Pelikan Twist Fountain Pen Review

There is something about fountain pens for beginners that I love. Generally, they come in cool colors, or funky designs. All have some type of molded grip to help you with the proper finger placement. And, almost without fail, the nibs prove to be excellent writers.

It makes me wonder sometimes why I spend hundreds of dollars on fountain pens given how well some of these entry level pens write.

The Pelikan Twist is clearly marketed towards children for their first fountain pen. The colors are bright, the grip is very well definied, it is a simple cartridge filler, and the plastic barrel is going to be able to handle getting beat up. Plus, it just flat-out looks cool. I can see kids enjoying learning the proper way to write with this pen.

Being a big kid myself, I found I enjoyed using it. The medium nib is dead smooth, and the output is clean with the provided Pelikan Royal Blue ink cartridge (it takes short and standard international.)

The one consideration for those who want to add this pen to their arsenal is how extreme the grip section really is. I have a traditional grip so I never mind molded grips, but there is no play with this one. The edges between each side of the section are sharp, locking you in to the preferred grip at all times. The Pilot Kakuno is much more subtle, and even the Lamy Safari feels tame in comparison.

Don't let that scare you away though. Learn how to grip a pen the right way! If nothing else, kids will appreciate how cool and fun this pen is to use, and they won't even know that you are creating muscle memory that will last them a lifetime.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

Pelikan M215 Blue Stripe XXXXF Waverly Nib Review

The Waverly nib is a special nib grind designed to make the tip of the nib smoother and more comfortable to write with. There is a slight upturn at the end of the nib, which hopefully you can see in the image above, and turning a standard Pelikan XF nib into something ultra fine with a Waverly grind should provide an excellent result. But it's not for me.

As my possibly flawed logic told me before even putting nib to paper, a Waverly grind should be worse in an XXXXF nib, especially on the horizontal strokes. At least with the way I grip and write with fountain pens. With the nib turned up, the sides of the nib will have a larger contact area on the page than a standard, straight XXXXF grind. Right? Writing with this nib grind confirmed just that.

If I am getting this fine of a nib grind done I want the resulting lines to be fine, sharp, and consistent. None of that happened with this nib. It wrote perfectly fine and was smooth, but the consistency was not there and it seems better suited for wider nib pens. My stock Pilot Vanishing Point EF nib fits my style more by a long shot.

My enabler Thomas loaned me this nib last year and feels similarly. I'd love to hear from anyone else with a Waverly nib grind to get another opinion and see if I am missing something. As it stands now, a standard ultra fine grind is the winner in this scenario.

Pelikan M215 Rings Fountain Pen Review

So you broke down and bought a Pelikan M205 and you love it, right? It is an amazing pen that writes wonderfully, looks beautiful, and will last for decades. Your Pelikan fountain pen needs have been met! Or so you think.

Businesses love consumers like me and you. We obsess over the small details, latch on to the things we love, think we have found perfection, and slam our wallets shut.

Squirrel!

What is that bright and shiny thing over there? You made a product I already think is perfection even better? Just take my money now!

Thanks a lot Pelikan.

The M205 is a near-flawless pen in my mind. The only teeny tiny thing that could be improved on is the overall weight. The M215 Rings model takes care of that by using the same M205 design and adding five metal rings to the barrel. This gives the pen some added heft that many writers may prefer over the base model M205. It's not a huge amount - 20 grams for the M215, 14 for the M205 - but you absolutely notice it when writing. It feels great.

My buddy Thomas loaned me this pen over a year ago, and the written portion of this review was done around then as well. At that time, I didn't own a Pelikan of my own, but a few short weeks later I bought an M405 at the Atlanta Pen Show. That was followed later in the year by my M205. To say I've been bitten by the Pelikan beak is accurate.

Thomas has since sent me the now discontinued M215 Blue Stripe model, which is a beauty, and the 2014 Atlanta Pen Show is only a few weeks away. I don't really have a shopping list for the show this year but the odds are good that I add another bird to the flock.

For more, check out Brian's review from way back in 2009. I wonder if he still uses his?