Rotring Newton Fountain Pen

I think I actually spelled the name of the ink color correctly. This might be the only time I managed that for this color…

This particular peculiar Rotring entered my life as a birthday present from my dearheart, who went to the local pen store asking for something I didn’t already have. Voilà—a Rotring I’d never even seen before.

I think I need to add another fake sun to the left side of my desk.

With a bit of Googling I’ve decided that this is a Rotring Newton, the mod odd update to the very popular, hexagonal 600 series. The pen has a lot of solid metal and oblique angles going for it, and I love the finish.

You can’t just have a pen, you have to gaze deeply into its very surface

It’s not just solid black—look very closely and you see some dark twinkle to the finish. And all the silvery bits? This pen is a looker.

Untwisting and untwisted.

But beautiful as it is, this pen has some quirks to note. The biggest is how you get to the cartridge/converter side. Look up at the picture of the whole body, see the silver bit on the non-cap end? Twist it counter-clockwise like you’re retracting a tube of chapstick (go clockwise—as though advancing a chapstick—to secure it back to the body). Not what you were expecting. But then why not, why not involve some randomly strange mechanism? Quirk #2: do NOT reuse a standard international cleaned-out cartridge in this pen. I’ve read somewhere before that you need to use the special (pricey) Rotring converter in the Rotring pens or it won’t seal properly…I don’t know for sure about all that, but I know it doesn’t play well reusing a cartridge. The cartridge came loose, ink was everywhere; so I decided not to tempt fate anymore and slapped in the one Rotring converter I have. Fits perfectly. No more ink everywhere.

Modern nib decoration

The writing is mostly wonderful—smooth without being out of control, never scratchy. But I think the nib might be currently suffering from a bit of baby’s bottom.

Is it? I can’t exactly tell. The nib looks very round at the tip. That’s about all I can tell

There are times, not even the span of an entire letter really, just the first stroke, where there’s no ink, right at the beginning. Then it starts up just fine. If it is a case of baby’s bottom, it’s an easy fix.

Also it came with a neato-keen octagonal-type box

Mine came from Office Supplies and More, but I haven’t seen him have any of this pen before or since. Goldspot carries them, looks like…let me know if you know of any other good retailers that stock the Newton and I’ll add a link!