New Skylines

[ac12]

I saw the new Skylines and the 100 year pens, wow

They are very nice pens.

I was quite impressed.

[user01]

I´ve noticed the 100 Year Edition too. The "taffy stipe" version looks so nice. And beeing not the typical cartridge converter makes the new Skyline pens very interesting.

But I wonder how much ink these pens hold.

[ac12]

I just tried mine, the Lucky C-Note model.

 

Cosmetic. What can I say, it is NICE. Shiny gold plated cap, and polished plastic section and barrel. Nice open nib to look at as I write.

 

I skipped my normal routine of breaking in a pen with Waterman ink.

I cleaned then pen, dried it, then loaded Diamine Ultra Green.

I had to adjust the nib to give me the desired ink flow with Diamine Ultra Green, with VERY little down force on the pen, and once adjusted....NICE. It is a smooth writer. I just have to learn to keep on the sweet spot of the nib and not roll the pen onto one tine where it starts to feel like it is dragging. I seem to be rolling several of my pens lately. Must be my old-age hand/eye coordination is off. You will see later that this adjustment of the nib, for my writing style did not agree with flexing the nib.

 

I forgot to measure the capacity of the converter, but it looks a bit longer than a Parker converter. Next time I pull the converter, I will measure for volume. But realistically, that converter fully loaded will last me a long time. Because I rotate thru several different pens during the day, a converter of ink will last me from a couple of weeks to more than a month. The only quirk with the Skyline is that you cannot see the clear tube of the converter. The converter sits deep into the body. Think of a piston pen, unscrew the blind cap, and that is where you load the converter or cartridge. So you do not unscrew the body like the vintage Skyline, you unscrew the blind cap like a piston pen. Loading operation is no different than any piston pen, or visually any other pen where you cannot see the ink in the barrel. This will stop me from my habit of constantly unscrewing the barrel of my pens to look at the ink level in the converter or cartridge.

 

BTW, if you think you might run out of ink during the day because you can't check the ink level, I recommend you do what I recommend to students. At the end of the day, fill up/top-off the pen, that way you are starting the day with a FULL load of ink in the pen.

 

The semi-flex nib will flex a little, but I found it more comfortable to not flex the nib. Flexing the nib required deliberate effort to apply pressure to the pen. That is quite the opposite of my standard writing method of using the least amount of pressure to write. Flexing the nib is similar to using my Nikko G dip pen flex nib, where I have to apply pressure to flex the nib. Although the Skyline feels like it requires more pressure than the Nikko G. I did not do a side-by-side comparison of this, so I can't say much more. The degree of effort to flex the nib seems similar to the nib on my vintage Skyline, and I have that nib adjusted the same, to give me a desired flow at almost no pressure, and not to flex. I do not have a vintage Skyline flex nib, so I can't compare to that. I agree about calling it semi-flex, because you can get it to flex a little, but not like a flex dip pen. And please don't try to, as you would likely spring the nib if you do. A new nib will cost you much more than the $2 a flex dip pen nib costs.

Because I adjusted the nib to give me a desired ink flow with almost no pressure, flexing causes a bit too much ink to be put down. For flexing, the ink flow at no pressure needs to be less than what I have it adjusted for, probably the factory nib setting flow is close to correct. If I were to use the pen to do flex writing, then things would change, as I would set the pen up closer to factory setting. And I would not use it for my normal very light pressure writing, because the pen would write too dry and light. So no fault of the nib, just my preferred way of writing does not match flexing a FM semi-flex nib with this particular ink.

 

I am rather sensitive to a pens balance. The metal cap at 15g is a bit heavy for me to use the pen posted, however the pen feels and writes just fine unposted, which is how I use it. I can use a vintage Skyline with a plastic cap posted, but the vintage plastic cap at 7g weighs less than half the 15g metal cap. And the plastic cap does not look anywhere near as nice as the metal cap. I like the metal cap, I'll write with it unposted.

BTW, there are several modern pens that I cannot write with the cap posted, because the cap is HEAVY, and moves the balance point of the pen too far to the tail.

 

All in all a very good pen.