Failure

Maybe I like Occam’s Razor too much, but I am not fond of new inventions unless they did prove to offer a real advantage. So, I have a hard time understanding the point of 24 K gold and 23 K palladium nibs. Or that of those titanium nibs in some Italian pens.

Out of the box.

Do they offer anything or they are just bricks in the wall of marketing?

Testing the Stipula T with a medium nib in titanium –the only one available on this pen—made me change my mind. This nib really shows some flexibility, and when dipped in ink, it performed nicely.


Therefore, here we got a flexible or semi-flexible titanium nib in a pen that accepts cartridges, converter, and that can be inked as an eyedropper. And, how does it work? How well does this pen perform?


To answer those questions a review is in order. But those two selling points—filling system and nib—need to past the test before analyzing the rest of features.

The titanium nib (by the way, how pure is this titanium? 100%? 75%?) is flexible and is capable to generate some line variation. But, as was pointed out on a previous chronicle (“Against Dipping”), there are problems regarding the ink flow. And those problems are connected to the filling systems.

Inked with cartridge or converter, the performance of this pen is the same—awful. The nib seems to never get enough ink. If pressed down, it starts railroading almost right away. A second problem is that the nib becomes dry very quickly during pauses on the writing, even if short.

In summary, a total disaster. Not usable.

Writing sample with the pen inked with the converter.

The third filling option is the eyedropper. In this case, the nib performance improves a lot. Now, the railroading problem is a lot less noteworthy.

The nib is very wet, almost uncomfortably so. But at the same time, it keeps being annoyingly quick at drying up and it is a very slow starter.

The gasket inside the barrel to seal it when used as an eyedropper pen.

As an eyedropper, this pen improves, but not enough to become a reliable and comfortable pen. Actually, the continuous interruptions in the flow make the writing experience a nightmare.

Therefore, given these circumstances, who cares about the looks, the construction quality and the rest? The first thing a pen needs to do is to write reliably. And this Stipula T does not do that.

(Stipula T as eyedropper – Parker Blue)

Bruno Taut
(In exile, January 4th, 2011)
[labels: Stipula, plumín]