Posts filed under Pilot

Pilot Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo Ink Cartridge Review

Under no circumstances are fountain pen ink cartridges a good value. The cost per milliliter is higher than with bottled ink, and there is the added waste of a bunch of little plastic cartridges laying around.

Yet, I love them.

As with a lot of things ink life, moderation is key. My current ink bottle situation is an exercise in excess. Anarchy is a better term. Adding new ink cartridges to the situation doesn’t help, but I have some fixed ideas about pen and ink combinations, where the use of cartridges grants me the freedom to use certain pens more.

That sounds ridiculous, and it is. Then again, here you are reading a blog about stationery, so let’s at least be ridiculous together.

Would you be surprised if I told you that in three* of my priciest pens I regularly use ink cartridges? Why? Two reasons: 1. I want to use these pens, and this allows me to use them more, and 2. I found ink in cartridge form that I love.

Point one is laziness, let’s be honest. But if that is what gets me using a pen more frequently, then sign me up for a nap! In conjunction with point two, that ease of use combined with a heck of a good pen and ink combo, well, that is really what it is all about.

When I bought my Namiki Yukari Milky Way, I committed to using only one ink with it: Pilot Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo. It’s a great color, and a perfect match for the pen. I use it in bottle form, with the Pilot CON-70 converter, aka the best, worst converter in the world. The CON-70 is Pilot’s largest ink capacity converter, which is good, but I can only fill it and clean it well with a syringe, which is bad/annoying. Would I ever be able to get Tsuki-yo in cartridge form so I am less angsty about inking up what is quite possibly my favorite pen?

Pilot announced the launch of their Iroshizuku ink cartridge lineup in early 2022, and after a few delays in their worldwide release, they have arrived. 12 of the 26 stock colors are available in packs of 6 for a whopping $12.50 per pack. Each cartridge holds 0.8ml, putting the cost at two dollars and sixty cents per milliliter. Compare that to the 50 ml Iroshizuku ink bottles, which track at right around fifty cents per milliliter, and you realize how ridiculous they are.

But I love them. One six-pack at a time, because they make me want to use my pen more.

Like I said, there is no narrative that makes these a good value. Except one. How many milliliters of unused ink is sitting in a bottle on your shelf? Is it better to spend $25 and use 25% of it, or spend $12.50 and use 100% of it? There are a lot of ifs, ands, or buts in that statement, but we all want to use our stuff more. Smaller and less cost-effective may work in certain situations, as silly as that sounds.

Again, moderation is key here. I bought Tsuki-yo for a specific use case. I will not be adding another five boxes of Iroshizuku ink cartridges to the collection.

As poor as the price for these cartridges is, the ink itself is fantastic. I wouldn’t have sprung for them if it wasn’t. Tsuki-yo translates to “Moonlight Night” and is a beautiful dark blue with a hint of teal. On the right paper, there is a touch of red sheen to be found around the edges. It matches the Raden planets in the Milky Way wonderfully.

Fountain pen ink cartridges will always cost more than their bulk bottle brethren. They are great for travel, portability, and ease of use. The trade off is the price, and, on occasion, that’s a trade I’m willing to make.

(*The other two pen/cartridge combos I use are the Nakaya Portable Kuro-tamenuri with Platinum Mt. Fuji Blue Black, and the Nakaya Piccolo Negoro Orange with Platinum Carbon Black.)

(I purchased these cartridges from Yoseka Stationery for review purposes at full retail price.)

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Posted on January 9, 2023 by Brad Dowdy and filed under Pilot, Iroshizuku, Ink Reviews.

don’t try this at home: vintage pilot vanishing point

(This is guest post by Dennis Moore from a fleeting ripple. No capital letters were harmed in the writing of this post.)

After days of sunny weather, last night’s storm finally brought in the cold. The yellow leaves are wet on the streets, rotting in gutters. People on the streets are finally pulling out their thick coats, tall boots and fuzzy gloves. The glass covers of the bus stop seem to give some protection from the drizzle and the relentless wind. The bus itself looks almost like a ship cutting through the waves. It’s just the water in the potholes splashing taller than the bus itself. It speeds towards you, a freight train on the wet road. It’ll pass you in a moment. The roar of the motor, the roar of the tires, the splash of the water. Gone in a second. No, it slows down, comes to a halt in front of the stop. When the doors open, water drips down inside the bus, every step leaving muddy marks behind.

By nature, I am a curious person. Studying design has only spurred that curiosity forward. So when I learned about the Pilot Vanishing Point, I was obsessed. Fancy working mechanism. A simple problem -ink tends to evaporate on the nib- and an elegant solution -trapdoor. Not the crude, obvious solution of a cap. Ingenious.

Push a button. Out. Ready to write.

Push the button again. Closed off. Sealed.

My problem with the modern Vanishing Point was the weight, the clip just sat comfortably between my fingers. I cannot use a heavy pen for very long. My boyfriend’s problem was that the clip was in the way. So we did what any sane person would do: ordered a vintage one.

The vintage Pilot Vanishing Point is a whole other story. It’s a pen with a presence. Tiniest bit of retro-futurism (I guess it wasn’t “retro” at the time) and mid-century elegance. It is an unassuming plastic, with the cap at the back of the push button, it resembles a ballpoint a little too much. The cone of the pen tapers down significantly, kind of reminding me the old USSR space posters. Or I just spent too much time looking at old propaganda posters lately.

It’s a lightweight pen that fits into your hand a lot more intuitively than the modern version. The further back clip gives some extra place for your fingers, but in return, when you’re clipping it to pen cases, a significant amount of the unprotected tip pokes out. One of my pen cases doesn’t even close. The nib on mine is still gold, even though it is much harder than the Pilot nibs I’m used to. Perfectly smooth, a little on the drier side. It makes me curious about how vintage Pilot nibs are, because it is such a wildly different writing experience from modern Pilot pens.

The unfortunate part about these old Pilot pen is that it fills up with old-style cartridges. Modern Pilot cartridges will not fit into it. Of course we decided to engineer a solution for it. Because the single old cartridge it came with will wear out. Well, there is a Platinum adapter that lets you use regular international cartridges on Platinum pens It’s made of soft, thin plastic. It gets even softer and more malleable once you run it under warm water. Not too warm though, you still want to be able to hold the plastic. Then, it fits over the cartridge fitting in the vintage Vanishing Point. Awesome, right? Now you can use your pen with your endless supply of Kaweco Royal Blue short cartridges that you always throw into the darkest corner of a drawer.

Please don’t try this at home.

I refuse any responsibility for this.

I used the pen for a few days. I realised it was drying out. The line would get painfully dry, skip, then somehow start running regularly again. It bummed both of us out, it was a beautiful pen that we really looked forward to enjoying.

Then the pen started spluttering ink out. A tiny tiny drop or two onto the page every time you push the button to open the “cap.”

This time I decided to take a closer look. I took everything apart, armed myself with cotton swabs and a bowl of water to investigate what went wrong.

Spoiler: it was not the trapdoor mechanism.

The Platinum adapter had cracked. It wasn’t holding the ink cartridge to the pen’s fitting place properly. That’s why it was “drying out.” It needs ink in the first place to dry out, and this nib was not getting any! So... I raised the white flag, took out the adapter, put it in the bin and filled up the tiny little old Pilot cartridge it came with. This is a battle I cannot win.

Now, the pen is heavenly. All the beauty and comfort of the barrel, topped up by the smoothness of the nib. I sometimes underestimate how much a nib/flow problem can hinder the enjoyment of a pen because it always feels like the actual fit of the pen to my hand is more important. Lesson learned.

If you have any old Pilot cartridges laying around, hold onto them. They will become a sought after commodity when our cartridges give out on us. All jokes aside, I am extremely pleased with this pen. I got burned in the near past a couple of times by buying second-hand pens, even from places I trust to inspect the pen. Even if I inspected the pen. Human errors happen. Some of my faith is restored in buying used pens, but I doubt I’ll get them as easily from now on.

Thank you for reading!

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Posted on December 12, 2022 by Brad Dowdy and filed under Vanishing Point, Pilot, Vintage.

Pilot Otobaco Pen Case Review

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)

The Pilot Otobaco is a pen box that transforms into a desk stand. A very cool idea, if a puzzling execution. It's made of hard plastic with a magnetic closure, and the inside is comprised of a number of compartments that unfold to serve various stationery related purposes. The material is sturdy but lightweight. If you were a kid in the 80s-90s, this is the same plastic your toys were made of. This is the 90’s Barbie fold-out camper of pen cases.

When the case is opened, the front flap folds down to become a pen tray, one part smooth, with part of it ridged to keep pens from rolling. Behind the ridged tray is a rubber strip designed to work as a stand for your phone or papers. Behind the stand strip is a deeper compartment with a hinged cup that folds up to serve as a pen cup.

There's a lot going on, and it's definitely fun, but not entirely functional. When closed, it only holds 5-6 pens total because so much of the interior space is taken up by its mechanics. While you can use the front edge of the tray, or the deeper back compartment to hold things when the case if fully opened, all of those things will have to come out before you can close the case back up, because the pens fold into those spaces when it closes. Overall, it makes a better desk stand than a case, and might be handy as a permanently open wee stand on a wee desk. As a case for on-the-go, it doesn't quite work for me. It's large and inflexible and doesn't hold enough stuff.

I could see this being useful for a student, though. If you don't need a lot of gear, and will be moving between multiple small desks throughout your day.

Whatever you're carrying in this case will need to be fairly small, also. It is only 16.5 cm long internally, so it won't hold most wood pencils or longer pens. That's what keeps me from recommending this for wandering artists. Bulky pens or highlighters would take up most of the interior. There isn't space for things like washi or erasers or other accessories.

As a mini-mobile desk stand, I think it does serve its purpose, but the trick is, what is the audience for this purpose? I'm not sure. It's also a bit pricey at $27. That's $10 more than the SMAND, the now legendary case-tray-stand that serves a similar purpose and is close in size, but holds at least a dozen pens.

So while I don't enthusiastically recommend this, it does make a useful small desk organizer, and no doubt it will find its audience who will love it dearly.

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

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