The thick cap band (obscured in this picture, but visible in the close-up photograph of the nib below) is also decorated with a motif just like the no-longer-made Dolce Vita by the now-defunct Delta. This body costs around $70 and the Ultra Flex nib is an additional $14, bringing the total almost to the same amount as the Bluedew.Īs you can see, the pen is strongly influenced by the Delta Dolce Vita down to the black cap with orange body and gold plated trim. There is a thread elsewhere on FPN speculating as to whether the pen is actually made in Japan or made in Taiwan by a Taiwanese subcontractor to said Japanese manufacturer, but wherever it is made, it is made very well. Now, this FPR Ultra Flex nib is available mounted on a variety of pens sold by FPR, but I opted for the somewhat expensive (relative to the rest of the FPR lineup) model called the "Tanoshii." This is also a departure for FPR in that this pen is made in collaboration not with an Indian manufacturer but a Japanese manufacturer. It is inspiring that small companies founded by individual enthusiasts are bringing the innovation to this century-old space that the big pen-manufacturing corporations have chosen not to address.) (Like Bluedew, FPR is also essentially a one-person company. Next, let's take a look at the other modern flex-nib contender, the FPR "Ultra Flex" nib from Fountain Pen Revolution (FPR), a company headquartered in Texas that made its reputation by commissioning inexpensive but reliable fountain pens from manufacturers in India and offering sales and warranty support right here in the USA, together with excellent and responsive customer service. Remarkably, the feed is plastic and not ebonite, and there is an explanation for this choice in the FAQ on the site. Unlike several other flex nibs that are created from stock steel nibs by cutting out scoops from the sides, this nib was designed from scratch, according to the Bluedew inventor Jeffrey, and the interesting breather hole pattern, the two cuts (parallel to the slit) on the two sides of the slit, and the horizontal ribbing above the breather hole all testify to a novel design. Here you get a closer look at the details of the nib. Unfortunately, the converter looks like a proprietary design even though the cartridges it takes are the standard international size. Ink flow does seem to be wetter with the converter, by the way. The barrel threads are precise and the pen can be easily eyedroppered (maybe with a little silicone grease applied to the threads for peace of mind), although I have only used the pen with the converter and a cartridge. The fit and finish of the pen are definitely in the uppermost range of what is available at this price point. The pen is 140mm capped, 125mm uncapped, and the grip section is between 10mm and 11mm in diameter. It has faint pink swirls in the resin, and there is a "BLUEDEW" engraved on the barrel. Multiple body colors are available, including (obviously) a blue colorway, but at the time I went to the website this translucent finish was the best-looking option they had in stock. If you read the FAQ on you will see that everything about the nib was designed in order to extract maximum flex from it, even the embossed "B" on the nib (which is supposed to trap a small amount of excess ink under the raised "B"). Kudos for no-waste packaging! Now, about the nib itself, it has long narrow tines and a very interesting pattern in place of a simple breather hole. The pen sells for USD88, ships worldwide for an additional USD12, and as you can imagine for that price you get a stainless steel nib and not a gold one, although you do get a very nice faux-leather single-pen case that can hold a good-sized pen (and is in fact the only packaging for the Bluedew pen itself during transit). Indeed, he founded the company to sell the nib, with a pen around it. This is a pen created by a Singaporean inventor named Jeffrey, and it is all about the flex nib. Instead, let us take a look at two reasonably priced (even if not quite "inexpensive", notwithstanding the title of this post) flex-nibbed pens, starting with the Bluedew. I approached the "modern flex" question out of curiosity, and my curiosity does not extend to spending several hundreds of dollars to investigate the question. Some are expensive gold nibs mounted on expensive bodies (Aurora, Montblanc 149 Calligraphy, Scribo Feel), with the pen and nib together costing between $500 and $1000. In recent years, some pen makers are making a concerted effort to create flex nibs that do achieve the line width variation, snapback, and lack-of-railroading of those fabled vintage flex nibs. We often hear that there is no modern equivalent to the vintage "wet noodle" flex nibs of 80-90 years ago.
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