Goodbye Chinese Fountain Pens

[writtenworlds]

Hello FP Geeks, and goodbye Chinese fountain pens.

I have about 15 Chinese fountain pens. All of them but one have needed some sort of adjustment... anything from widening the nib a little, to aligning the tines and smoothing the nib too. The only Chinese fountain pen I have that wrote wonderfully right out of the box is my Jinhao 159. So, I'm quite used to adjusting nibs.

Now let me tell you a little story. A while ago, I got a Jinhao x450. Normally if you need to widen a nib, it only takes about 10 to 15 minutes to do, if you're being careful. This Jinhao x450 just wouldn't write, unless I gave it a fair amount of pressure, so it was obvious the nib needed widening. I gathered my tools and got to work. It took two hours, yes, two hours, to get the nib widened. Then the tines needed to be aligned and the nib needed to be smoothed. After all that, it wrote wonderfully. For a while. I used up all the ink in the pen and refilled it, and now it's decided it wants to leak whenever I hold the pen point-down.

Later, I got a Kaigelu 356. I had heard nothing but good things about them. When my pen arrived, the nib slit and tines were closed so tight, it was like they were welded together. Just slightly down from the hole, not a speck of light would pass between. I worked on that pen and worked on that pen. I really wanted it to work because it was so comfortable to hold. Two hours later and I could get the barest, thinnest line from it. And then the tipping of one of the nib tines decided to break off.

So then it was on to a Baoer 388. Baoers are generally well-received and this was basically the same model as the Kaigelu 356. When it arrived there was a nice amount of space in the nib slit, until it got to the tines, which were stuck fast together. Three hours, three hours of work and the pen still wouldn't write without applying quite a bit of pressure. The nib just would not adjust. And I noticed that it too was leaking whenever held point-down, both with bottled ink in a converter, and a completely different brand of ink in a cartridge.

At that point, I carefully and deliberately bent the nib into a very interesting shape. Three different Chinese fountain pens from three different manufacturers all in a row. I'm done with Chinese fountain pens. I'm so frustrated, I can't even look at my fountain pens right now. I'm just reaching for my trusty roller ball. It has a magic button on the back where when you press it, it just works. Every time.

[WilsonCQB1911]

Sorry to hear about your troubles. No matter how much people seem to love their Chinese pens I just can't get interested. China isn't known for quality.

[Paul-H]

Hi

On the other hand I have quite a few Chinese pens including many different Jinhao's, Baoer 388's Kaigelu, Hero and Picasso and apart from a couple over the very cheap (99p) pens all have wrote wonderfully out of the box and never given a moments grief.

So sometimes they can get it right.

Paul

[Sailor Kenshin]

I believe certain pens and people have affinities for each other. I have a huge affinity with Chinese pens, Safaris and Sailors... Not so much with Sheaffer and Parker.

Writtenworlds may just need to find the right affinity. Obviously for you it's not Chinese pens.

[jar]

I've had a few Chinese pens and for the most part, they were adequate. One I would even place in the nice category. But when I here "China isn't known for quality." I'll admit my hackles do rise. I certainly can remember when the same was said about Germany, England (especially the Prince of Darkness), Japan and definitely the US.

China can and does make very high quality items in every area or sector from computers to medicines to car parts to space craft to planes to vessels...

China is among the forefront in many of the sciences.

BUT China like the US and Germany and England and France and Japan and every other manufacturing nation can also produce really cheap commodity products. It is unreasonable to expect a product designed to sell at the under $10.00 price point to be as high quality as a product made at a much higher price point.

[AndyT]

That's unfortunate. My feeling is that things have got a whole lot better just recently and it's been a fair while since I've come across a Chinese pen which wouldn't lay down a passable line out of the box. Some of the semi-hooded nibs are downright impressive.

Still, I can't blame you for rejecting the Chinese fountain pen out of hand after such a string of lousy experiences. Long ago I vowed never to touch a rollerball again under similar circumstances.

[Sailor Kenshin]

You can always send your unwanted Chinese pens to the Mercy Home For Unloved Chinese Fountain Pens....aka, me.

[KrazyIvan]

I agree with Jar. On the opposite side of that, unfortunately there is no guarantee that a quality pen will be any better. Let me rephrase that. You have a higher chance of getting a quality pen from a quality manufacturer that is perfectly fine. That does not mean that the occasional dud will not get through to the consumer. I had an Aurora Ipsilon with a bad case of baby's bottom. I exchanged it for a Pelikan. I have heard of others complain about Visconti, Delta, Pelikan, Mont Blanc, and others just to name a few.

Actually, for me, that is part of the fun of collecting fountain pens. Going in and making adjustments to nibs. Making them write to my liking is quite relaxing. That's just my perspective. On the other hand I understand wanting to have a pen that works out of the box. I refused to fix the Aurora even though I know I could have done it.

My recommendation to you is get a quality pen from someone like Richard Binder or John Mottishaw. They will make sure your pen is writing before it even gets to you.

[kaisnowbird]

My recommendation to you is get a quality pen from someone like Richard Binder or John Mottishaw. They will make sure your pen is writing before it even gets to you.

+1 on that.

Writtenworlds, so sorry to hear your frustrating experience with these pens. My luck has not been very bad, but I have to say I'm generally not impressed with the Chinese pens I bought/received in the last few years.

I still have 5 Chinese pens left and sold/gave away 8, including a TWSBI. I think the numbers are indicative. Of the remaining 5, only 2 were made in recent years. The other three were made in the 70's and 80's when the nibs' quality from reputable Chinese pen manufacturers was better controlled.

I will give TWSBI one more chance, but am unlikely to buy any other Chinese FP in the near future.

Don't give up on FPs yet. I hope you run into something fantastic real soon.

[dr.grace]

I too gave up on Chinese pens several years ago. Some of them wrote well and were attractive in one way or another while others were poorly made or designed. The biggest problem for me, however, was that nearly all of them were made of brass and thus too heavy, or too top-heavy, to write with comfortably.

[Senecabud]

Oh, dear. I just ordered a Jinhao x450 yesterday from Goulet. A review on Goulet's site as well as reviews on Amazon indicated that this pen worked well despite the cheap price. I've never had a bad pen and all of mine --10 so far-- work well. But I bought the Jinhao x450 just for my Rohrer & Klingner Salix (Iron Gall) ink. Well, we'll see.

One thought--I gather from your time and effort spent in adjusting the nib that these pens don't have removable/replaceable nibs (?). I see they take #6 nibs, and I have two #6 nibs from Goulet which I use in my Noodler's Ahab pens (because my hand tires when trying to use the flex nibs). If I do get a Jinhao x450 with a problem nib, I was assuming I could just replace the nib; of course, that adds to the cost, but if I liked the pen otherwise, it was an option.

[Sailor Kenshin]

The x450s will probably work just fine.

[79spitfire]

The OP is surely having a stroke of bad luck!

My biggest beef with Chinese FPs are the fancy looking finishes coming off. The lacquer and thin plating looking like trash after a trip or two in my pocket. I don't mind a 10 year or older pen looking a bit worn, but one I bought less than a week ago?

[WilsonCQB1911]

I've had a few Chinese pens and for the most part, they were adequate. One I would even place in the nice category. But when I here "China isn't known for quality." I'll admit my hackles do rise. I certainly can remember when the same was said about Germany, England (especially the Prince of Darkness), Japan and definitely the US.
.

That's just ignoring reality though. Chinese manufacturing's business model is to produce items as cheaply as possible and fill the void for lowest cost products. Doing this naturally requires skimping on quality and sometimes safety. They make foods, even baby foods, with unsafe chemicals in them, etc. and that's for developed countries like the US. In developing countries they offload radioactive material by forming it into bottles and packaging for goods they sell. Low quality is one thing, but this is isn't the same model that Japan followed. Japan and Germany pulled themselves out of it and are renowned for quality. I don't think that's China's end game nor do I think the controls are there to allow for it. I don't remember the US ever been known for cheap goods. It's hard to make anything cheap there.

I'm not saying that one can't be satisfied with their goods. They fill a niche, but with China's track record, I'd rather spend money elsewhere.

[writtenworlds]

Writtenworlds may just need to find the right affinity. Obviously for you it's not Chinese pens.

Sometimes you can buy a Chinese FP on eBay for, say, $10, and sometimes you can get the exact same model from an auction listing for about $3, with free shipping. I have wondered before, though I have no basis for my wondering, if sometimes when someone gets a pen for really super cheap from one of the auctions, the seller goes through their stock and picks out one of the lower-quality examples of that model to send along.

But when I here "China isn't known for quality." I'll admit my hackles do rise. I certainly can remember when the same was said about Germany, England (especially the Prince of Darkness), Japan and definitely the US.

In my experience, there's a difference between products manufactured in China for non-Chinese companies and products manufactured in China for Chinese-owned companies. It seems there's a difference in the level of quality control based on whether the company that's having the product manufactured is Chinese or non-Chinese, even though in both instances the products are manufactured in China.

Actually, for me, that is part of the fun of collecting fountain pens. Going in and making adjustments to nibs. Making them write to my liking is quite relaxing. That's just my perspective. On the other hand I understand wanting to have a pen that works out of the box. I refused to fix the Aurora even though I know I could have done it.

I would greatly prefer a pen that writes great right out of the box. However, if a pen needs the nib slit widened a little bit it doesn't bother me too much, as long as the nib will actually adjust. With some of my past Chinese pens the nibs adjusted fairly quickly, but with the last three that I talked about above, the nibs either took a long time to adjust, as with the Jinhao, or they just wouldn't adjust at all, as with the Kaigelu or Baoer.

I would love to get a pen from one of the places you linked, however I'm sure they're unfortunately out of my price range.

One thought--I gather from your time and effort spent in adjusting the nib that these pens don't have removable/replaceable nibs (?). I see they take #6 nibs, and I have two #6 nibs from Goulet which I use in my Noodler's Ahab pens (because my hand tires when trying to use the flex nibs). If I do get a Jinhao x450 with a problem nib, I was assuming I could just replace the nib; of course, that adds to the cost, but if I liked the pen otherwise, it was an option.

The nibs are removable, but I don't have any spare nibs laying around so I wanted to make the nibs they came with work.

Thanks for all the replies everyone, I appreciate it. I do still like fountain pens, but as you can tell from my experiences I'm very frustrated with them right now.

[Laura N]

Hello FP Geeks, and goodbye Chinese fountain pens.

I have about 15 Chinese fountain pens. All of them but one have needed some sort of adjustment... anything from widening the nib a little, to aligning the tines and smoothing the nib too. The only Chinese fountain pen I have that wrote wonderfully right out of the box is my Jinhao 159....

I had one bad Hero and that was enough for me.

[6of1]

Norman Haase at His Nibs adjusts all the Chinese pens that he sells. I wholeheartedly vouch for his service.

That being said, though, the only pen I've never had to worry about was the Hero 100, which appears to be discontinued now. Still a good value for the time being. I'm curious about the 110, which looks like its replacement.

Be seeing you.

[amk]

My Chinese pens write nicely. Not perhaps compared to my best vintage pens, but quite okay, and they are nice cheap pens to try out my nib adjusting skills on.

But the thing I don't like about them - I think someone else mentioned it - is that they're very heavy, being made of brass, and also that the design of many of them has far too much bling (mind you, the same can be said about Italian pens at $200 and upwards).

The really great thing about Chinese pens? They got me into this mad fountain pen world in the first place :-)

[kaisnowbird]

The thing with Chinese pens though is often there will be something I'm not happy with over time. For example:

- I got a Duke Imperator with actual 14K gold nib as a gift. The pen wrote well and was springy but occasionally had hard start. For a slim pen, the clip and cap ring were too gaudy. As it wasn't a sentimental gift, I was happy to see it sold -- vacate some space for a new pen.

- my Hero 100, again 14K gold nib. Writes well and particularly for Chinese characters. The friction fit cap is very tight though. Once I was using it at a seminar, I took some notes, put the cap on, and I couldn't uncap it! So I couldn't take more notes! I had to duck out of the room to really pull on the cap real hard to uncap it. And the irony is the cap is not well sealed. The nib tries out if left unused for a day. More hard starts. I've only inked the pen about 5 times and I noticed that the thin chrome plating on the clip was damaged. Nothing like this ever happened to my other pens. I knew then that it's time to let go.

The two remaining modern Chinese pens in my humble collection may not stay that long any way. There is always something not quite right that prevents me from getting very attached to them.

[dr.grace]

My Hero 100 also started out as a nice writer, but eventually developed an air leak in the inner cap and had the same problem with drying out quickly. Once I tried a real Parker '51', I never looked back.