April 11 was the long awaited arrival day for the Namisu fountain pens in suburban Philadelphia. Backing a Kickstarter one cannot have the same expectation as ordering from a retailer and I had signed up to back this project 8 months earlier in August of 2014.
 The padded envelope in which the pens arrived had a tear, but all contents were safe. |
 And here’s what was in the envelope… three Namisu fountain pens and the converter. It was amazing that the converter hadn’t fallen out of the tear in the envelope. |
…the Aluminum in both silver and black, and the Titanium, which I ordered with the titanium nib. |
 I chose the silver Aluminum to ink first, installed the converter and dipped it into a bottle of Waterman South Seas Blue and quickly realized that with the threads just above the nib and the grooves in the gripping area that it would be difficult to wipe those areas clean. But even more surprising was that the pen was stained by this fairly innocuous ink. |
The folks at Namisu suggested that it would be best to fill the converter directly from the bottle rather than putting the nib in the bottle. I think these would be good candidates to use with my Stipula Netto filling system or perhaps a Visconti traveling inkwell if I wanted to use the converter.
Bottom line:
Nice size fountain pens that feel good in the hand. The steel Bock nibs are stiff but write smoothly. Be forewarned the caps do not post, which may not be an issue with the size of these pens. They also do not have clips, if that’s important to you. (Namisu does offer leather sleeves for when you carry the pens.)
fountain pen users 