Right back to the whole point of this blog: an addiction to flex!

The humble India-based FPR offers a cheap pens to rival Noodler’s. FPR also has Pen of the Week deals where a pen in question is heavily discounted. I found out later that the Indus sells for as low as $15 when that happens, and bought myself a spare; the first one I bought cost me $22. Both arrived in London a week after I placed my orders. That’s pretty fast: East Asian sellers could take a leaf out of their book!

And it actually is really fun to clean, being very easy to take apart. However…

Uh oh.

The first thing people say when I hand them the pen is Ooooh, followed by What’s that smell? Undeniably, the FPR Indus has a slight stench of uncured resin about it. I’ve been told the Noodler’s pens smell similar, though I have never owned one. And being cheap resin, it stains way too easily; the yellow bits were coloured by Private Reserve Black Cherry.

That said, if you can look past these obvious cost-saving faults, it is a pretty good starter pen for flex writing. It looks like a Pelikan, has an easily-replaceable flex nib in a standard size (#5/5.5), and you can swap the nib out for normal point sizes if you wish (EF, F, M, B). They also come in stub sizes.

You get what you pay for, obviously, but then again, this nib is a surprise package in itself.

By no means is this anywhere close to vintage flex. But when used with the right amount of force — in this case, quite a bit — it’s possible to get some very nice line variation. It is also surprisingly smooth, with just the right amount of bite to let you know how much you’re flexing and where you are on the paper. But enough talk: let the results speak for themselves!

And to cap it all off, here is a video of it hard at work: