Waterman Lady Patricia, Pilot Custom 823, and Jinhao 188

     A pen that has been on my wishlist for sometime, a diamond found in the rough, and an inexpensive pen to tinker with have all reached my desk. My goal in the next little while is to figure out which 3 pens will need to come out of the drawer to make room.

    The pen that has been on my wishlist for sometime now is the Pilot Custom 823. Typically in this region Pilot is only offering the amber colour, so when I saw this pen in the smoke colour show up on the local classifieds I felt compelled to make contact with its owner. The person selling the pen was a lawyer who had a similar approach to fountain pens as I in which he only kept 3 pens and worked with the principle of displacement. We met in a local coffee shop, I brought my favourite ink and trusty pad of Rhodia dot. I was hoping to find a fine or extra-fine nib but this pen was a medium and I wanted to test it before buying. The Pilot medium was finer than expected and I came to learn that Japanese nibs tend to be finer in comparison to the western grind.

     I saw this Waterman Lady Patricia in a dark display of an antique store, the section and feed were damaged but that nib. That nib is a needle point with a lot of flex, after discovering that quality when inspecting the pen I politely offered the shop owner what I believed to be the price of gold for the nib and walked out with a smile. I will document how I got this pen functioning in a later post.

     I picked this Jinhao 188 up at my local pen store for less that $10 and was pleasantly surprised by it's qualities. It is a metal pen, featuring a spring clip and an ink piston converter. This is a great value considering what you pay. My plan is to practice custom nib grinding and apply it to this pen.

     I will prepare a few posts on these new additions in the near future and reveal where they fit into the 18 pen drawer.