Scan20054.jpg

 

Compared to my Sheaffer calligraphy pen, this one writes a whole order of magnitude more smoothly. With the two smaller nibs there is none of the skipping or stalling or hard starting that plagues the Sheaffer. The Sheaffer does tend to give me better line variation than the Hero though.

 

Compaired to Lamy's calligraphy pens (the Joy, or italic nibbed Safaris and Al-stars), Lamy is still by far the superior pen in my opinion. The Lamy writes a touch smoother, a little drier, has better ink flow, and is an all-around more solid pen, but the Hero comes in a not too distant second.

 

All in all, it's not a bad little pen, though it writes a little wetter than I would like. I'd say it's pretty solidly middle of the road for calligraphy sets under fifty or sixty dollars. I think the twelve dollars I paid for it was a pretty fair price for what it is. And for calligraphy sets under twenty dollars, I don't think you can find a better one than this.

what type of coverter?

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I picked one of these up for 5 USD. The pen takes a standard size cartridge. The converter was in the pen. It's a nice little pen for the money, and they come in different colors as well.

 

Doug

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  • 11 months later...

I got my set today.

The 1.1 nib worked the best and it is rather nice.The 1.5 took more convincing. The 1.9 requires a lot of pressure and also some help from the converter to push the ink to get it started.

At $5 shipped from China, some variability on manufacturing is expected. The converter that came with it is actuallt great and easier to work with than the Faber Castell branded that was more expensive than this set.

It is my first foray into stub nibs and I am now thinking about maybe getting a better one (maybe the twsbi eco).

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I enjoy this pen a lot. Mine writes better than Lamy and Kaweco stubs (1,1).

 

I agree. It's a shame these nibs aren't offered on other more sturdy Hero pens (if they are someone let me know).

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I have got two pieces of the same... and they are amazing writer... I just want to mention here is that instead of 2.0 stub it is 1.9 stub....

vaibhav mehandiratta

architect & fountain pen connoisseur

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I have had mine for about a month. The QC is horrid. Only the 1.1 nib was useable and that one gushes ink. The cap would not stay posted and I dislike the cheap overall feel of it.

 

I also have a Pilot 78G in B 1.1 nib. Though 2.5X the price, it is still inexpensive and it is so much better in pretty much any conceivable way and I reallt enjoy it.

 

I would say that for the quality of the 5028, it is IMO overpriced, because you can get a very decent Jinhao for half the price. Just because it has a 1.1 nib "novelty" doesn't mean one has to compromise that much on the overall quality.

 

I may have drawn a bad one. Thats part of the ebay game, I guess. Maybe a local vendor knows how to pick the correct supplier.

Maybe I have been lucky with the Pilot ebay sellers, because the ones I have so far (78G, Kakuno) are... well... excellent.

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I like the 1.1 nib. It writes very smoothly, although line variation is not as good as a cursive italic.

 

There is a new version where the pen is made of metal, feels much more substantial.

 

Pen can be brought individually, i.e. one pen one nib, not one pen three nibs.

 

 

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x125/mychestnut/IMG_6431_zps17pazzw7.jpg

 

 

In addition, you can take off the nib and put it in other pens that use a #5 nib.

 

I put a Hero 1.1 nib in a transparent Wing Sung 659. It looks good.

 

 

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x125/mychestnut/8f89f7ee-48b5-4816-a028-59027dffa93f_zpsyw4piwij.jpg

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  • 1 month later...

My set is magenta metal -- looks like anodized aluminum. I got it from jewelrymathematics on eBay for $5.50US. I have dealt with him for many years and been a very satisfied customer (though I might be biased because I am a mathematician;-) He also has a medium metallic blue and black. I use only the narrowest nib as an italic for ordinary handwriting. I have had lots of Sheaffer and Parker calligraphy pens, as well as a set from Panache. I also have a Pilot 78G that is marked "B" but sure seems like a calligraphy pen to me. Unlike my Sheaffer broad which has a huge ball of metal at the tip and just floats over the page, the 78G (like the calligraphy pens) is chopped off flat with little to no tipping material. The Hero writes more smoothly than any of the calligraphy pens, and by a wide margin. It is also considerably smoother than the Pilot (or most other Heros). It is almost as smooth as the $100 Sheaffer. I don't see much tipping material but it looks like they really polished the tip. Comparing the pens I have, I can't see any way in which the Pilot is better for ordinary writing. I know very little about real calligraphy and I can imagine the Hero might be too smooth for that. It just kind of slithers along and might be harder to control accurately. And I can well believe Pilot might have better quality control. It would be interesting to hear from someone doing serious calligraphy.

 

For me the cap stays on and posts well but is not too tight.

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  • 6 months later...

I seem to have nothing but bad luck with Hero pens and my worst experience was with a 5028 set, so I thought I should warn others about it.

 

I got my first 5028 set from jewelrymathematics and it worked fine for about a year. Then this happened today:

 

fpn_1479474983__img_20161118_205221.jpg

 

The seams on the plastic section actually started leaking onto my hand!

It's a shame because the nibs are incredibly smooth and fun to use with inks that are too dry for some other pens.

 

I recently bought another 5028 set in a store here and the threaded part of the section cracked when I put a different Hero converter in it that was just slightly larger than the skinny one that it comes with. It still writes fine, but we'll see if the leaking seam issue happens with this pen as well.

 

My only other comment is that the plastic parts on these pens are very fragile. The fins on the feeds can easily be bent if you try to remove the nib and feed. I've even bent them just while cleaning the pen.

fpn_1451608922__truthpil_signature_small

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  • 3 months later...
  • 3 months later...

In addition, you can take off the nib and put it in other pens that use a #5 nib.

 

I put a Hero 1.1 nib in a transparent Wing Sung 659. It looks good.

How did you disassemble it? I recently got 5028 and intended to put the 1.1 nib in another pen, but I can't take the nib out from 5028.
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How did you disassemble it? I recently got 5028 and intended to put the 1.1 nib in another pen, but I can't take the nib out from 5028.

 

Watch Goulet's video please:

 

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I was able to get them out, but you have to use an insane amount of force combined with twisting action and some gripping material. I tried to put one back in the section after taking it out and it was just as difficult. Ended up bending the nib in the process. :(

 

Other than the WingSung 659 mentioned above, what other pens have folks been able to successfully transplant these nibs into (pictures would be great). They are very smooth nibs, but need a better pen.

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