Brandless Wood

Specifications:

Real wood (vs. wood grain imitation)

M nib

Weight: 21.60 g

Weight (unposted): 12.46 g

Snap-on cap

One piston converter

Retails at CAD 4–5

A few words before I delve into the individual components. There are two different types of listing on eBay Canada for this pen. The first is sold by multiple sellers and is described as a wood or maple wood pen. It is marketed as a brandless gift pen and the sellers use stock images. The second listing is unique to one seller who uses his own images, and is described as a white wood Jinhao pen. It should be noted that it is not a Jinhao pen—it has absolutely no branding whatsoever—and that the only difference between either type of listing seems to be the nib.

I bought the pen listed as Jinhao because the seller had bothered taking his own pictures (and I preferred the fluff on the nib). In a more general sense, I bought this particular pen because, ultimately, wooden pens are what I’m really interested in: plastic is an incredible material, but more often than not, I find it a little boring.

Cap

The aesthetic on the cap—much like on the rest of the pen—is fairly simple: a smooth wooden body, a gold ring with black trimming to highlight the bottom of the cap and a lightly detailed gold clip for carrying. It is noteworthy that the inclusion of the clip separates the knob from the barrel on the body. That knob exhibit noticeable chipping at the joint with the barrel, but overall, I am glad they went with more wood vs. more metal when they added fixtures.

Mechanically, the snap feature seems to work fine, but the cap goes through some awkward motions before it actually snaps. However, this does not seem to affect the nib. The clip itself is quite stiff, but it is also very well fixed to the pen: unlike the clip on my Pilot 78G, the clip on this pen doesn’t move at all when you touch it.

The cap is also quite heavy, weighing only three grams less than the rest of the pen, even when that pen holds an inked converter.

Nib

The nib is advertised as being medium sized, but it does not actually feature any marking indicating it as such. For reference, the broadness of the line on this pen is similar to that of my Pilot 78G with a Japanese medium nib.

As for the markings on the nib, there is some fluff near the tip that looks like many interlocking s, or tildes, or eights, or infinite symbols (that’s not very clear). There is also an eight or an infinite symbol mould-stamped in the feed. For the other mark, IRIDIUM POINT GERMANY, I have no means of verifying its veracity.

The writing itself is nice—on par with my Pilot 78G, if only slightly scratchier—and the pen writes nib-down. One caveat is that the nib does not allow much “angling”. By that I mean that if you rotate the tip ever so slightly sideways—for example, because you rolled the pen between your fingers—the nib will stop writing: the slit in the nib has to be straight on the page at all time. It is something that can get annoying, but that is overall minor. Also, it does not seem to shade as much as my Pilot 78G.

Converter

The pen comes with a piston converter with a slide mechanism. Inside the converter is a small plastic ball, most likely added to agitate the ink, similar to the metal piece in the Con-50 from Pilot. However, unlike the Con-50, where the ink goes up and down almost instantly with the action of the metal agitator, the ink in this converter does not move around quite as easily and some of it seems to stick around the piston independently of the pen’s position. My assumption is that the plastic ball is neither big enough nor heavy enough to produce the kind of movement you might see in the Con-50. Indeed, at times, it seems to have difficulty to even fall out of the ink (J. Herbin Vert Empire). Although I should note that I have not had any ink delivery problem at this point, neither did I experience any leakage. Should it happen, I will update this section.

Body

The body is built much like the cap: a long and smooth wooden barrel connected to a wooden knob by a gold ring washer (that washer has a clip on the cap). Once again, the knob shows noticeable marks of chipping, although on my particular pen, the knob on the body is in much better condition than on the cap. As this is a $5 dollar pen, that kind of issue on finish is not wholly important, but it is worth mentioning. Speaking of finish, all wooden parts—be it on the cap or the body—look clear-coated. That clear coat appears very light, however, so I expect any ink spill, hand sweat or dirt to be permanent, which might be a factor in deciding where and when you would use it. On the upside, should that happen, you would end up with a very unique pen (but better it be ink rather than food grease).

The assembly requires a modicum of caution: the threading on the plastic part is plastic; on the wooden part, metal. Therefore, screwing both parts together feels rough, and doing so carelessly would eventually lead to breakage.

When it comes to size, if I described my Pilot 78G as a #8 size brush, I would describe this pen as a #9 or #10 size brush. But that description alone would be misleading: there is a fairly sizeable gap between the wooden barrel and the plastic portion/handle where your fingers go. To keep with the Pilot 78G comparison, if the barrel on this pen is bigger than on the Pilot, its handle is smaller. Overall, I find it awkward, but workable. Your own experience with pens will dictate how the size of this pen in particular would work for you.

On the question of posted vs. unposted, well, there is no debate: the pen is not really designed to be posted. If you do post it, it will be loose and the pen will look crooked: the cap posts tilted by default and you will have to manually make it follow the line of the pen for it to appear straight. While you can avoid the looseness and the tilt by pushing the cap further down, you will be damaging (scratching) the pen barrel: I would personally not recommend it.

Conclusion

For its $5 price point, there is little that would constitute a deal-breaker unless you consider posting the pen to be essential: the pen writes well and looks good. I am very positive about the fact that the pen is made of real wood—rather than wood grain styled plastic—and that the amount of metal fixtures is minimal. There is nothing perfect about this pen, but everything is within the realm of what you could expect from a price that amounts to small change in the fountain pen world.

Thanks for flying by and feel free to hoot a comment.

~Nicolas a.k.a Nocto