Leonardo Officina Italiana - Momento Zero

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I scored one of these and can confirm a few things mentioned in the various fora and an additional observation or two:

1. The pen needed to be washed with warm dish-soapy water. I gently washed the whole thing and the nib unit and then rinsed it very thoroughly. It had some manufacturing residue on it. Otherwise the fit and finish were very good. Just some sticky hands on assembly or grinding dust or some such.

The temptation is to ink it right out of the box. I say give it a bath first.

2. My converter doesn't rattle. yay! Lots of complaints about this and rattle driven me crazy so happy to report mine is silent. I have heard that just changing to a regular Schmidt converter or a little tape does the trick. Mine was good to go.

3. The nib had serious baby's bottom. The pen hard started like crazy but >3 minutes working on 8,000 grit micromesh solved that problem entirely. Just be sure not to polish in such a way as to *increase* the baby's booty but to flatten it out. See: various tutorials on the net.

4. The acrylic is gorgeous.

5. Pen looks awkward to hold, with that odd section but is strangely quite comfortable. However the metal converter makes it a tad back heavy. Changing to a standard Schimdt or what have you would solve that but I am okay with it as it is for now. Weirdly delighted by the unnecessarily luxurious screw in converter. hah.

6. The nib (once adjusted) is kind of mind-blowing. It has a soft, wet feel that I associate with a lot of 18k nibs. My theory is that the nib is tuned wet and is a bit thinner and the surface is very highly polished (shines like a mirror) and this leads to a surprisingly luxurious feel. I also think to add to this feel they are horribly over polishing these nib tips at the factory so get out your micromesh for a minute or two and I think you end up with a great result. This is one of the very nicest steel nibs I have now. No hard starts even on that chalky glassy CF/Rhodia stuff. But it did need a little love out of the box.

7. This pen is what I thought the Delta THE JOURNAL was going to be. They got it right this time (these pens looks almost the same).

I got the deep blue. Pleased as punch. Sans VAT, this pen is a surprisingly good value for an Italian pen.

Anyone else have one? I got mine from fontoplumo. They were excellent. A bit of a wait to get the color/nib I wanted but they we pleasant to deal with.