…is my Pilot

For years I’ve been singing the virtues of the Pilot Var­si­ty, which is a sort of odd duck in both of the worlds it strad­dles. It is a dis­pos­able foun­tain pen, and so far as I know, it is the only dis­pos­able foun­tain pen. It is by far the most inex­pen­sive foun­tain pen on the mar­ket, but please, lets not call it cheap.

The Var­si­ty is a feath­er­weight of a pen, weigh­ing in at nine grams full of ink and with cap. Some pre­fer such a light pen, I per­son­al­ly like a bit of heft to my writ­ers. How­ev­er, I can­not deny that the Var­si­ty is a great writer. The nib glides across paper with just a touch of tooth­i­ness, mak­ing it as close to ide­al a foun­tain pen as you could ask for. Smooth­ness and scratch­i­ness is a mat­ter of per­son­al taste (with­in rea­son) but most folks like to be able to feel the paper just a lit­tle bit. I think it helps the impres­sion of smooth­ness to feel what lit­tle fric­tion there is, to remind you that you’re using some­thing very smooth, rather than some­thing undetectable.

The nib, while not a lot to look at, is sim­ple, func­tion­al, and even ele­gant in its way. The Var­si­ty is a min­i­mal­ist foun­tain pen, and the nib seems eco­nom­i­cal in the best sense of the word. There’s no waste in its flat, angu­lar design.

As far as flex­i­bil­i­ty, well, we should­n’t expect mir­a­cles. That said, this steel nib is not at all what I would call a nail. It’s absolute­ly pos­si­ble to get a bit of flour­ish and vari­a­tion to the line with a bit of prac­tice. For the most part, how­ev­er, it lays down a very even, con­sis­tent, unvar­ied line.

The sec­tion of the pen is real­ly what aston­ish­es me. It’s trans­par­ent, show­ing the feed and what on anoth­er pen would be called «comb serrations.» The pur­pose of these ser­ra­tions is to reg­u­late the flow of ink, mak­ing sure it does not go too fast and leave the pen in a huge blot on your page. While many pens leave that job to a half dozen or so ser­ra­tions on the under­side of the feed, the Var­si­ty has what looks like twen­ty very tiny discs sur­round­ing the feed on all sides. These discs are pro­tect­ed inside the pen’s sec­tion, sealed off where even if ink does over­flow it won’t sim­ply drip off.

It’s a very smart design, and accounts for the Var­si­ty’s even flow of ink. Per­haps this design was used because some oth­er part that reg­u­lates ink flow is miss­ing, but if so, it is not missed. I’ve had sev­er­al of these over the past few years and nev­er had a prob­lem with one dry­ing up or leak­ing. This is a lot more than I can say for many pens ten or twen­ty times the price.

The nib is avail­able only in a medi­um, but like most Japan­ese pens, they run on the fine side of what can be expect from an Amer­i­can or Euro­pean pen. I’d say it splits the dif­fer­ence between the fine and medi­um points of a Water­man or Park­er foun­tain pen.

The Var­si­ty is con­ve­nient, reli­able, and low-main­te­nance. Being a dis­pos­able pen, of course there’s not a lot of choice for ink. I’ve heard that some­one has devised a hack to refill the Var­si­ty, which would per­mit any vari­ety of inks to be used, but frankly, while I like the Var­si­ty, I don’t like it enough to go to the effort to refill one. I can keep one around any­where, lend it out, leave it on a table with a guest­book and not be con­cerned that it might dis­ap­pear. I can leave one in my pock­et or pret­ty much any­where. I can­not say the same for most of my oth­er foun­tain pens.

At about three dol­lars, the Var­si­ty is a great starter pen for some­one who isn’t sure whether they would enjoy using a foun­tain pen, or for some­one who has got­ten so hooked on foun­tain pens that a dis­pos­able ball­point is out of the ques­tion. It’s not sub­stan­tial, will nev­er be a fam­i­ly heir­loom and is not at all a work of art. Instead it’s a hum­ble, prac­ti­cal and depend­able writ­ing instru­ment that despite it’s light weight is a plea­sure to write with.

If you like the Var­si­ty, let me intro­duce you to its big broth­er. This is the Pilot Knight. The Knight car­ries a sug­gest­ed retail price of $45 but can be found for around $35. The Knight then is an order of mag­ni­tude more pricey than the Var­si­ty. Com­pared with oth­er foun­tain pens of the Knight’s qual­i­ty, design, mate­ri­als, and work­man­ship, it’s an absolute steal. In gen­er­al terms the Knight is eas­i­ly the equal or bet­ter of a Rotring New­ton, Water­man Hem­ish­pere, Park­er Son­net (steel-nibbed vari­ety), Cross ATX or Sha­ef­fer Pre­lude, all pens that car­ry price tags half again to dou­ble or more the Knight’s. These exam­ples may have spe­cif­ic qual­i­ties that one prefers to the Knight, but there is no argu­ing that the Knight is a pen in a class above its price.

The Knight’s nib, like the Var­si­ty’s, comes only in a medi­um. As stat­ed before, Pilot’s medi­um point is cer­tain­ly suit­able for those pre­fer­ring a fine. A look at the nib shows some basic sim­i­lar­i­ty to the Var­si­ty. It has eco­nom­i­cal lines, made more ele­gant than the Var­si­ty’s with the round­ing of cor­ners and a smoother pol­ish. The Knight’s nib writes smooth­ly and reli­ably like its small­er sib­ling. The qual­i­ties of smooth­ness with a sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the tex­ture of the paper men­tioned regard­ing the Var­si­ty apply here to an even greater degree. Writ­ing with the Knight is like a trip on a moun­tain road in a car with a sport-tuned sus­pen­sion. The pen glides over tex­ture rather than insu­lat­ing the writer from the texture.

Unlike the Var­si­ty, the Knight is not a dis­pos­able and comes with a squeeze-style sac con­vert­er. Pilot/Namiki car­tridges are avail­able, but I pre­fer the converter.

The Knight weighs in at 36 grams with the cap or 21 grams with­out, mak­ing it much more my kind of pen. The weight of the Knight rests in my hand nice­ly; I’ve nev­er been the sort who wants to for­get there’s a pen in my hand. The bal­ance is good and the pen feels sol­id and trust­wor­thy. The clip on the cap is sub­stan­tial and looks as though it could not be bent. A tug on the clip reveals that it is on a sprung hinge the piv­ot of which is near the oppo­site side of the cap. The pen will with­stand seri­ous dam­age before that clip bends.

The only short­com­ing I can attribute to the Knight is the over­ly short sec­tion. There’s a pret­ty short space between the nib and the ridge the cap snaps to, and the step in width from the bar­rel to sec­tion means the options for grip­ping the pen are lim­it­ed. I use the Knight with my index fin­ger on the sec­tion and my thumb on the bar­rel. With most pens my thumb and fore­fin­ger are clos­er to oppo­site one anoth­er, but the adjust­ment is minor and not at all troublesome.

The sec­tion is not trans­par­ent and I have not dis­as­sem­bled the Knight far enough to see how the ink flow is reg­u­lat­ed, but I have not had any trou­ble with the Knight. It’s on the dry side of mod­er­ate as a writer, but nev­er threat­ens to stop — unless it has run dry, of course.

The Knight’s nib is cer­tain­ly stiff, but not so stiff that you can’t get some per­son­al­i­ty from your line when you want to. At the same time, when you want a clean, con­sis­tent line it cheer­ful­ly deliv­ers exact­ly that.

These two pens have a great many dif­fer­ences but also a great many sim­i­lar­i­ties. I would not hes­i­tate to rec­om­mend either. The bang for the buck can­not be matched, which is not to say that these are bar­gain pens. Yes, there are com­pro­mis­es with the Var­si­ty’s design that per­mit it to be pro­duced inex­pen­sive­ly, but both pens are man­u­fac­tured with enough pre­ci­sion and designed so well that they can be relied upon not only for func­tion, but to pro­vide a plea­sur­able writ­ing expe­ri­ence. Remem­ber that Nami­ki, the com­pa­ny that makes Pilot pens, makes foun­tain pens priced in excess of ten thou­sand dol­lars. It’s heart­en­ing then that they are versed enough with their craft that the pens they make for us reg­u­lar folk are sim­ply excel­lent. It’s encour­ag­ing that to at least one com­pa­ny, inex­pen­sive means straight­for­ward and func­tion­al rather than cheap.

Pilot Var­si­ty: 9 grams

Pilot Knight: 36 grams