Pen Review: Sailor 1911 ( Sailor nib thoughts)

Of all my nibs the zoom is the least springy of the bunch. I would agree that music has a lot of character to it out of the box and is springy enough, though nothing near some of the Italian counterparts I own. M and EF to me are just daily writers with no character, but that's what I was looking for at the time of purchase.

WRT the C/C system and dropping the ball, while I would tend to agree as I fundamentally don't like them, the experience as a daily note taker is just enough for me to go home after a day or two and switch colours whereas my big pistons/vacs/powers can take days to weeks to empty out given the pace I write.

I still think everyone should try Sailor out at the shop and, if willing to purchase, possibly look to Asia for direct purchase.

Also, only had one quality control issue with them over many years in the form of a broken section. Was in North America at the time and had to send back to Japan to replace. Took about 5 months... but man did I miss my EF nib during that period

Excellent review.

I borrowed Dougs Music nib once, and I dont remember it being that springy, and by that I mean i really dont remember, not that I remember it and remember it being stiff, unless it is stiff and its a difference between their 14,18,21k nibs, I forget which version Doug had

A Great Story About Sailor here

So while in DC one of the guys in the crowd found a vintage Sailor pen with one of the specialty pens, dual layer emperor model I forget which ones. Yukio Nagahara was there doing free re grinds and touch ups to anyone with a sailor pen, and this gent brought his new vintage pen over for a touch up, Yukio looks over the nib, looks to the guy and says there is a crack in the nib, there is nothing he can do to fix it at the show, while the customer was sighing is disbelief, yukio was reaching into a box, and before the guy could reach his hand out to take the cracked pen back, Yukio went to work changing out the nib with a brand new version of that very same nib.

I mean those nibs once put on a pen raise the price by about 2-300 bucks, so that wasn't a cheap fix for sailor, but the guy got a fully working pen with a touched up nib by Yukio for one heck of a price (I forget what he had paid for it), was a cool move, but im not sure Sailor North america would have done it, though they were not about to tell Yukio any different lol

That's a great story! In fact, one of the "Masters of Fountain Pens" videos shows the Sailor Pen Clinics. Yukio Nagahara is shown at 2:54 in. I love seeing these guys in action:

lol funny none of the pens he works on are sailors

yeah, those videos are awesome. i like the one where it shows a small pen factory - Kiyoshi Kato - making some pens. Ingenious melding of machinery and tooling with hand-crafting, which is typical old-school japanese. And the guy re-tipping nibs with a plate welder. These take me back to shop class in high school...

syngent said:

lol funny none of the pens he works on are sailors

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It's not really, because the introduction of the video proudly announces that Sailor craftsmen will also work on other manufacturer's pens.

Eeyore said:

It's not really, because the introduction of the video proudly announces that Sailor craftsmen will also work on other manufacturer's pens.

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Yeah, and I think it's pretty cool that they just set up shop in a mall or something. I don't know how often they do it or how widespread it is but wouldn't it be great to just go down the road and have your pen tuned and ground on the spot? I guess the equivalent that we have here is a pen show.

I think this whole video series should be a sticky at the top of the forum.