Shamefully I did not curb my addiction to acquire more writing instruments, and exactly one week after my last purchases, I bought a new one, this time a SET. My excuse: I took the Parker Urban pen that Mum had bought for me back to Bugis Junction BHG to get my name engraved in gold, and while waiting I browsed.
There are three brands sold there. It’s at the children’s level, near the notebooks and photo frames area. The little region for pens carries Parker, Waterman and Sheaffer ones. While waiting for the engraving to be done, I subconsciously (okay, I mean VERY consciously) walked to the Sheaffer section and browsed. The lady happened to be on her tea break and the other lady who did the engraving for me only represents Parker, and she told me that the Sheaffer girl would be back in about 15 minutes. I thought I couldn’t wait, so after getting my pen done I started going off. But before I could, the Sheaffer lady came back. I went to ask about inks and while choosing the colour I wanted from a display case, I caught sight of this:
I’m really sorry I took it off the internet; I had opened the box and inked the smallest nib and I don’t want to dismantle everything again for a photo.
So from the picture we can see that there are three nibs which are colour coded. The red one is fine, the blue is medium and the green is broad. Personally I don’t think the difference is that great, if you compare to, let’s say, the Pilot Parellel series. A quick measurement of the nib width on the ruler shows that the fine is about 1mm, the medium about 1.5mm and the broad about 2mm.
I think Sheaffer is really nice to include 4 different ink colours: black, blue, green and what seems to me like orange. In addition, the pen body and cap looks really nice to me. The material is black plastic but I think it looks decent and simple. There is a window at the side like the Lamy Al-Star to show the ink level.
I had already put on the fine nib and tried doodling with it. It’s very smooth even for a left-handed person like me, but a slight disappointment for me is that it doesn’t provide much line variation. I tried to produce thick and thin lines but the thin ones were not very much thinner than the thick. I read on the Fountain Pen Network that these nibs were ground, so the line variations are not that great. But I think it could also be because it is not easy to get line variations for small-sized nibs. Oh well. I may be wrong. I’m just trying to cheer myself up. 😛 Not wanting to ink the other two sizes just yet, I dipped them slightly into the Sheaffer Skrip Green that I had bought along with the box set and tried making a few lines on paper. These two produced better line variations and somehow looks crisper as well.
Compared to the previous Art Friend calligraphy pen that I used before, the Sheaffer mini box set is definitely smoother, and I would say it’s worth the money as it costs only 25 SGD. I wouldn’t think that professionals would like this very much, but if you are a beginner like me, this would be a good start.
I am the founder of this website.
Chemist by day, slacker by night, fanatic of stationery all the time.
I write with my left hand, but can also do the same with my right hand – it just won’t look very pretty.
