Ink Drop Soup: More Pens to Throw Money At

Two new crowdfunding pens to throw on your radar. Will you risk your hard-earned moneydollars? PERHAPS!

First up, the WINKpen. It’s got nine days left and still about $17,000 to go, so I’m starting to get a little worried that I won’t get mine. But if it makes its funding goal, caps will be included now for no extra charge. It’s a glass nib fountain pen (not a dip pen), and it would give me a use for those rare times I end up with spare coffee beans. And all this wine I’ve accumulated. Yeah, it’s not just for regular fountain pen ink—the name came from being designed to use wine as ink.

Read more and/or back the WINKPen on Kickstarter

Second, on Indiegogo, only 4 days old, the Infinity Pen. I wonder why most pen projects are on Kickstarter, rather than Indiegogo. I don’t wonder hard enough to actually put any effort into researching the question, but the passing thought was there. My love of magnets will never cease, so I am intrigued by the idea of this pen. How many sections can be stacked magnetically together before the whole thing becomes unstable? How easily will these things stick to the fridge? I really want to get one and just abuse it to the limit. I don’t know why. Can I smack sections off if I bang it on a table? I NEED TO KNOW.

The body is aluminum, the special refills, if the campaign succeeds, will be manufactured by Centropen and allegedly go for $1 each.

Read more and/or throw dollars at the Infinity Pen on Indiegogo

BONUS NEWS! My United P2 Pocket Pen arrived last week. Pretty on-point for its estimated delivery time. You can see the final product below the smaller prototype.

It’s on my to-review list, once I can abuse it some first. There’s about 26 of these slightly bigger United P2 pens left, if you still want one.

United P2: Pocket Pen

Time to kick another starter!

What I have here today is a prototype model of the United P2 Pocket Pen that just launched on Kickstarter. I’ve spent a few weeks throwing it in pockets and bags, I’ve showed it off to nearly everyone I work with, I’ve lost it for almost a week in someone else’s car before finding it again, and I’ve scribbled my fair share of notes with it. Now, my memory is a bit hazy, but this just might be my favorite compact ballpoint pen.

Aluminum body. Stainless steel cap. Machined awesomeness

It looks part lava lamp, part minimalist rocket. It feels fantastically smooth to the touch, the finish some kind of mix between metal and silk. I’ve left it unprotected, free to jangle against keys, pocket knives, coins, and yet still I can’t find any signs of a scratch yet. I haven’t tried chucking it across a roughly paved parking lot or tried dropping it from the top of a five story building, but I’m not sure I’d want to. I like this pen too much to take the abuse quite that far.

I was worried about a small cap on a pocket pen, but it works

The cap (machined out of solid 17-4 stainless steel bar stock) and its locking grooves are machined so precisely that when you push the cap on, air has nowhere to go, thus requiring the hole in the top of the cap. When you pull the cap off, the air being sucked back in as you pull makes a little pop! when the cap is free. The result is a very secure cap that is nevertheless easy to remove and incredibly fun to play with.

If you grip your pens at the very absolute tip of the pen, this might be a problem, but everyone else will be okay

Not sure what I was expecting the first time I pulled the cap off, but this wasn’t it. This was something altogether strange and different. This looked like a candle, with the writer’s flame of a ballpoint tip. I was a bit skeptical. But then I followed the groove of the pen and was pleasantly surprised with the result.

I need to work on having a more photogenic grip

For my hand, the prototype is the perfect size. The weight of the pen gives it presence in the hand, but the comfortable way it’s balanced makes the weight almost unnoticeable. The refill included, a medium Schmidt, is nice and smooth in its own right. But the United P2 is designed to take a D1 refill. You know who makes a D1 refill? Do you?! UNI BALL. THE ANSWER IS JETSTREAM. THE ANSWER IS I CAN HAVE A FANCY LITTLE JETSTREAM REFILL POCKET PEN AND A CHOIR OF PENLY ANGELS SHALL SING ABOVE MY HEAD. Ok put that thought on pause. Brad Dowdy has discovered (as I did once he pointed it out and I tried swapping the refill) that the Jetstream refill is too skinny. I HAVEN’T GIVEN UP YET. RESEARCH MUST BE DONE. But I’ll have to come back to this. I’m holding out hope.

UPDATE from the inventor himself:

“Also for the record, the production pen WILL accept all D1 refills. Currently the prototype doesn’t accept some refills because the coating thickness is a little too thick which in turn made the hole size a touch smaller than it needs to be.”

HOPE RETURNS!

Everyday carry approved

Tweaks are already planned for the production run vs. what I have here in the prototype. The pen will be a little larger, both in length and in diameter. Personally I’m fine with the prototype size, but I have medium sized hands. It would be nice, down the line, to perhaps have “large” and “small” size options for the United P2. No one size will be perfect for everyone, but it would be nice to have a choice. I worry that a larger pen wouldn’t fit nicely in the pockets of my fitted jeans. The production run pen will also have a smaller cap hole, which I didn’t have a concern about either way. Finally, the production run will have the press fit cap on the back end of the pen flush with the pen body. It sticks out so slightly on the prototype that I didn’t even notice until I saw this improvement listed, but that update is a good idea. Don’t know when I’d need to stand the pen upright, but just in case.

There are still 28 days to go and already the United P2 has reached its (admittedly easy to attain) funding goal. The makers of this pen have successfully completed a Kickstarter project before (a small brass spinning top that looks really cool and I really want one now, thanks a lot research). If you’re interested in this pen, hop onboard.

United P2: Pocket Pen by Dylan Polseno on Kickstarter

Ohto Capstick Cap-Knock Needle Point Ballpoint Pen – 0.5 mm – Red Cap / Black Body

In honor of it being that holiday with the color red (also, pink, chocolates, maybe heart-shaped objects are involved)

I’ve had this pen almost three years now! Wow. I don’t even remember what might have specifically motivated me to get it, aside from my general love of compact pens.

It comes in other lipstickesque colors like black cap red body, black cap pink body, and pink body black cap.

The look is a svelte combination of a six-sided wooden pencil and a slim chapstick, made of metal.

How they made this baby is beyond the scope of this blog

The metal body has a matte-like surface that has held up well and provides a decent grip. It’s about as comfortable as a standard wooden pencil is, but the concern for a little pen like this is more durability and utility than comfort. You want something you can throw in your pocket or bag and not worry about—and in that, the Capstick has excelled. Three years of abuse and only one little dent.

And a few nicks, nothing too atrocious

The cap snaps securely to close and into place to deploy the tip. It’s a clever mechanism.

This is where the magic happens

Even if it somehow managed to lose its cap, the Capstick isn’t going to mark up the inside of your bag or pocket—the tip isn’t deployed unless the cap is posted. It’s a neat feature, unless you do lose the cap—then you can’t use the pen (which is ultimately why I decided against making this a motorcycling pen…I could see a fumbling of gloves, and a cap dropping off the side of a mountain, never to be seen again).

It LOOKS totally awesome, and if only that was what mattered in writing utensils…

The 0.5mm needlepoint ballpoint is…meh. Sometimes it will write well for quite a while, lines slim and crisp for a ballpoint, but then the flow goes off, gets thin:

It also feels off when the writing gets thin

I might just be particularly nitpicky, because the ink never cuts out entirely, but I can’t help feeling that a needlepoint gel 0.5mm refill would have been a better-performing option for this pen than the ballpoint.

Complete with sparkly logo “for pouch” ..give one to the kangaroo in your life today

The Capstick is more about compact convenience and style than a stellar writing performance. Or maybe this is just what happens to the refill being this old. The construction is solid—I may see if any other refills can be hacked into this body.

Ohto Capstick Cap-Knock Needle Point Ballpoint Pen – 0.5 mm – Red Cap / Black Body at JetPens