Pilot Kakuno Transparent Green Fountain Pen Review

(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)

The Pilot Kakuno was introduced several years ago at this point, and I'm embarrassed that it took me this long to try one out for myself. With a collection of Pilot Metropolitans and Platinum Preppys, I just didn't see a reason to add another low end fountain pen to an already unwieldy collection. But in the same way that I keep adding Kaweco Sports and Lamy Safaris to my collection, the Pilot Kakuno just has a unique and amazing feel all its own. This Transparent Green Pilot Kakuno has really impressed me so far.

The Kakuno is a fairly small and lightweight pen, but don't let it fool you. This pen is also sturdy and ready for every day shenanigans. The transparent plastic is vibrant and resistant to fingerprints. While this pen may cost three times more than a Platinum Preppy, it also feels at least three times more durable. The cap is held to the pen with a snap fit mechanism that feels nice to use and also does a great job at keeping the cap in place. The cap can easily post on the back of the pen, and due to the light weight, it doesn't really change the balance of the pen when posted. The cap also doesn't have a clip, but it does have a couple of nubs that keep the pen from rolling away.

Compared to the Metropolitan, the Kakuno is a little thicker overall since it doesn't taper like the Metropolitan. The grip section is a good diameter for my fingers and I feel like the grip is incredibly comfortable for my low three-finger grip. The grip section has a triangular shape similar to a Lamy Safari, but it's not as noticeable as the Lamy version. For my grip, it fits my fingers well and feels secure.

The nib of the Kakuno is pretty much the same nib that you'll find in the Metropolitan or even the Prera. And that's a great thing — the fact that Pilot include this excellent steel nib in their entry level fountain pen is fantastic. The only real difference with the Kakuno nib is the branding — it has a happy smiley face on the nib along with the size designation. Out of the box, my copy worked perfectly. It's smooth, responsive, and the lines are super crisp. If there's one thing I love about Pilot, it's how consistent they are when it comes to nib performance. To this day, I've never had an issue with a Pilot nib needing any kind of tweaking or adjustments out of the box — they just write as intended.

The Kakuno comes with a single black ink cartridge. This is par for the course, but I wish Pilot included a more exciting ink cartridge color to match the pretty transparent blue-green pen body. You can use a Pilot cartridge converter (like the CON-40 or CON-70) with this pen, which makes it easy to use whatever ink you'd like to use, but I wish it came with a blue ink cartridge.

It's a shame I waited all these years before trying the Kakuno. It's really a world-class fountain pen, and the fact that you can pick one up for less than $13 is incredible. This makes for a great gift, a great foray into the fountain pen world, or a great treat for yourself when you want to throw a new reliable pen into the mix. You can pick from EF, F, and M nibs, and several fun colors. Don't be like me — try one out sooner than later!

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

---

Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!

Kaweco Premium Steel Fountain Pen Nib Review

When the Kaweco Premium Steel Fountain Pen Nib launched last year, my initial reaction was “the what now?” What is this? What is Kaweco saying about their current offerings? Is it worth the premium price for the premium nib? Who is this for? Is it any good? After spending a few months with this nib I am ready to tackle these questions.

I want to start with performance and quality first. Is the Kaweco Premium nib any good? I ordered the steel nib in extra fine, and it has been nothing but great right out of the box. The line is clean and sharp, while retaining its smoothness. I’ve used it exclusively in my Kaweco Steel Sport (which apparently I love so much I’ve reviewed it twice,) and I’ll readily admit it is better than the stock steel extra fine nib that it ships with. It should be.

So, what do you do with this information? For most Kaweco users, nothing. I’m guessing that the $25 Classic Sport-and related options-is far and away Kaweco’s best selling pen. It is good quality for a good price, and is a good choice for first time fountain pen buyers.

And the crowd chants “If you get a good nib!”

Stock nib quality control has been a long-time Kaweco issue, with the main culprit being the phenomenon pen users refer to as Baby’s Bottom. Jeff covered this issue, and how to fix it, because of the frustration his AL Sport nib was giving him. Unfortunately, his situation is not unique.

Kaweco Premium Steel EF, top, vs. Standard Steel.

With this being a recurring theme for the popular German pen maker, you would think they would address the issue directly. Maybe they have, as I hear fewer stories of bad out-of-the-box experiences, but that’s anecdotally speaking. There is still a dice-roll feel to ordering a Kaweco pocket pen of any style.

Kaweco Premium Steel EF, top lines, vs. Standard Steel writing comparison. The Premium nib is clearly wetter and smoother, which led to a nicer line than the drier stock EF nib.

What if I told you that you could guarantee a better writing experience on your $25 fountain pen by adding on a $45 nib? For starters, I’d feel like I’m being played for a fool. By introducing their Premium Nib lineup, Kaweco is telling me that their stock nibs aren’t good enough. That’s a marketing problem, but admittedly, only to obsessives like myself. A large majority of first-time Kaweco Sport buyers will have no idea this product exists. I just cross my fingers that they get a good nib, and their first foray into fountain pens isn’t ruined by a bad one.

Marketing aside, Kaweco did create a premium product that the aforementioned obsessives like myself will enjoy. Once. That is what the Premium Nib is to me. What exactly makes this nib premium? According to Kaweco, the tipping is larger, and each nib is hand-finished, giving these nibs a smoother, more consistent writing experience. Based on my experience, I concur with all of that. I’m glad to have this nib, and it will be in heavy use, likely over any other non-modified Kaweco nib I own.

If you have several Kaweco fountain pens that fit the smaller #5 nib, it would be worth buying a Premium nib to use interchangeably with your favorite pen barrels. I don’t think it would be worth it to change out all of your Kaweco steel nibs to Premium Steel nibs. Even though they are so easy to swap out, it doesn’t make financial sense.

Kaweco has also determined that it doesn’t make financial sense for them to improve their stock steel nibs, so this is the price you have to pay for better quality control.

For a full writing breakdown, check out this wonderfully thorough Yoseka Stationery comparison post.

(Vanness Pens provided this product at a discount to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

---

Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!

BlueDew Flex Fountain Pen - Too Good to be True?

(Kimberly (she/her) took the express train down the fountain pen/stationery rabbit hole and doesn't want to be rescued. She can be found on Instagram @allthehobbies because there really are many, many hobbies!.)

Hang around the fountain pen hobby long enough and inevitably someone will ask about finding an inexpensive flex fountain pen option. And the answers will usually range from “it doesn’t exist”, or “nothing beats vintage flex” (with no explanation as to which vintage pens/nibs have flex), or “you can try XYZ brand but it’s not very flexy” or “cram a Zebra or Nikko G nib into a cheap pen until it rusts and you throw it out the window”. Any of these sound familiar? As someone who kinda sorta knows how to use flex (taking intro to Spencerian and Copperplate courses means I’m an expert, right? I kid, I kid.), it can be a frustrating experience trying to find something that actually is flexy and not just bouncy at best.

Before I go any further though, here’s a quick explanation of “what is flex” (which is from my article on Stylosuite Flex Nibs - Flex is what you get when applying pressure to the tines of the nib. The separation gives a wider line than what you’d normally get when unflexed. Most nibs are not meant to be flexed but they may vary in how much “bounce” you might get when applying a little bit of pressure. Releasing that pressure allows the tines to go back together and write as normal. Apply too much pressure and your tines may never fully go back to their original position and your nib is now “sprung”. As they say, every nib is a flex nib … once. So, don’t ever press your luck too far with any nib, flex, dip or otherwise.

Dip nibs require the user to dip the nib into ink before writing a few letters/words before dipping it again. Some of the drawbacks include the tedium of constant dipping, potential messiness if you knock your bottle, or inconsistent ink flow in your writing if you dip too much/too little. Some of the vintage fountain pens have varying degrees of flexibility in their nibs (note that not all vintage pens have flex nibs) but it does require a bit of knowledge as to which makers and nibs were flexible. Modern fountain pens have had some success with bouncier/softer nibs which can give some line variation. An example is the 14kt gold Pilot FA nibbed pens like the 742/912 and 743/823 (size 10 being a bit softer/flexier than size 15), or the Pilot Falcon, which are pretty good options but they aren’t inexpensive (~$150 - $300). There are also steel nibs that are a cheaper option but usually don’t have very much flex - usually somewhere between slightly bouncy and semi-flex. This is where BlueDew comes in. BlueDew Pens is a Singaporean company founded with the goal of creating an affordable, portable option for folks who wanted to work on their calligraphy without the hassle of dip nibs or the mystery of vintage. Let’s see if it measures up.

The BlueDew Flex fountain pen ships in a padded envelope with a single pen case inside. I love that there are no additional boxes or packaging that I have to deal with. The case has a magnetic flap and the bottom of the case is nicely padded so you don’t have to clip the pen to the case. I like that the branding is subtle. The textured case has since been discontinued and replaced with a smooth material instead.

The BlueDew Flex fountain pen comes equipped with a flex nib unit already installed and a converter. The BlueDew converter is not the usual standard international converter that comes with many pens, but something different. It looks similar to the converter found on old Nemosine pens but the latter will work with the usual Jowo/Bock nib units as well as with the BlueDew nib unit, but the BlueDew converter does not work with other nib units. You can also use a standard international converter with the BlueDew nib unit. I was also able to partially install the nib unit into Bock-threaded pens but not Jowo. I confirmed this on their website, where it says “the threads should match Bock pens but the length might not match.” The nib and feed are friction-fit so you can also pull them to put into another housing if the BlueDew housing doesn’t fit your Bock-threaded pen. Be careful not to lose the little o-ring on the edge of the nib unit and also make sure that the cap has enough clearance because the BlueDew nib is a bit longer than a Bock 6 nib.

The converter is etched with “BlueDew Pens” so you don’t mix it up with your other converters.

Lining up the nib units at the collar (the top of the housing), you can see that the BlueDew nib on the right is just a wee bit longer than the Bock 6 - take note of that if you put the nib into another pen.

I was partially successful in putting the nib unit into a Namisu Ixion, but clearly it doesn’t fit all the way in there.

The nib itself is really where it’s at. It looks very much like a dip nib, so much so that I looked through the dip nib section of John Neal Books (which is an excellent calligraphy resource), and found something that was very similar. The Leonardt Principal EF nib has the same perpendicular “cuts” across the tines, the same B-shaped breather hole shape and similar cut on the sides of the nib. I don’t know if the BlueDew nibs were custom-made by the same maker or if they were used as a template for their nibs. Unfortunately, I don’t have any Leonardt nibs to compare the writing experience.

The Leonardt nib on the left (PC:John Neal Books) and the BlueDew flex nib on the right.

Speaking of writing experience, how does it write? For my initial inking, I used Waterman inks. Since I had two of them to play with, I used Waterman Inspired Blue in the Ancient Ice pen and Waterman Harmonious Green in the Emerald. Like most dip nibs, the BlueDew nib does not have any tipping, so you can get very fine lines with little pressure. This also means that the nib is pretty sharp so it can be easy to scratch the paper if you write too hard, resulting in more feathering because the ink travels through the fibers. Both of the pens wrote beautifully with the Waterman inks and didn’t have any problems with hard starts or railroading. When I used a drier ink like Robert Oster Avocado, I did get some hard starts and railroading, so be sure to use an ink with at least average flow, though you don’t need to use a super wet or lubricated ink to get good results. You do need to write somewhat slowly if you are going to use it like a flex pen, but it kept up nicely with regular speed cursive and printing.

Writing sample on Clairefontaine Triomphe 90gsm paper.

Up close, you can see the feathering.

This time on Rhodia with light pressure, medium pressure, regular cursive, print and all caps.

Generally pretty fountain pen-friendly, but this Strathmore paper couldn’t hold up to all that ink.

Over the course of four months, I reinked the Emerald pen three times and used it about 20 times to do a lot of flex writing. Pro tip: using a flex nib can help you use up ink quickly! I left the pen unused for 1-3 weeks at a time and didn’t have any problems with it starting right up. I also didn’t notice any degradation of the nib quality or ability to bounce back from being flexed. I asked several friends who use dip nibs how long it took for them to replace the nibs due to corrosion or getting worn down and they said anywhere from 1-4 weeks depending on usage. Considering I had the Emerald inked for about four months, I would say this is a huge improvement over using dip nibs!

Since inking up these pens, I traveled quite a bit and the Emerald one had leaked inside the barrel. Thankfully, it did not leak into the cap or onto the nib. On a few occasions, the pen didn’t write after being uncapped so I unscrewed the barrel to check the ink levels when I discovered there were drops of ink all over the converter and in the barrel. I did not have this problem with the Ancient Ice pen, which was inked up for two months and was taken on many of the same trips. I will probably try a different converter in the Emerald next time I ink it up.

The BlueDew Flex fountain pens sell for $88 USD which I think is a good price for an acrylic pen with flex nib unit and converter. Replacement nib units are available for $35 for a pair (nib units are not sold individually). The flex nib unit also fits in the BlueDew Writer fountain pen. Shipping from Singapore was $15 to the US.

Pro:

• Flex fountain pen that performs well and is affordable
• Pen case is a nice touch
• Replaceable flex nib units that have more longevity than usual dip nib
• Pen body has a nice feel - did not feel like a cheap pen
• Minimalist packaging (a pro for me)

Neutral:

• The non-standard converter might be difficult to find, as they are not sold on BlueDew’s website.

Not sure:

• Not sure if my leaky barrel experience is common or due to a faulty converter.
• The Leonardt dip nib costs $2.50 each versus $17.50 each for the BlueDew. However, that includes the feed and housing and you are likely to get several times more use from the BlueDew, so it might be closer in price than at first glance.

In summary, the BlueDew Flex is a really good flex nib fountain pen. You get the dip nib writing experience with none of the hassle of dipping and the portability of a regular fountain pen.

(Disclaimer: Thank you to BlueDew for providing both pens for review. Prior to receiving these, I had already bought the Emerald pen and two replacement nib units.)