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08/29/2009: "Vanishing Point"

Braving the rain and the Kennedy funeral, I took a trip into Boston today to visit the Bromfield Pen Shop. There I procured a Pilot Vanishing Point retractable fountain pen, in carbonesque black.

It's a wonderful and quirky pen, looking more or less like a retractable ballpoint unless you look closely. The pointy end actually sits at the top when it's clipped in your pocket. This is confusing at first -- you're continually clicking the wrong end with your thumb. The other potential downside is that you hold the pen at the clip end. This doesn't bother me at all. In fact, it's helpful because it keeps the nib correctly oriented.

I bought the pen with a Fine nib (the only one in the shop, it turned out), which writes about as fine as my XF Lamy nib, but much, much more smoothly.

The only downside so far seems to be the ink converter which holds only a smidgen of ink at a time. I'm currently using Noodler's Black, my favorite ink mostly because it's one of the few truly permanent fountain pen inks on the market.