P for Preppy; P for Petit

... Or P for Platinum; P for Pilot.

They say that a newbie's collection is forever incomplete without a Platinum Preppy or a Pilot Petit. I drooled over them because they're really colorful pens. But though I want them so badly, I could not have any because they're not available here.

Pens uncapped. 0.3/Fine Platinum Preppy Blue Black. (Preppy pens are very unique - their nibs are colored as their ink colors!) Fine Pilot Petit with purple ink. (Petit pens, on the hand, have barrel and cap color accents according to their inks!)

When I started my collection, I got a couple of inexpensive plastic pens, including the colorful Schneider Zippis and M&G Joy Box. But the talk about ED'd Preppies and colorful Petits continued to haunt me.

Nibs up close.

Sometime in early September, I had a conversation with a pen seller from Taiwan, and after exchanging a series of email messages, two pens were sent on their way to me. Hurray!

Writing samples of the two pens. Better views below.

I got the pens in a couple of days and I was very, very surprised at the Preppy. It wrote very, very smoothly and despite bearing a fine nib, wrote as comfortably as my medium-nibbed pens. But the biggest and most awesome surprise with the Preppy is that, of all the pens I've tried on my Moleskine notebook, this one has the least bleed through! It actually doesn't have a remarkable bleed through, and the writing on the paper's backside is still visible and comfortable to read.

Writing sample of the Platinum Preppy, blue black ink, fine nib.

The Petit, though did not fare as well as the Preppy did. I was very excited about it because it is purple and has purple ink, but not only did it show excessive bleed through in my Moleskine and on most papers, it had bad feathering issues, too. A page written with it is somewhat difficult to read, and writing on backside is out of the question. Both sides written with it would be difficult to read. Another feature of this pen that I am uncomfortable with is its length. I am not used to posting my pens as I write, but it becomes necessary to post this one to comfortably write. Despite all these, I still love my Petit. It's a cool pen to carry around, not to mention that it's got purple ink. I'm dying to get my hands on any purple ink, and if this is the closest I can get to purple, then so be it. *Wink.*

Sample sample of Pilot Petit, purple ink, fine nib.

There. Two pens. Great members of my newbie stash. Great pieces to lend to my nieces when they like to tinker with my pens. :) 

Read More

B is for Bold

And we're now back to regular programming... Err, pens. Yes, we're back to the topic of pens.

As a newbie FP collector, I read (and heard) a lot about Pilot 78Gs as being excellent starter pens. I thought the pens looked simple and unpretentious but I liked that because it made them look classy and neat.

During my first pen meet, I saw my fellow Pinoy fountain pen collectors getting their 78Gs from Sir Butch Dalisay who brought a couple of the pens for them from his Shanghai trip (I got a black Hero 616 from that giveaway, though). And then I read about 78Gs from the FPN forums and good reviews from a lot of pen and paper blogs, but the best are from my good friend Tom and Paul David Krishnan's Phase Ignition.

My Pilot 78G B rests on the rim of my Cusco, Peru shotglass. Another opportunity to mix the stuff I love to hoard: pens and shotglasses. :)

After months of waiting, I made it to Cosmos Bazaar in Binondo, a store recommended by Pidoy Velez, another Pinoy FP collector, and found a couple of 78Gs with medium and fine nibs among a vast selection of other Pilot pens. Typical hoarder that I am, I bought all available colors with medium nibs: black, teal, green. A medium maroon was not in stock so I wasn't able to complete the four-color set, but that's okay. I inked the black pen as soon as I got home, and I was disappointed that despite being a medium, I was not satisfied with how it wrote. I realized that in nib language, Japanese medium becomes a Western fine (or even extra fine). I don't have anything against that, a lot of FP users prefer fine or extra fine nibs, but I am a medium nib user. I always find my writing to be uncomfortably ugly when I use thin nibs. I want wide strokes using broad, bold and wet nibs.

I knew Pilot 78Gs are also available with broad/bold (B) and double broad/bold (BB) nib, yet I couldn't possibly think of a way of getting one. But I had to get one. It's amazing that while chatting with Tom one time, I asked him if he happened to have a 78G with a B nib. And he has! :) Tom kindly sent the pen to me right away. Hurray! Applause!

The black broad/bold 78G did not look any different from the black medium pen I inked earlier, except for its nib. The pen is made of plastic, yes, but still looked classy to me. I don't mind the gold-plated metal clip and the two gold bands near the cap rim. Who cares? I got a classy pen that writes smoothly and that's all that's important, I guess.

The Pilot 78G B. Above: Barrel with the Pilot sticker on, and section with the converter. Below: the pen's cap and barrel.

The name Pilot is imprinted downwards on the clip, and Japan is printed on the back side of the cap, breaking the wider of the two gold bands. The nib is almost a stub, and looking at it through a 10x loupe shows its tines properly aligned. This pen, like the ones before it, has an aerometric filling system, but further reading says it can also be inked using international cartridges. The pen is very light owing to its plastic body, and that makes it easy to hold when writing. Cleaning it is a breeze because the nib assembly can be removed from the section with a slight but firm tug. (Thanks to John Raymond Lim and Mona Caccam for the useful information.)

The section when I fully diassembled it. The pen part on top is the converter. Parts below, from left: nib, feed, and section barell.

Oh, what more can I say about this great pen? I'm happy to have it now that I'm learning to write italic and script. Below is a writing sample using the broad/bold/stub 78G inked with Lamy Black.

And again, as my small token of gratitude for the help extended to me so I can get and enjoy this pen, here's to you, Tom! :)

Read More