anyone want to share their experiences with the Sailor Junior Skeleton?

[firstpancake]

I'm thinking about getting one, and would like to know what other owners think of it.

Any FPG'ers have one of these pretties?

[inBOIL]

Well, i don't have one (sorry to bump the thread and get your hopes up), but i DID just order one. Maybe in a few weeks i'll have something good to say about it. (Or perhaps something bad? We'll see.)

Not expecting a whole lot, really, from an $18 pen [i don't know what actual retail is on the thing], but y'never know. i wasn't expecting much from my Lamys, either--and my Al-Star is currently sleeping in a case next to my Pro Gear and my Aurora 88, so ... hey. Sometimes cheaper impulse buys actually work out.

[CapeClear]

InBOIL did you buy from Engeika? My coworker gonna order a 1911 through him and I am tempted to ask him to get the Junior Skeleton for me.

[john]

I have a Sailor 1911 profit which bought from Engeika. He's a great seller. But I found that the Sailor junior skeleton which is looking alike the Platinum preppy. From my point of view ,I won't buy it.

[inBOIL]

Yeah, i bought it from Engeika. Was ordering-up a Platinum 3776 Century Bourgogne (finally!) and decided to add the Sailor, since the shipping was free on the second item, anyway. (And he has the Platinum on for $84 right now, so ... why not? :P) (Three cheers for fountain pen gluttony!) Anyway ... i've been wanting to test out the lower-range Sailors without spending too much, and since he stopped stocking those Lecoule pens, there weren't really many other options. (The Neo didn't really look appealing.)

Hey, it's still a Sailor. So (if nothing else): it's cool! (Much cooler, in my opinion, than a set of diamond-studded Montblanc-branded nose-hair-clippers. And ... it's only $18. Doubt i'll be too disappointed.)

[firstpancake]

Hey, it's still a Sailor. So (if nothing else): it's cool! (Much cooler, in my opinion, than a set of diamond-studded Montblanc-branded nose-hair-clippers. And ... it's only $18. Doubt i'll be too disappointed.)

That's what I was thinking! Please let us know how the skeleton turns out!

[reprieve]

My experience with Sailor has been excellent--I have a 1911 zoom nib, a Professional Gear fine nib, a King of Pen king eagle nib, and a Nagahara Moonlit Forest cross music emperor nib. All of them have written perfectly out of the box; the fit and finish is perfect; I've experienced no issues whatsoever. I had a 1911 with a music nib, but I sold it, and I regret it now. I will eventually replace it. The fine nib on my Pro Gear is more of an XF or even XXF, but it writes very smoothly and has good ink flow. I haven't had good luck with many modern pens out of the box, but Sailor and Delta are the two big exceptions for me.

[plistumi]

I have two Sailors, a 1911 and a Professional Gear. Both black pens that allow me to be a member of the black pen club (yay!). They are both XF and very nice writers. They have been very good purchases.

[inBOIL]

The weekend messed things up a bit (been "in transit" since Friday--but it's probably just sitting in a room downtown waiting to be scanned) so i'm hoping tomorrow bright and early i'll get a ding-dong! at the door as i'm making my coffee. Certainly i'll find a word or two to add here once i've tested it a bit.

My only real concern is which one to play with first? Never bought two modern pens at once before. Seems a bit weird to me now, actually. (Well, whatever.)

As an aside (sorta'): i bought a Prismacolor .005mm marker the other day [yeah, yeah, yeah], and my EF Sapporo nib is finer than that thing is. For whatever reason, that kind of blew my mind. :P (My F-nibbed Pro Gear is about the same width as my Lamy EF.)

[inBOIL]

Okay, so i've had the pen just over a week now. My most basic answer: it writes just like a Sailor. More than i thot it would, actually. (Perhaps because i just assumed the cheaper nibs were ground by meth-addicted badgers in an off-shore sweatshop?) It's got some character. Only issue is that it's a bit touchy about inks--and was skipping a bit (and drying up) with DA Petrol. However, it's been going strong for quite a bit with Waterman Purple ... so it might've just been oil and gunk, or whatever that weird sparkly stuff in the converter was? (Beats me.) Probably a few more flushes won't hurt.

Other things of note: the molding marks on the section were really not polished at all (you could likely shave with them), and posting the cap isn't super-snug unless you really push it on there. (Fortunately, the pen's longer than my Pro Gear, so posting the cap's somewhat optional. At least for me.)

What else?... The clear feed's pretty cool. (Especially with a lighter ink.) Oh, and the section from my Sapporo fits right in! (Defeats the point ... but it' still kinda' handy.)

So, basically: it's pretty cool. Would i trade a Sapporo for 5 more of these? Probably not. Would i give it as a first fountain pen? Hard to say ... but probably not. (Bit plain, i guess.) i'd probably give it to someone as a 2nd or 3rd, tho.

So ... that's that. Helpful? Probably not.

[KrazyIvan]

Here are three reviews of three different Sailors. They are not mine but I was able to play with them through the generosity of the fountain pen community.

http://inktronics.wordpress.com/2013...greg-minuskin/

http://inktronics.wordpress.com/2013...mike-masuyama/

http://inktronics.wordpress.com/2013...ith-music-nib/

[firstpancake]

Thanks for the review!! I may pick one of these up in the coming weeks.

[CapeClear]

I'm just back from my holidays in HK and KL. I nearly bought the Junior Skeleton twice (roughly $22US) but ultimately I decided against it because I only really enjoy using italic or stub nibs. The nibs on both pens were super smooth however. I know you could replace the nib etc but at that cost I could just buy a 'better' Sailor demonstrator with the nib I want.