ystudio Brassing Portable Fountain Pen Review

Finally.

For a pen that has been a personal favorite of mine for years, I am finally putting pen to paper and writing my review of the ystudio Brassing Portable Fountain Pen.

What has taken me so long? I can’t really say, other than I use it a lot, which, for some reason, puts it in a different mental work queue. It even got to the point where I used it so much, and raved about it on top of that, that I just assumed I had reviewed it. It was only when I went to search for the link of the review to share that I realized I hadn’t. Repeatedly.

I’ve had plenty of opportunity to review it, too. It was my first ystudio product, and since then, I’ve reviewed six other ystudio products. But never this one.

As the origin story goes, I first saw this pen shared by my online friend Patrick Ng and my jaw dropped. I had to have it, but as with many products from the Asian market, it was tough to acquire. I kept a keen eye on the situation, eventually discovering a shop named Kohezi in Amsterdam, who became my first ystudio dealer, and where I acquired this pen. That was in November, 2016, and it has been in regular use since.

The style is what first drew me to the Brassing Portable Fountain Pen. Hex barrels have been used in pens for quite some time, but the way this one was executed is unique enough to make it stand out from the pack. The lines are clean, and are set off by brass highlights peeking out from under the black exterior coating.

The black coating is what gives this pen its Brassing name. Over time, it will wear with use to show more of the underling brass barrel. I see more wabi-sabi in the grip section that I do in the black paint, but I do have plenty of dings on the exterior edges, giving it the well-loved look this pen deserves. You can speed up the Brassing effect with the included sandpaper, but I decided not to go that route with this pen.

The top of the pen features an integrated lanyard loop, where you can slide through the provided leather rope, and tighten it up with a brass bead. There is even an external carrying tube you can slide the lanyard through for added protection, although I haven’t seen mine for years. The leather rope and brass bead do reside permanently on my pen.

As much as I love the design of this pen, it wouldn’t be worth a mention if it didn’t perform well, and feel great doing it. In use, I would consider the Brassing Portable Fountain Pen to be a small pen. The grip section is narrow, and tapers down towards the provided #5 gold-plated steel Schmidt nib. The Schmidt nib works perfectly well, but I swapped it out for a Franklin-Christoph Steel #5 Broad Nib, with a Mike Masuyama Cursive Italic grind. It’s a mouthful, but it has proven to be the perfect compliment to this pen for years.

(Side note: Schmidt and Jowo #5 nibs are swappable, but the same #6 nibs are not due to feed differences.)

I honestly cannot speak highly enough of this pen. It’s not for everyone - with possible questions around size, barrel materials, nib choice, and cost - but I’ve found it perfect for me. The way it feels in my hand. The way the cap clicks on. The way the barrel lines up. The way the brass hits just right. The way the lanyard allows me to fidget with it. And, most importantly, the way it writes.

Luckily, since I bought mine, ystudio products have become much more accessible. Kohezi is the best choice in Europe, and even worldwide if you are looking for some of the more rare releases. In the US, distributor Kenro brought ystudio in earlier this year, meaning you can check out their full product lineups at all of my site sponsors - JetPens, Goldspot, PenChalet, and Vanness Pens.

ystudio keeps doing good work, and I keep adding them to my library. The Brassing Portable Fountain Pen was my first, and despite the competition from their own catalog, it is still the best for me.

---

Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!

ystudio Letter Paper Set Review

As I do with every ystudio review, I start off by stating how much of a fan of the brand I am. The look, the feel, the marketing - all of it works for me. That extends to the Letter Paper Set as well, but there is one additional question I have to ask of the brand for the first time: Why?

The design of the Letter Paper Set is as beautiful and well made as all ystudio products that have come before it. It’s listed as part of their Brassing lineup, which is a bit confusing as this isn’t a writing instrument. It does carry the same black and brass aesthetic though.

This A5 writing pad contains a feature that you don’t normally see in other stationery products, at least not ones from this century. Behind each of the first 10 sheets is a second, carbonless, copy sheet. The idea, according to ystudio, is to write a letter, mail it off, and keep a copy of the correspondence for yourself.

I get it. It’s not a bad idea at all. Carbon and carbonless copy papers have been around for as long as we have been writing regularly, but I have to ask: Do we need it?

Even as a fun, throwback, stationery product, the ystudio Letter Paper set leaves a lot to be desired. For starters, there are just 13 sheets per pad, with only the first 10 of those sheets backed, as mentioned above. It also ships with 5 envelopes as part of the set, so in combination with the page counts, you have a lot of management ahead of you if you want to make the best use of it.

If you want to use this product as intended, you should know that fountain pens need not apply. I have a heavy hand when writing, so using something like the ystudio Brassing Rollerball is the perfect choice to effectively copy your handwriting to the carbonless page. With fountain pens, I don’t - and don’t want to - press as hard as it would require to see my words on the copy page, even with the built-in backing board giving me something to press down on.

As odd as I find this product, I can’t help but be enamored with the paper itself. Maybe it’s the ystudio fanboy in me coming out, but the brass lines on the off-white page really pop. The pages are thin, so there is some ghosting, and it is absorbent, so you won’t see much shade or sheen if you do choose to use a fountain pen, but there is no feathering to speak of. I wouldn’t want a 200 page journal with this paper, but give me a 30 page pad, drop the copy sheets, and sell letter envelopes as a separate 10-pack. Then we have a product I can really get behind.

Because right now, at $40, this is not a product I can recommend. Yes, it features the ystudio style I love, and yes, this is a brand that makes premium products and charges accordingly. The difference is that I can see a use case for their other products. There is a very limited use case to be made for the Letter Paper Set.

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

---

Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!

ystudio Resin Fountain Pen Review

As a ystudio fanboy, I was a little concerned about the Resin Fountain Pen when I first saw pictures of it. How would it stack up to my favorite Brassing models? Would the plastic barrel take a way some of the magic of the brand? My fears have proven to be unfounded, as this is a pen I want to use all of the time.

I will admit that it took me a couple of days to warm up to it. While it shares some of its design DNA with the Brassing Fountain Pen, it really is a different beast altogether. It sat on my desk. I stared at it. It stared back at me. I picked it up. I uncapped it, posted it, and capped it back again. And then I decided ok, time to ink it up. That’s where I ran into trouble.

As much as I am going to rave about this pen in a moment, there is a flaw in its design that must be mentioned: For a cartridge/converter pen, it doesn’t fit standard international converters. Or I should say, it doesn’t fit most of them.

I should have known something was up when it didn’t ship with one, but that’s neither the first - nor last - time a c/c pen won’t ship with one. I thought well fine, the ystudio Resin Fountain Pen uses Schmidt hardware for the nib unit, so I’ll just grab one of the dozens of Schmidt converters I have laying around. I attached it to the feed post, dipped it in the ink bottle, and drew up the ink just fine. Then I tried to screw the barrel back on.

If it doesn’t fit …

When standard international converters fail to fit into barrels it is usually a length problem. Not here, as the barrel is more than long enough. With this pen, it is a diameter problem. The metal ring around the barrel is too wide to fit inside the barrel.

My first thought was oh, there is something wrong with my converter - let me try another. And another. Until I realized it wasn’t the converter that was the problem. How could this be, seeing that other ystudio pens use the same Schmidt hardware and Schmidt converters fit those pens just fine? I’m guessing that the microscopic measurement that the barrel needed to be expanded by would have altered the entire design? I don’t see how, but I find it hard to believe that this was an oversight. Manufacturing tolerance maybe?

The workaround I found is either to use cartridges - short or long international sized - or a narrower converter, like the one in the picture. Mine is from Kaweco, which looks like this one from Monteverde. Is there a name for this style of converter that we can pass on to ystudio so they can package them with future pens to avoid this unnecessary angst?

Clairefontaine Triomphe with Standard Bindery Stargaze

Ok, I’ve prattled on long enough about an issue that in the end is a minor annoyance on a pen that gets everything else right. Here is what you really need to know: I cannot put this pen down. I’m not sure if it is the shape, the feel, the weight, the nib, or the tactile-ness of it, but I love using it. I have to set it out of reach sometimes just so other pens get a fair shake.

To try and describe it I’d say it feels close to a large marker in the hand, but it allows for the fine control of a technical pen. These aren’t words I normally use to describe a fountain pen, but they work for this one. It’s different, in a good way.

The way the resin hexagonal barrel smoothly transitions into the the brass grip section is a joy. Brass discs also adorn the top of the cap and end of the pen as an added touch of flair. The cap posts, although not with the same snap as when capping the pen. It could come loose if you set the pen down, for example, or fidget with it.

I’ve said it before - earlier in this review even - that the best compliment that I can give any product is that I want to use it, and that I miss it when I’m not. The ystudio Resin Fountain Pen is a perfect example of that. And at $72, I feel very comfortable recommending it, converter weirdness and all.

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

---

Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!