Manuscript Italic Fountain Pen

It's Sunday.  That means that Michaels has released another 40% off [one regular priced item] coupon.

I can't stand sitting at home without [new] things to do, so I hopped on over to the Michaels craft store down the street to see what my coupon can get me.

Now, I have a fascination for fountain pens - been using them for years and have acquired a small collection over this time period.  My previous experience with the Manuscript brand of pens have not been great, but seeing as how they have redone their pens' appearance while I was browsing through Michaels, I figured I'd give them another try.  The other reason being that they'd actually distinguished the difference between the Italic nib and the Calligraphy nibs that they had on display.

With the 40% off coupon, the total came out to be $6.99 - $2.80 = $4.19 + CA tax.  Not bad for a "starter" type fountain pen.  It's by no means rugged, but that's fine.

The pen itself is black and made of cheap plastic.  The grip section is textured plastic.  There's a plastic "silver" coated ring where the pen's grip meets the barrel - I'm guessing it's a "washer" of some sort.  There's silver writing at the bottom of the barrel that says "Manuscript" in script as well.  I don't think there's an option for nib sizes, but the one I got was a medium.  MAYBE they didn't really distinguish anything and the Calligraphy set was actually the same nib, but with 3 different sizes.  I'll have to take a closer look next time I go to Michaels.

When I came home, I gave it a good flushing, as I do with all of my pens, to get rid of any manufacturing gunk that may have otherwise clogged up my feed and nib.  After doing so, I cleaned out the ink cartridge it came with (I don't like their ink; I don't find that Manuscript ink has good flow) and used a syringe to fill it up with Noodler's Bad Blue Heron.  I then gave the pen a good themometer shake and  put it to the test - it was SMOOTH, surprisingly!  Particularly for an italic nib.

It glided over my cheap composition notebook paper.  There wasn't any roughness felt at all.  Maybe it's the lubricative Noodler's ink that I had in there, but regardless, there was no scratchiness from the nib that I would sometimes find on some other inexpensive pens; neither felt or heard.  I'm going to have to say it's on par with my Pilot 78G B (italic) nib, albeit the materials used for the Manuscript pen itself is of lesser quality.

 

Update:  (09 August 2011)
After having this pen for a few days now, I've noticed that it can be a bit of a hard starter.  But a quick dab on the nib is all it needs and it's all good to go.  The nib still writes smoothly on this end.  :)