Red Ring Cycle Part II or 600 Bottles of Ink on the Wall

The Rotring 600 is Rotring’s most pop­u­lar and well-known foun­tain pen, with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of their inex­pen­sive Art­Pen line. When peo­ple think of Rotring pens, they almost invari­ably think of either rapi­do­graphs or the 600.

There were a cou­ple of 600s in the pen case the day I bought my 700 back in the late nineties. I tried them out and did­n’t care for them as much as the 700. Of course, I’m glad that I bought the 700 then, as they sub­se­quent­ly became dif­fi­cult to find, and the 600 mod­el has always been plen­ti­ful. When I recent­ly decid­ed to revis­it the 600 line, it was no trou­ble get­ting my hands on them, I even found an old-style 600 as «new old stock», an unused pen that had wait­ed on a shelf in the shop for sev­er­al years. But I’m get­ting ahead of myself.

The 600 has a char­ac­ter­is­tic hexag­o­nal shape to it. It was designed not to roll when placed on an inclined table like a draft­ing board. Now, it will slide down a table with not very much tilt (15° from hor­i­zon­tal) to it, but it’s true that it will not roll.

The Rotring 600 is an engi­neer’s pen. It was­n’t that long ago that engi­neer­ing and archi­tec­ture stu­dents bought up the stock of 600s from any shop that car­ried them near their cam­pus­es. It is mod­ern, stark, has clean, util­i­tar­i­an lines, and heavy. The Rotring 600 is clear­ly not your grand­moth­er’s foun­tain pen.

When Rotring began mak­ing the 600, its ends had dia­mond-grid knurl­ing at the first half-inch or so, and the cap sport­ed a win­dow that could be rotat­ed to reveal the indi­ca­tor of the size of the nib. After the first few years, Rotring switched to a sim­pler mod­el with smooth ends, and no such tur­ret. The pen’s cap is short­er on the new­er style 600s, but uncapped the pens are the same length. Since the cylin­dri­cal end of the bar­rel is short­er on the new­er mod­el, the cap rides a bit high­er when post­ed, mak­ing the new­er mod­el almost 2mm longer with the cap post­ed, despite being rough­ly 3mm short­er when capped.

In the last years of pro­duc­tion of the 600, it was rebrand­ed as the Rotring New­ton. Many new­er-style 600s were sold as New­tons, but the real change hap­pened a cou­ple of years ago when Rotring com­plete­ly redesigned the New­ton. Despite the rebadg­ing of the 600 pri­or to the redesign of the line, I still refer to any of the two old­er styles as a 600, and refer only to the com­plete­ly redesigned mod­els as New­tons. If any­one from Rotring’s mar­ket­ing depart­ment wants to take it up with me, I’ll be glad to take the call.

The new New­ton retains the hexag­o­nal shape, but the cor­ners have been round­ed, mak­ing the design less severe. The clip and cylin­dri­cal ends are now chromed and pol­ished, where­as pre­vi­ous­ly these parts were either black or a mat­te sil­ver. But the great­est change to the char­ac­ter of the New­ton comes from the diag­o­nal lines. All of the tran­si­tions of the pen — bar­rel-end cylin­der to bar­rel, bar­rel to cap, cap-end cylin­der to cap — are cut on a 45° angle diag­o­nal­ly, mak­ing the bot­tom facet of the pen short­er than the top. There is only one way to cap the pen, and that is with the clip ori­ent­ed over the top of the nib. This is a mild­ly inter­est­ing exer­cise in design until one con­sid­ers unscrew­ing the sec­tion from the bar­rel. With the con­nect­ing sur­faces at a 45° angle to the axis of the pen, there is no way that the sec­tion could be unscrewed from the bar­rel, as with most oth­er pens.

Rotring, appar­ent­ly wish­ing to impress with their engi­neer­ing prowess, designed the sec­tion and the bar­rel with recessed threads, the bar­rel’s threads on a rotat­ing sleeve con­nect­ed to the bar­rel-end cylin­der. In order to fill the New­ton or replace a car­tridge, one twists the end cylin­der, which gen­tly push­es the nib and sec­tion up and out of the bar­rel. Rather than screw­ing the sec­tion into the bar­rel, the bar­rel screws itself onto the sec­tion, from the inside.

It’s a clever gim­mick, but I won­der whether it serves a prac­ti­cal pur­pose or if Rotring was indulging in a bit of show­ing off. The design is much more com­plex and there­fore is like­ly to be more prone to fail­ure. Per­haps qual­i­ty mate­ri­als off­set this poten­tial, but psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly the dam­age is done. I keep my New­ton, along with match­ing mechan­i­cal pen­cil, in a pro­tec­tive leather pouch. My old­er 600s appear sim­ple and inde­struc­tible and there­fore some­times find them­selves in a pock­et as I head out the door. The New­ton may be as durable as its pre­de­ces­sors, but it does­n’t feel that way. It feels sol­id, but not the way the 600s do.

New or old, the pens of the 600/Newton series are con­sis­tent, pre­cise, and smooth writ­ers. These are not pens that will give you expres­sive lines from the flex of the nib, as there is very lit­tle flex in their nibs. They lay down a clean line and rarely have ink flow problems.

Many peo­ple dis­like a nib this stiff. As much as I appre­ci­ate flex­i­er nibs, I use both flex­i­ble and inflex­i­ble pens. When I want a lot of vari­ance to my lines I’ll reach for some oth­er pen. But for an unwa­ver­ing line of even weight, it’s hard to beat a Rotring. And for all the years that I avoid­ed 600s in favor of my 700, well, the 700 is still the bet­ter writer in my opin­ion, but the 700 per­mits a lit­tle bit of per­son­al­i­ty in the line. This is desir­able in writ­ing and even sketch­ing, but when I have a vari­ety of pens at my dis­pos­al, the 600 is the one I’d use in place of a rapi­do­graph. I admit I did myself a dis­ser­vice not to have got­ten a 600 ear­li­er. My orig­i­nal 700, were it a 600, would have weath­ered the abuse bet­ter over the years. I’d rec­om­mend an orig­i­nal or sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion 600 to any­one look­ing for a trav­el­ing pen, even under harsh con­di­tions. Take it to Antarc­ti­ca if you like, just make sure that you load it up with Noodler’s Polar black or blue so the ink won’t freeze. For those who absolute­ly must have a gold nibbed pen, Rotring made a few 18K-nibbed 600s that appear on eBay from time to time.

The 600 series pens are built like tanks. They are heavy and tough. It’s a com­mon joke that these pens could be used as weapons. These are brass-bar­reled pens and as such car­ry a bit of weight. Even the New­ton los­es only about five grams in the switch to alu­minum con­struc­tion. This is sure to make those of us who like heavy pens hap­py, but will rule out the rest. If you don’t like a heavy pen, this is not bor­der­line heavy, so stay away.

As might be expect­ed from heavy pens tar­get­ed at engi­neers, every­thing about the 600s snap into place pre­cise­ly. Cap­ping, uncap­ping, and post­ing a 600 may require a bit more force than you’re used to, but then it comes off clean­ly with a snap­ping sound. There’s nev­er any doubt that the cap is snug­ly in place. Though the New­ton does click when cap­ping and uncap­ping, it is essen­tial­ly a slip-on cap and lacks the sol­id feel of the ear­li­er mod­els. The ear­li­er style 600 also has a slip-on cap, but feels much more secure. The sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion mod­el of 600 incor­po­rates a pair spring-loaded studs or bear­ings on the sec­tion to mechan­i­cal­ly secure the cap into place. This addi­tion to the design secures the sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion 600 in my mind as the pin­na­cle of the line. While it’s nat­ur­al to idol­ize the orig­i­nal (and yes, the orig­i­nal style tends to be more high­ly sought after by pen col­lec­tors and knowl­edge­able users) the only real fea­ture that went by the way­side with the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion is the mov­able nib-size indi­ca­tor on the cap. The knurled ends don’t seem to serve any pur­pose aside from attract­ing col­lec­tors. The oth­er styl­is­tic refine­ments are minor, but the spring-loaded lock­ing of the cap ensures that the cap will remain secure much longer into the life of the pen. This is a fea­ture I’ve seen only on a few high-end Water­man pens and makes the sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion 600 more desir­able than the original.

The orig­i­nal and sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion 600s were avail­able in three col­ors: black, sil­ver, and a fine­ly-speck­led dark grey they called «lava». The lava fin­ish has a bit of tex­ture to it and adds to the attrac­tion. In black and sil­ver the 600s are good-look­ing pens if you like stark, func­tion-dri­ven, mod­ern design. If you don’t you might find all the 600s to be hideous. Still, though per­haps harsh-look­ing, the pens are not gar­ish at all and will not offend. A 600 will be as appro­pri­ate in the board­room as it is in the workshop.

The New­ton was made avail­able in black and in sil­ver, but along with the angled redesign Rotring replaced the lava option with a hand­some metal­lic brown they call cop­per. Though the fin­ish is fine­ly speck­led like its pre­de­ces­sor in lava, the sim­i­lar­i­ty stops at the appear­ance. The bar­rel of the cop­per New­ton is as smooth as the black or sil­ver vari­eties, no sub­sti­tute for the superfine-grit feel of the lava 600.

In many ways the New­ton is a step down from the 600, but as the suc­ces­sor to the 600 it is not unwor­thy. It car­ries for­ward the 600’s tra­di­tion of being a smooth and reli­able writer and while it puts down a clean, con­sis­tent line it does have just a hint of respon­sive­ness not found in the 600s. Per­haps it’s best to think of the New­ton as a com­pan­ion to the 600 rather than a replace­ment for it. It is no replace­ment for the 600, but on its own mer­its it is a great pen. If you’re going to pick just one of the three how­ev­er, I say leave the mys­tique of the orig­i­nal and its knurled ends at the door and find your­self a sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion 600.

Rotring 600 (old style): 43 grams
Rotring 600 (new­er style): 42 grams
Rotring New­ton: 38 grams