In this regard the pen did well, having good ergonomics, good price and a somewhat modern, ok looking design. But one of the most important things in a pen is the ball point and how does it write.
Upon first inspection the line of the pen writes thin. I suspect it is under the claimed 0,7 mm, and the blue tone of the ink is appealing. But the smoothness can't be compared to the Jetstream.
It is not by any mean a bad pen, but it is in a close competition with the Jetstream either.
Jinhao 80 is a simple and nice pen you can have for a very low price. Buying it is simply a no-brainer. The design of the pen is definitely inspired from one of the most iconic pens in the world having a minimalist and simple while elegant design. Jinhao 80 is a great addition the the fountain pen collection. With a very low price of 6-7 $.
The pen does not copy one for one the Lamy 2000 with it's iconic Bauhaus look. The Jinhao is more a mix and match of two Lamy pens, the Lamy 2000 (2k) and the Lamy Aion.
Jinhao 80 is available in several colors. I have bought the almost classic black body with silver trim.
The pen is made out of plastic. It is light and comfortable. The plastic is textured imitating in a way the looks of the Lamy 2000 which has a fiber glass body. The texture is not very prominent and is not that visible. But offers a more "natural" feel to the touch. It is like touching a piece of wood which has been sanded but still retains a little bit of it's natural texture. It is hard to convey it through the pictures, you will just have to take my word.
The pen has somewhat of a cigar shape with flat ends. The top of the cap is just a black plastic with no decoration. The brushed silver clip contrasts very well the black body, offering the pen a "tool" look, industrial, reliable while still looking classy and ready to do business.
While the end of the barrel has a silver metal insert that balances the silver clip on the cap. It ads some character to the very sterile and simple body.
The snap cap is hugging the body well. The fact that the nib doesn't dry out even if left on the desk without use for a few weeks is a testament that the cap does it's job very good. Every time I took the cap off, the pen wrote without any hesitation even after weeks of sitting on the desk being ignored.
The cap will also reveal a polished silver nib and a silver ring that delimits the barrel from the grip position. The ring is almost flat and not noticeable when you write even if your hand crosses over it. I would give the pen an extra point for design if it would come with a black nib or a brushed silver nib that matches the clip.
Jinhao 80 has a Lamy style silver nib, and I suspect that an original Lamy nib will fit onto the feed without any issues. I can't confirm as I haven't tested this yet but is a good future project.
The nib has Jinhao written on it along side with the logo and the F marking the width of the nib.
The grip is comfortable and tapers a little bit. The barrel is separated from the grip visually by a silver metal ring.
I am happy to see that the barrel and the grip have metal threads. This will assure a longer life to the pen. It will prevent cross threading or plastic cracking from over tightening the parts.
The pen comes with a Jinaho converter, which is not the best. As all of the Jinhao's converters I have used so far due to the lack of an agitator inside the surface tension of the ink stops it from flowing. Many times it requires to prime the feed again as you can feel the pen is struggling for the precious ink.
The pen comes with a fine nib that is no surprise. It is a very common size for Chinese pens. The flow is ok, a little on the dry side. The pencil will perform great on any kind of paper, without much feathering and see trough on the other side due to the reserved ink flow and thin lines.
I can see a tiny bit of difference in the thickness of the horizontal lines compared to the vertical ones, but not that noticeable when you write.
It writes smooth, with a hint of feed back. This has a fraction more feedback compared to the number 8 nib on the Jinhao X159.
This was quite a nice surprise, to see that a restaurant has opted for pencil sets to create great looking decor. Some pencils, some artificial flowers/feathers, bright colors and you are done.
I realize that it might involve some elbow grease DYI. But a glue gun or some other kind of glue would help to do such decor in no time,it does look very good, simple and fresh.
As I enjoyed the unique approach and presentation of superhero movies in "The Boys" I started watching the Gen V spin-off while waiting for a new The Boys season.
The story of the blog started 10 years ago, when I decided to share with the world my passion for pens and pencils, a journey not just to celebrate their charm and allure but to immerse myself in the world of analog tools in a time overrun by digital. I started the blog with a few ideas and with the hopes that it will be mildly interesting for others with similar interest as mine.
Besides pens and pencils I do have other hobbies, like erasers for example 😊. Once in a while my other hobbies peak in the posts of the blog, but I try keeping them to a minimum as I don't want to divert too much from the main topic.
I haven't started the blog with a goal. Perhaps this was not the most productive way, and certainly not the best way to reach more readers. But by doing things at my own speed and without too many sacrifices has helped me to keep the passion vivid and made me share my experiences for this long.
Even though I didn't start the journey with much hope the results in the first years were even less than expected. There were one or two hundred visits per month in the first three or four years, and this in good months. I asume a part of those numbers were not real readers but some bots doing bot things. After the first grueling years I started seeing some traction, which I guess made me a bit more prolific in posting more regularly in that period. Now after 10 years I roughly get 10k visits per month (in the more recent months, less at the beginning of the year). In the end I try not too focus too much on this metrics. Even though they are a good way to judge the success and analize what people are drawn too, which can help focus more attention on particular subjects I find it too "job" like to analyze, plan, forecast, etc. Also from my observation the randomness factor sometimes is too big. Wild spikes in traffic due to bots, google algorithms or cosmic rays.
A lot of inspiration for starting the blog came from two blogs that I was reading regularly Dave's Mechanical Pencil and Bleistift. In case you don't know them (slim chance) check them out.
And I would sum up the 10 years with a few numbers
Blog Posts so far: 168
Blog Post on average per month: 1.4
Top 3 most prolific years (when it comes to writing): 2018, 2019, 2020
Top 3 average most prolific months: April, July, December
Total words so far: 66.497 words
Total pictures posted: 716 pictures
Total videos posted: 2 videos
Longest blog post: 2442 words
Most pictures in a post: 55 pictures
Average blog post length: 396 words
Average number of photos per post: 4 pictures
Total read time for the entire blog (225 words / min average): 4 hours 55 minutes 32 seconds
Longest blog post read time: 10 minutes 51 seconds
Average blog post read time: 3 minutes 58 seconds
If I would start again what would I do differently? Probably not much. I guess a little more strictness in posting regularly and increasing the content quality would be a good idea.
Because this is not a resolution I am not going to make promises that will be abandoned sooner rather than later. What can I say is that I will keep doing it as long as it is fun.
The book has a few simple rules that can create a successful work life while enjoying what you do. Besides the rules there will be a lot of examples of how different people used these rules in their lives and how they managed to succeed, also at the end is the authors experience with the rules.
The #1 rule as stated in the book So Good They Can't Ignore You is don't follow your passion. Unpopular opinion in these days. When it seems that everyone thinks that ditching their current job and pursuing their greatest passion will give the bliss. Usually "follow your passion" approach applies to very few individuals, as passion in general is hard to monetize and tricky to do as a job. Less than 4% of people have passions that are related to work or education, while the rest of 96% are describing hobby style interests like sports or arts.
The type of work done does not predict how much people enjoy it. Other attributes are more important. According to Wrzesniewski the happiest, and most passionate employees are those who have enough experience and are good at what they do. A good example here could be people who seem to have the perfect job, like gamers or youtubers, who seem to have the perfect job. After a while finding a subjects for new videos, filming them and editing begins to feel more like a chore and a real job. Same with gamers who have to play for hours daily, stream, increase views etc.
People thrive by focusing on question of who they really are. If you focus only on what you don't like about the work, you are on a path of chronic unhappiness, especially in entry level positions, where the projects you will tackle will not be challenging, with little to no autonomy. Being stuck in a job as a junior might not be fun, but as time passes and you accumulate knowledge that is rares and desirable (people are willing to pay for it) you can climb the ladder, while accumulating "career capital". This way you can get a better job that has more benefits, and more control. This will help you create the work you love.
Where these rules don't apply? In jobs where with few opportunities to distinguish yourself by developing relevant skills, job's that focuses on something useless or even bad for the world, and jobs that forces you to work with people you really dislike.
Start with positions that gives you an inside clear look of how things work and are done. Jobs that are allow you to grow and understand the business from end to end. Getting god at something will mean you have to put in the hours of work, you will have to do deliberate practice and real study (practice that is purposeful and systematic, with problems that are at an appropriate challenge level for allowing you to increase your abilities, with consistency and preferably feedback)
Most people will not go through all of the work needed to become really good. They will put in just sufficient work to reach an acceptable level of abilities and knowledge. Doing things that you know to do will be enjoyable but will not allow you to grow. If you are not uncomfortable (mentally) then probably you are stuck at an "acceptable level". If you want to really love what you do you will have to go the extra mile to outshine the average person.
Once you accumulate enough "career capital", and there is evidence that people are willing to pay for it, you can negotiate for more control in your work life. This will create some conflict with the employer, who will resist you most likely. Because it is not in the company's interest for you to gain more control over your work life, but rather reinvest the career capital back in your career to obtain more money and prestige while producing more for the company. Instead of loosing a good employee most companies will choose to negotiate. For example negotiating for more free time to pursue what you love, cherry pick projects to work on and so on.
The final step in truly loving what you do is finding a mission, an organizing purpose to your work life. Every week expose yourself to new stuff in your field, and keep track of the stuff (read a paper, attend a talk, have a meeting). An effective strategy for making the leap from a tentative mission idea to a compelling accomplishments is to use small projects called little bets. A little bet in the setting of mission exploration has the following characteristics.
It's a project small enough to e completed in less than a month
It forces you to create new value (example master a new skill and produce new results that didn't exist before)
It produces concrete results that allow you to gather feedback
Use these bets to explore new ideas, keep only a couple of bets active at a time so they can receive the needed attention. Also it is a good idea to use deadline to keep the urgency of their completion high. Don't procrastinate on this work by turning your attention on more urgent but less important matters.
When a little bet finishes, use the feedback it generates to guide the research efforts going forward.
Don't obsess over finding your true calling, instead master rare and valuable skills. Once you build up career capital invest it wisely. Use it to acquire control over what you do and how you do it, identify and act o a life changing mission.
Trying out another eraser from Factis. This Factis OV 12 is a large oval shape eraser that looks simple and elegant at the same time. The eraser comes with no wrap. The branding and the bar code is written directly on the eraser with a thin black font while the model is a punchy red font. Also a Made in Spain is written just below the model name.
The shape and size sits very comfortably in the hand. And like the other Factis erasers I have tested it is made out of a soft compound. The size of the eraser is about 6.5 cm in length and around 2.5 cm.
But what really counts about an eraser it how well it erases. So I will test the OV 12 against a standard HB lead (rotring). I will test how well it does against standard pressure pencil marks and high pressure pencil marks, one pass of the eraser versus multiple passes.
As you can see the eraser leaves a fair bit of eraser dust behind. It was expected from the fact it is a soft eraser.
Cleaning the dust off the page and I am left with a pretty good result from the Factis eraser. Even in the case of a single pass the pencil marks are almost entirely gone.
I went through the pen holders on my colleagues desks, and found that the most popular pencil in the office is ... the Rotring Tikky 3. Four out of seven people, or just a bit over 57% of the people in the office use the Rotring Tikky. Affordable, reliable and available in a multitude of colors, this Rotring is the perfect companion in the office, school or anywhere for that matter.
Starting with my 0.7 mm Light Blue pencil. The color was introduced by Rotring in 2017 (code 2007252 for 0.7 mm and 2007253 for 0.5 mm pencil). It is a pale, almost pastel blue color. To my eyes, it looks a lot like baby blue.
The second pencil is the Rotring Tikky 3 Blue 0.5 mm (code 1904701 for 0.5 mm and 1904508 for 0.7 mm). This shade of blue is much darker and more saturated and vibrant looking. A classic royal blue never gets old.
Third pencil in the lineup is the Tikky 3 Red 0.5 mm (code 1904699 for 0.5 mm and 1904507 for 0.7 mm)
The last one in the bunch is the updated Red 0.7 mm. The updated color was introduced in 2017 (code for the updated version remain the same as for the previous red, 1904699 for 0.5 mm and 1904507 for 0.7 mm). Comparing the updated red to the old red, the new color is a bit brighter and more vibrant. Also, the color of the rubber grip has changed to a darker gray.
The love for 0.5 and 0.7 mm lead is equal, 2 of the pencils being 0.5 mm and the other 2 0.7 mm. The same thing can be said about the colors, half of the pencils being blue and half being red.
Comparing the shades to each other.
All the colors look very nice. It is hard to pick a winner. Both blues are interesting in their own way, and both reds look very nice.
When I reviewed the Jinhao X159 I kept saying how big is a number 8 nib compared to a standard fountain pen nib. Here are a few sample shots comparing the Jinhao X159 with #8 nib and the Jinhao 922 with #5 more standard nib.
Both nibs are size F, and both write well. The X159 with dual tone nib is dwarfing the 992. The number 8 nib is taller and a lot wider than the number 5.
To accommodate the large nib, the grip section has to be a lot thicker.
Jinhao made me very curious with one of its latest fountain pen in the lineup. I had to have the pen just because of its nib. It is a bit unconventional for a basic pen to come with an interesting nib, and on top of that, the Chinese nibs usually have nothing special to them, just the same plane Fine or Extra Fine nibs. This pen is special not because it breaks the XF / F tradition, but because of its size. The pen that caught my eye is the Jinhao X159. The X159 comes with a number #8 nib, which is quite big compared to more conservative sized nibs. A "normal" size for a nib is 5 or 6, so this is 2 numbers bigger. It is not easy to judge the size based on this information but, there is a noticeable difference when you pick the pen up.
So with my eye on the interesting offering from Jinhao it was time to embark with patience, as I ordered the pen off Aliexpress.
Jinhao X159 is a sibling of the older model Jinhao 159. I can't compare the two as I don't have the 159. But the main difference is that the 159 has a regular nib size and a metal body while the X159 is made out of plastic and has a big nib.
I have seen some reviews of the X159 prior to buying it, and in general people focused very much on its appearance, with clickbait titles like: "Montblanc replacement", "Better than a Montblanc??", etc. The pen is a "copy" of the Montblanc 149 to the millimeter.
This was not what made me buy the pen, but the unusual nib that came with it. I was very curious how a number 8 nib feels to write with. If you are interested in the pen and my experience using it for a little bit over a month, just jump and the review part, and skip how I ramble about the world...
You have been worn, last chance to scroll..
First thing I have to point out: clickbait titles promoted everywhere, in every domain, and by everyone. Many who reviewd this pen have made this pen a Montblanc nemesis. Why would a fountain pen which costs $6 replace a Montblanc? Just because it "copied" it's design?(coming back to this part in a minute). Foremost, the Montblanc's are more a status thing than anything else. You buy one because celebrities, presidents, kings and queens have used them over these years. And that makes them desirable. Because they are expensive, not everyone can afford one, so this brings the exclusivity to the table (the same thing with brands like Rolex or any other brand that is focused on finer things in life). Nobody will buy a Jinhao, a Wing Sung or something else along these lines instead of a real Montblanc, just because they look the same...(I have to clarify that Jinhao is not dishonest about the pen, it doesn't have the Montblanc's logo, and Jinhao is present on the clip, they look the same in general appearance, the pen is NOT A FAKE). So why start a review with something like this. I could write much more about this, but it is more than enough.
My second point is about how Jinhao "copied" the design of the Montblanc 149. The pen is a cigar shape, which is considered by everyone a classic. The design is nothing innovative, and several other brands have products similar fountain pens in size and looks. Sailor King of Pens, Pilot Custom, etc. Aren't those copies?
There are so many original designs until the water starts to get murky, and you see influences here and there, and after many inspirations and many years it is hard to tell which design is the legit one and which is the copy. If Jinhao had made the pen a few millimeters thinner or thicker, shorter or longer, would it still be a copy?
Not to start my third point on how fountain pen producers (like Kaweco but not exclusive) rest on the laurels of designs that are decades old, without innovating and coming with new products on the market.
First thing that I notice was the size. The pen is large in every dimension. It is a long and thick pen (horizontally challenged).
There are 2 variants of the pen. The original model came only in black with silver trim, and the successors came in a multitude of colors with gold trim and nib. The difference from the information available is the number of turns to take the cap off. Original 3, second iteration 2.
The blue resin in person looks unbelievable. It is a dark blue that in the right light looks splendid, from teal, navy blue and in dimmer light it looks black. The gold trim compliments the color very well. I am very pleased with what arrived.
The pen is made entirely out of resin (plastic). Even though it is big, in hand it feels just right.
The top of the cap is nicely rounded and besides the esthetic purpose, it also holds the clip in place, fixed between the finial and the cap. The metal clip is strong, made out of rolled metal, nicely finished with no sharp edges. The cap also has a golden ring at the bottom, on which Jinhao and X159 is written. I am not fond of the font used, but the fact it is discrete makes it better, as you don't see it unless you are looking for it.
Also, the molds lines are visible on the barrel, although you really have to look for them.
The pen can be capped, but for this one I think you are better off laying the cap on the table. The pen becomes huge and a bit top-heavy. The barrel is long enough for the pen to be used uncapped without any problems. I have to state that I usually prefer not to cap pens.
There is an o-ring at the end of the metal threads, with the purpose of preventing the barrel to be tighten too much, and cause cracks in the material. I will have to see how good it will work in the long run. So far the ring did it's job.
As most Jinhao pens, this one comes with a converter. The X159 takes international cartridges long and standard.
The pen is big and bold. It has a length of 15 cm
The nib is the star of the show, being a number #8 nib it dwarfs the regular fountain pens. The nib is a dual tone, gold and silver, and has a nice design, with Jinhao and F printed in the middle. The lines engraved on the nib don't match the dual tone very well, but it still is better than a plane silver look.
The pen writes really nicely out of the box, at least the one I've got. The ink flow is just right, even though a bit on the low side, like the majority of Chinese pens. The feed is interesting, very big matching the nib and it looks like it can hold a lot of ink. I haven't had any starvation issues or burps so far. The fins of the feed are very long and soft.
Even though the nib is large, it doesn't flex at all.
Reverse writing is possible but it is dry.
Even though the pen looks impressive, you can definitely see some corners cut. Take into account the pen is just 6$ so don't expect miracles from it. The injection molds are barely visible, but they are there.
Another thing that makes me raise an eyebrow are inner and outer threads on the barrel. The section is very thin in that place, and the material might crack from normal use, or if by mistake you over tight it. I always feel I am stepping on thin ice when I take off the barrel to ink it. I have the same felling with the Jinhao 992, so if you tested that one and are ok with its build, you will be very happy with this one as well.
Another small minus to the pen's construction are the caps on the section and cap. The cap has a little play side to side when screwed on, making some cracking sounds. Tightening the cap helps, but the risk of cracking increases.
I think the number of turns to take off the cap is related to this issue. In the first generation, Jinhao's X159 cap had 3 complete rotations to take off the cap, and they reduced it to just two and a quarter in the second generation. If the plastic and threads had been a higher quality, they could reduce the number of turns to one, just like they have on the Jinhao 992.
Another drawback that is true for all the Jinhao's tested is the converter. It is a plus the fountain pen comes with a converter at this price, but they don't work very well in my experience. I don't know why converters that are provided by Jinhao don't allow the ink to flow correctly. The surface tension is high, and pockets of air are formed inside that in the end starve the pen of ink. This never happens in a cartridge. It could be some residue from the manufacturing process that creates this. For me is not a big deal as I like cartridges more than converters, but it kinda makes the free converter not that useful. I will fiddle a little more with them to see if a good clean solves the problem, or adding an agitator is the only solution.
The last thing on my complaints list is the limited nib options. A medium or even a broad would better suit such a big pen. The pen comes with a F or XF nib, which is usually the case for most Chinese nibs.
