Friday, September 28, 2012

Pilot Metal Falcon Soft Extra-Fine

We just recently started carrying the Pilot Metal Falcons at GouletPens.com, and I was really excited to show you what they're about. Specifically, the 14k soft extra-fine nib, because it's a unique nib that's not available in the resin Namiki Falcon. The whole pen is slightly longer than the Namiki Falcon, which is just enough to allow it to use the Pilot Con-70 converter, which has significantly better ink capacity than the Con-50 that comes in the resin version. It's much heavier, obviously, but very comfortable and well-balanced in use. All of the trim on this pen is plated in rhodium, which I really think looks nice. The design of the nib and its flexibility is the same as you'd expect with the Namiki Falcon, but this particular nib size is only available in the metal version, which is why I wanted to show it off!

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Changing Noodler's Army Green?

Every now and then, I get a fun surprise that an ink has changed formulas. It's happened before with numerous brands, and it seems that it's more often the case that it catches me by surprise because the manufacturer doesn't tell anyone about it. Here's the latest one, Noodler's Army Green.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Swapping Out Monteverde Nibs

One of the really cool things about the Monteverde Invincias, Napa, and Regatta is that they all use the same size nib that you can swap pretty easily. This allows you to buy their pens with nib colors (black or steel) that wouldn't normally be offered, as well as buy extra nibs to keep on hand to swap out on a single pen. Swapping the nibs are pretty straightforward, but can be tricky if you aren't familiar with the nibs and how they fit in the pen. This video is to clear up any confusion you have about swapping your Monteverde nibs.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Rhodiarama Webnotebooks

Rhodia has come out with a new line of colorful notebooks called Rhodiarama! There are 15 fun colors of the smaller 3.5"x3.5" Rhodia Webnotebooks, and I show them all off to you here. Same 90g Clairefontaine off-white paper you've been seeing in the Webbies all along. Fun!

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

J. Herbin 1670 Bleu Ocean

Here is a review of the much anticipated J. Herbin 1670 Bleu Ocean, the sibling ink to Rouge Hematite. It's an entirely different ink than RH, with no sheen, but it writes very smooth, wet, and dries quickly.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Noodler's Nib Creaper Rollerball Disassembly

For the last two years, I resolved myself to the fact that the Noodler's Nib Creaper rollerball couldn't have the piston mechanism removed from it....but I was wrong! it turns out it can, with a handy trick that I show here in this video.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

HUGE Noodler's Ink Bottles

Nathan Tardif of Noodler's ink has always been willing to do custom oversized bottles of inks by request, you may or may not have seen some of them before. Noodler's regular bottles are 3 ounces, some come in 4.5 ounces, which is a LOT of pen ink! But if you think that's a lot, just think about how much 16 ounces, or even 32 ounces is! Nathan makes all of the Noodler's inks by hand, by himself, and he's easily the busiest man that I know. He likes making these large bottles, so he makes time for them. It usually takes several months for him to make the time to do them, so a few times a year we'll get a shipment of large bottles that'll come in...and this is the largest assortment of large bottles I've ever had at once! I thought it was definitely worth showing in a video.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Monteverde Artista Crystal Bonus Footage

I kind of left out this footage of my big Monteverde Artista Crystal review, so I thought it was worth sharing in a separate video. I basically just compare the clear pen to several other clear pens like the Lamy Vista, Pilot Prera, Pilot Custom 74, Noodler's Ahab and Konrad, and others.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Monteverde Artista Crystal Review

The Monteverde Artista Crystal is a demonstrator fountain pen that looks very nice, is quite sturdy, and writes very smooth for a $36 pen. I show a full review of it here, with an unboxing all the way through inking it up and writing with it on the page.