Tag Archives: pilot

Pilot Custom Urushi Vermilion

18 Tuesday Feb 2020

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Flagship of the Pilot fountain pen range and a comparative behemoth in size, the Custom Urushi has shown that simplicity and cleanliness of design can be as appealing as complicated art works.  Available primarily in black, it is also made in smaller numbers with a vermilion finish to the cap and barrel.  For a long time it was only available in Japan and the USA, however as of recent it can now be bought from an increasing number of European and UK based retailers. Continue reading →

Pilot Vanishing Point

09 Sunday Feb 2020

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Click, click, clickity, click …. if ever there was a fountain pen to distract the wielder and annoy colleagues it is Pilot’s Vanishing Point/Capless/Decimo (depending on country and width). Until very recently no other fountain pen had been on sale for a long time with a ballpoint type clicker mechanism. Sure it’s not the only retractable fountain pen out there, and even around the time of launch there were JDM rivals, but for single handed ease of use there has been nothing comparable until this month (February 2020) with Platinum’s launch of the Curidas.
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Namiki Nippon Art Mount Fuji and Ship

04 Saturday Jan 2020

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I’m far from alone in liking maki-e and appreciating the skills and processes that go in to the creation of this form of art.  As with many I often thought that my only options would be the ‘cheap’ commercial screen print pens, which are approximately £100 a pop, as the far more attractive alternatives I saw were all high end in the four figure price range and with releases been limited to single digit numbers of pens.  Discovering the Namiki Nippon Art range was a revelation.  Sure these pens are still £400+ outside of rare deals, but they are also much more affordable for a hand drawn piece of work.

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Pilot Custom Heritage 912 FA

11 Thursday Jul 2019

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Flex is cool, flex is fun, flex will win you the boy/girl/goat of your dreams.  Flex is hyped yet many of us still buy pens with flex or semi-flex nibs and enjoy the experience.  For me, it’s not the challenge of modern or classical styles of formal writing (such as Spencerian or Copper Plate), but the springy nature of the nibs, for in all honesty I’m one of the last people you want to come to for place setting cards or party invite creation.
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Pilot Custom 823

27 Thursday Jun 2019

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Last week I posted about a number of pens which to me felt just right.  Amongst them was the Pilot Custom 823.  To some it is an over priced generically shaped pen with a less common filling system and seemingly mismatched materials, yet few owners regret the purchase and put them up for sale.  A number I’ve seen on the second hand market have actually been spares where some one has got carried away and bought each of the different finishes to find they just use the one pen.  Rarity partly helps as well as Pilot, for some reason, are only interested in selling the pen in Japan and the USA. Continue reading →

Pens that feel ‘just right’

20 Thursday Jun 2019

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We’ve all been there.  We’ve held an item, a gadget, a widget, a tool, in our hands and it has just felt right, perfect for the task, comfortable and comforting.  It may be cheap, it may be expensive.  It may be bespoke, it may be off the shelf, there are no hard and fast rules, and like all emotive mysteries, it’s hard to explain just why it works so well for one person, yet may not for another. Continue reading →

Pilot Elite 95S (Modern)

01 Wednesday May 2019

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In 1964 Platinum launched the 200, a ‘long-short’ pocket pen.  This was followed four years later by Pilot with the Elite 95 S, and while production of both was stopped before the Millennia, probably in the 1980s, it was the Pilot that was remembered with the result that in 2014 an updated version was re-introduced in to the USA as the E95S and shortly after in Japan under it’s original name.  Available in either black or burgundy and light gold, it looks very similar to the original.  Note the pen was not available outside the country and also should not be confused with the South Korean produced/licensed Pilot Elite, as covered in this video by Figboot on Pens alongside the E95s.
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