Kaweco Art Sport

[sharmon202]

I saw this line of pens and the pictures on the company web site made them look so gorgeous. When I got them I was very disappointed, Maybe my expectations were too high or I did not understand what I saw. The blue (Lapis) looked to be probably my least favorite and the black & white (aksehir) the one I looked forward to most. It ended up to be just the opposite. Also the white one (Alabaster)while nice looking in person, would not write worth a hoot. Ink would hardly go to the nib. It is in storage for now, I do not have time to mess with it. I think things should write, out of the box. Maybe I am just a naive newbie (8 months into the "hobby"). Anyway, they were overpriced in my opinion, maybe that is why they quit making them? I am using 2 of three. They will be in rotation. I really like the Sport AC. 4 Kaweco.jpg

[KrazyIvan]

I have two of the Lapis. One in fine the other in medium. No problems with either. I did not pay Art Sport prices though. These are pricier than their Classic Sport cousins because they are acrylic, not injection molded plastic and hand polished. That does not excuse them for not writing. I would send them back for replacement.

[writingrav]

I am obsessively into Kaweco Sport pens right now and will say that sometimes a little nib work is required to get them going properly. I few turns with micromesh makes a big difference.

[Mags]

Really micro mesh as a consumer of a plus $25 pen is something I am less and less interested in. I have tweaked nibs too and once adjusted they wrote awesome. But thinking about the absence of quality control we as pen users should not tolerate pens that don't work especially over the $100 or $200 or plus prices. As for Kaweco I have been lucky and content. Lamy is a pen I have zero time for given 3 strikes on three separate purchases all requiring me to fix a nib or feed. My time is worth $100 an hour minimum and I won't support a pen maker who sells pens that don't work. I say to them do your QC not my job!

The best local pens are from Edison Pens. After that use Richard Binder for QC on sales. Full stop. Here endeth my rant.

[amk]

I have a growing collection of the Sport Arts and I have to say, though I quibble with the price, I love them. They are attractive, small writers, and I haven't had too much trouble with any of the nibs, though a couple tend to write on the dry side and I am tempted to do a bit of remedial work on them.

You raise an interesting point though about how much the user/retailer ought to be prepared to do to make the pen write well, and how much is the manufacturer's job. Increasingly we're seeing collectors and committed FP users decide they want Binderised, Mike'd up, and otherwise customised nibs; Pelikan has reduced the range of nibs it makes (a dumb business move in my view) so you have to customise if you want some of them; and then we have Nathan Tardif supplying what are basically 'tweak your own pen' kits - there are conflicting trends and I wonder how it will end up.

Of course pens that don't write well out of the box, while many of us know how to tweak'em, are not exactly helping our cause when newbies decide to invest in their first pen.

By the way, anyone got a sterling recommendation for a mid-range pen manufacturer that is reliable for always writing well out of the box?

[AndyT]

What I don't understand about the Art Sport is the high price compared to the aluminium models; it's certainly not a matter of material costs. Not sure what the damage is likely to be elsewhere, but here it's a very pricey little number for a low capacity cartridge converter pen with a steel nib and a clip as an optional extra.

As for those nibs, my experiences with Kaweco have been distinctly unhappy. Mags' observations are very fair: there seem to be far too many expensive bad writers coming out of Europe in particular at the moment. Given the competition from the Far East, this looks a lot like contempt for the customer.

Amk: I'm a bottom feeder when it comes to new pens, but I've yet to hear a bad word about Edison.

[VertOlive]

I love my new [and first] Edison pen!

[sharmon202]

Another thing I noticed about Kaweco......I ordered an EF to change out an F, from Jet Pens. The new one came in a short clear plastic tube and the nib was loose moving around in it. I imagine the nib tip was hitting the end of the container many times during shipment. I don't know if that hurt it or not but I did not like it. When I ordered a Lamy replacement (from Goulet) it was sitting in a foam piece that fit exactly the size of the small square box, pefectly protected. I do not know if the manufacturer did this or the distributor. FYI

[KrazyIvan]

i would keep an eye on eBay. They are popping up more but people are confusing them with the Classic Sport. I nabbed both of mine for very close to Classic Sport prices with almost no one interested in bidding. Of course, now that I have posted this....

[VertOlive]

I'm with Mags, all due respect to the Kaweco fans here. If I did as poor a job on a genetics assay as sandy's Kawecos, I'd definitely expect the client to want their $2500 back! And I wouldn't expect them to have to finish the assay themselves....