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A Newbie Review Of Two "newbie" Pens


jr05

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Well, first off let me thank everybody on this site for all the information they have provided me in my research. Probably 5 months ago, I purchased a Lamy Safari (F) with a converter and a bottle of Noodler's Black ink as a starter fountain pen based on the reviews I had seen on here and other places. I was very happy with my purchase as a first pen and it wrote beautifully for the time I had it...it was "misplaced" at work one day and has not been seen since. The Safari was a great intro into fountain pens but was a bit rich to risk losing another one at work.

 

Well, on to my new purchases. I did some more digging for other budget minded pens and came to the decision to purchase two Platinum Preppys and one Pilot Metropolitan.

 

I will start with the Preppys:

I got one in 05 and one in 03 to test out how I liked the different nibs. I loaded the supplied cartridges into them and tried them on a variety of paper from my sketchpads, to nice notebook paper, to standard printer paper. On all paper, the 03 preppy was smooth as butter with a nice fine line, the ink was very
"watery" for me and became dull once dried. This was not really a big deal and there was very little feathering on any of the paper, just some bloating if you will. The nib on the 03 created a finer line than the F Safari I had and was quite a bit smoother. As I said, this nib is incredibly smooth with ZERO scratch to it at all.

 

The 05 Preppy was a much broader line and the nib did exhibit a bit of scratchy feel but nothing that bothered me, I would say about on par with my Safari nib (not to go into a tangent here, but the Safari went back and got replaced once due to a bad nib, the replacement was much better but still not what I would call ideal). The ink flow out of the 05 was much broader, probably in line with the Varsity pens I have tried, but the ink again was very watery and tended to look quite dull on all papers once dried and did bloat. The pen was a very wet writer, but did not blob or give any adverse writing. I am just not a broad/medium nib person and much preferred the 03 nib. Both pens function very well, start up every time, and are an amazing deal at $3 a piece. I intend to buy at least 1-2 more preppy's and convert one to an eyedropper to replace the ink which I don't enjoy as much with some Noodler's Black I have on hand.

 

 

Next up, the Metropolitan:

I would say this pen is the best of any I have tried to date. The nib creates a nice fine line on par with that of the 03 Preppy but the pen was filled with Noodler's black ink and the difference from the preppy ink is night and day. No bloating, no dulling, it is just a nice fine, dark line. The nib is very smooth, maybe not quite as good as the 03 preppy as it is a tad bit dry, but it never skips and there is no scratch to it. The look of the pen is very nice and I would say it is a better pen than the Safari was and has a finer nib which writes just as well as the Safari did with less scratch to it. If I was going to recommend a pen to somebody new to fountain pens it would definitely be the metropolitan. I am extremely impressed with this pen for the price; however, the squeeze converter is not the best method in my opinion. The first thing I will do with this pen is buy a piston converter which will hopefully hold more ink as well. I have not tested to see how long I can get the pen to write for, but it really doesn't seem to hold much ink with this method.

 

Overall I am extremely pleased with my purchase and would recommend either of these pens. The metropolitan is a bit fancier and an overall better pen, but that might also be from the ink I used which I think made a big difference. The preppy pens are an absolute bargain at their price and are going to make great work pens that I don't really care if I lose. Hopefully the next couple I get for testing eye droppers and converters in them will have nibs as good as the one on the 03 I have now.

A little plug for JetPens here, I ordered on Thursday last week and they arrived today with the free shipping, can't beat that.

 

Thanks again for all the great information on this site for leading me to these pens. I almost gave up on fountain pens after I lost the Safari, but I am glad I did not. These pens have made me turn a corner and don't think I will be leaving the fountain pen side for a long time to come.

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Bravo Jr05 for your new review to the forum. Keep the reviews coming.

 

Mags

Rob Maguire (Plse call me "M or Mags" like my friends do...)I use a Tablet, Apple Pencil and a fountain pen. Targas, Sailor, MB, Visconti, Aurora, vintage Parkers, all wonderful.

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I am not familiar with the preppys, but agree wholeheartedly as to the Pilot Metropolitan, for $15 you simply cannot beat it with a stick. I have subsequently acquired a couple of the higher priced types, and I like them, but for just straight up dependable steady writing, the Pilot is the 'go to' pen.

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Thanks for posting you impressions. I find it interesting that you find the Metropolitan nib to be fine. Pilot considers it a medium. You are already beginning to see some of the subjective measuring by the different manufacturers. Your review was enjoyable to read.

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Thanks for posting you impressions. I find it interesting that you find the Metropolitan nib to be fine. Pilot considers it a medium. You are already beginning to see some of the subjective measuring by the different manufacturers. Your review was enjoyable to read.

They may call it 'medium', but it is a nice hard fine, for sure. Not an XF, but a Fine.

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What does bloating mean? I have yet to come across the term here on FPN.

“Don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today, because if you do it today and like it, you can do again tomorrow!”

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I might have just made it up, as it was the best way to describe it at the time.

 

There was not feathering where it follows the fibers of the paper, but more of a uniform broadening of the inked area as it dried on certain papers. There may be a better term to describe it, but that is the best one that came to mind.

 

What does bloating mean? I have yet to come across the term here on FPN.

 

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I might have just made it up, as it was the best way to describe it at the time.

 

There was not feathering where it follows the fibers of the paper, but more of a uniform broadening of the inked area as it dried on certain papers. There may be a better term to describe it, but that is the best one that came to mind.

 

 

That's still considered feathering (since it's the same basic mechanism at work), if you look closely at the lines you'll see that the edges are fuzzy and there is feathering happening, it's just not very dramatic.

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Well just at the Eskimos have multiple names for snow and farmers have multiple names to describe soil, pen people, discerning people that we are can have multiple names for something such as feathering. Perhaps we might start a thread to determine the finer points (sic or sick, if you prefer) of feathering.

 

I am open to hearing and learning more about what is currently referred to as feathering, if many-one* chooses to elucidate the subject.

 

-S-

 

* Many-one - defined as an pro-active invitational term for responses from multiple contributors.

Edited by brgmarketing

“Don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today, because if you do it today and like it, you can do again tomorrow!”

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Well there you go, it was actually feathering I was seeing. I just don't mind feathering if it happens like this and is uniform.

 

In other news, I got my second Metropolitan and additional 03 preppy the other day and inked them up. I also got some blue ink samples from Goulet and have tried Noodler's blue so far in the metro. The metropolitan performed well, this one had a nice smooth fine nib just like the first one. The nib might not be quite as good and has a little bit less ink flow (during a quick test with Noodler's Black) but all in all a good writing pen.

 

Once I inked it up with Noodler's Blue I gave it another go and it wrote well, but either the ink, the pen, or the ink/pen combo was not ideal. I got a lot of light ink at the beginning of the stroke and darker at the end making all my writing two-tone almost. With the Noodler's Black it is nice uniform amount of ink/color which I prefer. I will try some of the other blue samples over the next few days and see how they do, I will probably try Serenity/Florida Blue next.

 

As for the new preppy, it worked almost as well as the first one, but the nib wasn't quite as good. Still a very nice writing pen though with good ink flow, no skipping, etc. The nib has a little bit of scratch but hardly noticeable. I maintain my endorsement for both of these pens, especially for somebody just starting out.

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