Jinhao 992 fountain pen

The third in the bunch of AliExpress fountain pen purchases bought for $2.8 is the Jinhao 992 fountain pen. I used the fountain pen for some time now, and I am going to share my experience with it.

The Jinhao 992 fountain pen has a classic and clean look to it. It resembles Sailor and Monteverde fountain pens, but I wouldn't call it a copy, maybe inspired. Also, the design is so classic that you will find parts of this in many other pens.

The Jinhao 992 fountain pen is made completely out of plastic and comes in a bunch of solid colors, translucent or transparent. So, there are a lot of options to suit everyone's taste. For me, the classic black with silver trim was the nicest and classiest looking, so I went with it. I enjoy the look of the fountain pen and the feel in hand, but this is not quite the hole story.

It comes with a fine nib, which is on the small side, as is the entire fountain pent. It has some graphics on it, and it has Jinhao and F are also present. The 992 didn't come with the smoothest nib. It doesn't scratch the paper, it just has more feedback than I would expect from a fountain pen. The flow of the ink is what you would expect from a Chinese fine nib. Fast writing is not an issue with the pen, even though it is not a wet nib. It keeps up with no problem. It is a perfect writer on regular paper, it doesn't feather or bleed trough. Upside down writing is scratchy and extremely dry. It's not a thing that this fountain pen is really able to do it, which is a bit odd for a Chinese fountain pen.

The cap is a screw on, and it takes just a hair over one revolution to take it off. It comes with a strong clip and a trim at the point where the cap screws on the barrel. The trim has the name Jinhao on it and that is about it. There is nothing fancy about it, no motifs or shapes on it. I think the reason for this trim beside the visual aspect is the longevity of the cap. The plastic from which the fountain pen is made doesn't inspire much confidence, and I think it is easy to crack it if you tighten the cap or the barrel a bit too much. Adding a metal ring I think prevents this to happen, as it offers some extra rigidity to the plastic.

  

The barrel has a small cylindrical end, nothing fancy here. 

The fountain pen is rather small, and for long writing sessions is not the most comfortable. You can post the cap securely on the back of the fountain pen to make it a more suitable writer for longer sessions. I usually write without posting the cap, but because the pen is small, thin and very light I use it with the cap posted if I take more than just a few quick jots. The cap has a good airtightness, as the fountain pen sat on my desk for a few weeks without being used and started with no skips when I picked it up to write with it.

The Jinhao 992 was supplied with a converter. And if you take into account that it cost $2.8 shipped, you will see that the shortcomings of the fountain pen are not that bad. It might not last a lifetime, but for what you pay you will get a decent writer.

The addition of a converter is nice, but mine at least is not a very good performer. The ink doesn’t flow liberally inside, and often air pockets are created due to the capillarity effect. Adding something to agitate the ink inside the converter would improve its function a lot. You can add it yourself or just swap it with an international standard cartridge. The Jinhao can't be used with long international cartridges as they do not fit inside.

What we do in the shadows series

Probably the best comedy movie and TV series featuring vampires ever made is "What we do in the shadows". Going through the first season, I spotted a Parker Jotter in a scene where Nandor is applying for US citizenship.

The government employee is going through a series of questions to see if Nandor is eligible for the citizenship, but the answers offered by Nando the Relentless are not helping at all.

If you haven't seen the movie or the series, I highly recommend it if you are in the mood for a good time.

45 year celebration from the debut of space shuttle Enterprise

To celebrate 45 years since the debut of the space shuttle Enterprise, company Retro 51 launched a limited edition Tornado pen with design inspired from the space shuttle.

Enterprise rolled out on September 17, 1976. Enterprise was restored and placed on display in 2003 at the Smithsonian's.

The pen tries to recreate the look of the shuttle, through the nice graphics printed on the barrel. The pen's barrel is made out of stainless steel.

You can get the pen for around 60 $

Holiday pencils

I just came back from a short but nice vacation, with good weather and great views. On this vacation, I took with me a fairly small notebook where I had info and sites worth seeing, planning notes and stuff.

I had all the information on my phone but I wanted to have a bit of redundancy in case I ran out of battery.  It wasn't the case but it's still nice to have it and maybe take some notes or make quick jots.

For this trip I took the Koh I Noor Notebook mechanical pencil because it is very small, travel safe as you can retract the writing lead completely, it has a built-in sharpener in the lead advance button, it has a body made out of metal and it looks really cool and retro.

I really like the size of the mechanical pencil for travel and everyday carry, not so much for proper writing due to it being too thin to have a comfortable grip. the looks are just a bonus.

You can take a look at the blog post about this pencil I have posted in 2019.

I enjoy traveling and I like walking up and down the streets of a city, getting in touch with the city atmosphere, enjoying the architecture, and all the stuff that is happening all around, and occasionally if the time permits I really enjoy time spent in museums.

This was a trip rather close to my home town, but it had a lot of surprises. On the first night out in the city enjoying site-seeing good food and beer, I stumble upon an open-air Jose Carreras concert. In the following days, I spent the time between beers, sightseeing, aquapark, and two museums.

The first museum visited (on the second day) was an art and science museum. In the science part of the museum between artifacts, skeletons, and all kinds of interesting relics, I found a section where the sketches, a notebook, and a pencil of a local historian were added to the gallery, showing his work and contribution to the exhibit.

Interestingly enough the pencil used was as a red Koh I Noor, 2 mm clutch mechanical pencil. I found it to be very cool, as I was traveling with a Koh I Noor.

The next day I visited a second museum which was a more eclectic collection of exhibits. Its main point focused on the history of the local fortress, the life of the nobles in medieval times, world war, graphic, photo, and art exhibitions, history of the church in the area, life under communism, and a few more.

The museum mostly made use of the beautiful fortress buildings to attract crowds and used all sorts of recreations to depict life from the past. It was a bummer for me, and  I would say its audience would be families with small children which probably would enjoy the pictures, figurines, armors, and so on.

The most interesting parts for me were the ruins of old buildings and tombs which were under the fortress, dug up, preserved, and presented very nicely, and a poster gallery. I really enjoy old posters and these ones are mostly collections of communist period work safety posters. I was fascinated to find out that the painter Toulouse-Lautrec is the father of the poster.

In continuation of the communist posters, there was a room representing the communist period in Romania, with pictures of the leader, common household objects and between them, there were a few stationary objects for students.

So if you wonder what would a student's bag includes, here are a few samples.

You can see in the image a wooden pencil box, a few hooded nib fountain pens and some sharpeners, the "Student" ink, below that is another hooded nib fountain pen and a dip pen and in the left a used bottle of permanent ink.

If you are curious about communist household objects used in Romania click on the images below.

Related articles:

If you would like to see more about Koh I Noor click you can use the following links or the Koh I Noor label in the right panel:

Koh-I-Noor shop in Prague

Koh-I-Noor Notebook

Koh-I-Noor Versatil 70s

Koh-I-Noor 5340 5,6 mm lead holder

or about my old Chinese fountain pen that I used in the primary school

Small notebook