Here's one that I have been meaning to review for a few months now. I picked this up last fall from Classic Fountain Pens (Nibs.com), and had a bit of an adventure along the way, which I will get to.
First Impressions: 10/10. The long awaited parcel - I ordered this pen before they were actually available, so had a bit of a wait on my hands. This, as many of you will already know, only increases the anticipation. The pen comes in a lovely softwood box, one that all Nakaya fans will be familiar with. The box is marked in Kanji with 'Nakaya Fountain Pen company' and 'Luxury Fountain Pen' (feel free to correct my rough translation). The pen came inside a cool little protective sleeve, and a small box of cartridges were included. Opening the sleeve to pull out the pen was like magic - the beautiful translucent brown over the green undercoat has such a gorgeous 'organic' look to it. My wife's first comment was that it 'looked like a teapot' - and indeed, the urushi does have a similar look to the glaze of pottery. Anyhow, love at first sight. The urushi finish is absolutely beautiful.
Size and weight: 10/10. No marks off here. I am not as big a fan of longer pens, of which this is one - but I can't hold that against the Naka-Ai, as I knew this when I bought it. Despite my bias, I really like this pen's dimensions. Unposted, it is a wonderful size to write with, and sits very comfortably in the hand. Makes you want to keep finding excuses to pick it up. I won't comment on 'posted', because I don't with this pen, and it doesn't post very effectively anyway.
Construction Quality: 7/10 While the threading is very good, and the nib section excellent in construction quality, one thing I did notice that bothers me, and that seems to come up not uncommonly with these pens, is that that the cap finial doesn't quite match the diameter of the cap where they meet. There is a slight step. I don't mean that the finial is off-centre, and that adjusting it would fix the problem - I mean that they are two different diameters. OK, the step is small, but this is a pen worth over $600 (after customs), and I would really expect more attention to this kind of detail.
Filling system: 10/10. The filling system is cart/converter, which is my personal fave. Even if it weren't my fave, I wouldn't take marks off for this, as I knew it was cart/converter when I bought it.
The nib: initially 2/10, now 9/10. Here is where the adventure began. I filled the nib with my usual write-test ink, Pelikan Royal Blue, and found that it just wouldn't run to the tipping. The pen would not write. So, no biggie - I gave it a gentle soapy rinse, checked the tines (to find a huge gap at the tipping), adjusted the tines slightly to bring them closer together. No joy. The ink would run to end of the feed, and stop cold. If I coaxed it by running my finger along the slit, I could get the ink to the tip, and write a short line, and then the ink would pull back. After working with this nib for some time, I finally contacted Classic Fountain Pens, and got some pretty excellent tips from John Mottishaw (I have to say, customer support was full-out excellent). But even after trying these tips, I had to admit defeat. I mean, I can get a nib to work, as a rule. But this was the first and only nib (out of many hundreds) that has ever completely defeated me. Fortunately, the good folks at CFP were very accommodating, and upon hearing of my utter failure with this nib, they offered to replace the feed. Mr Mottishaw installed one of the newer feeds that Nakaya is using, one that flows better. And, BOOM - with that new feed, the pen was transformed into an excellent writer. The nib is a broad nib, and writes a nice, smooth broad line, as it should.
Edit: Adding a requested writing sample. Darn, it was such a chore to ink up my Naka-Ai...
Price: 8/10. The pen cost $550, but was over $600 after customs. Given the step at the finial and the nib issues, I would have expected better for this price. Still, the urushi work on the pen is excellent.
Overall: 9/10. Yes, there were some small irksome things. The nib was a pain, but I suspect that was a freak problem, unlike to show up in another pen. And, the customer service in working on this and ultimately replacing it, was truly excellent. All in all, I know this will not be my last Nakaya (and I definitely will be back to CFP at Nibs.com for more awesome pens).
Thanks for reading this (or just looking at the pics, whatever )
Cheers,
Ken
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