The Lamy Safari is a fairly cheap fountain pen – perhaps the cheapest you can get that’s actually good.

(Click any pictures to see them on Flickr, with notes, comments, and bigger sizes available.)

• Plain ABS plastic casing.
• Simple design.
• Takes cartriges or a converter, but the converter is not supplied. Budget a little extra if you want to use bottled ink.

Looks

Personally, I like the way this pen looks, but it’s not for everyone. It’s quite different in styling to most fountain pens, and the case is plastic rather than laquer. The oversized ‘paperclip style’ pocket clip is effective, but not very decorative.

As I said, I like it, but it’s not going to fool anybody into thinking it cost you a lot of money.

The unusual look even continues to the nib. There’s none of the usual flared shape, polished two-tone metal, or swirly engravings. It’s just plain black-coated metal, with “LAMY” and a letter for the nib width marked on it.

It’s all very understated and minimalist, and that appeals to me.

Feel

For a plastic pen, this actually feels really good. The ABS plastic used for the body feels strong and firm. The screw thread on the barrel feels very precise, and it all has a sensation of quality about it that cheap plastic pens never normally manage.

In Use

This is where this pen shines. The ink flow starts instantly, and doesn’t require any pressure on the paper to keep going. It can keep up even with scribbling and sketching, and although the nib is fairly firm, you can still get a bit of variation to the line width.

Push down firmly, and the nib will give you a thicker line. Turn it upside down for another trick – the top edge of the nib will still write, and writes with a narrower line. The shape of the pen makes it uncomfortable to use that way for long, but if you need a few quick thin lines, it can be a handy trick.

Compared with some other pens (the Parker 45, for example), the Safari is slightly scratchy in feel, but it’s not at all unpleasant, and the flow is still perfectly smooth.

If you like a fairly heavy pen, this isn’t it. The safari is very light, with very little resistance to moving it quickly. For some reason, though, it doesn’t seem to be prone to the sort of shaky lines I sometimes end up with when using very light pens. The balance point is almost exactly in the centre. Pop the cap on the top for writing or drawing, though, and this pen becomes a bit heavier, and very top-heavy. I find it quite uncomfortable to use this way, so I never post the cap.

Oh, and that all-important question for many of you – any good on Moleskine paper? Well, that will depend on the ink, but the Lamy black ink that comes in their cartriges works really quite well. It’s a bit slow drying, so I tend to smudge it quite badly, but doesn’t feather too much, and doesn’t show through to the next page much at all.

Conclusion

I love this pen. It’s the first fountain pen I’ve used that really performs how I expect a good fountain pen to perform. Before this, almost every one I’ve tried has been disappointing. After this, others have a lot to live up to.

Certainly if you’re looking for a good fountain pen to use, this is about the best you’ll find for the money. Alternatives? You could look at some of the Parker pens. Their really cheap fountain pens really aren’t too bad, and a bit more money can get you some nice ones. If you’re willing to spend a bit more, Pelikan make some of the best pens around, and Lamy make some great pens further upmarket too.

For the money, though, the Safari really does perform.

Related

• Pens
• Lamy pens at Penspotters – includes a short review of the Safari.

I had a few Parker pens when I was growing up, including a Jotter that used to belong to my Granddad. At the time, I thought they were very nice, classy pens. As I grew up, I realised that they were actually quite cheap, and not very good quality. That perception has stayed with me, and put me off Parker pens.

When reading up about fountain pens, I’ve become much more aware of Parker’s history, and they have made some of the greatest pens around. The Parker 51, for example, is widely acknowledged as one of the best fountain pens ever made. I’d seen the 45 in Staples a couple of times, and thought it looked very nice, for a Parker. I’m often taken by pens with unusual nibs, so the partially-hooded design of the 45 caught my eye.

Recently, though, I read Richard Binder’s profile of the Parker 45, and realised that this is one of the originals. The 45 was introduced in 1960, and has just gone out of production this year. If I didn’t get one now, they could be gone for good.

Does it write well? Does it reaffirm my feelings that Parkers are just a bit cheap, and not very good? Or is it a real Parker, from they days when they were at the top?

And why is my Lamy Safari in the drawer?

Looks

Steel and gold. The looks aren’t really anything special, but they certainly aren’t at all bad. Personally, I like things a bit more unusual than this (Lamy unusual, perhaps, not Rotring Core unusual), but it’s a very pleasant looking pen. Fairly understated – the only real design feature is the black jewel at the top of the cap.

It’s not going to be offensive to anyone, but I think that’s the downside to me – I like things a little less bland. No complaints, though, it’s got enough about it to keep me happy.

Things actually improve when you open the pen – the section is black, which really contrasts with the brushed steel, and the gold-plated nib contrasts beautifully with the black – especially with the hooding around it. I find myself wanting to make more notes, just so I can spend more time looking at the nib.

Feel

It feels a bit more solid than the cheapest Parker pens do, but not much different. It definitely feels like it should last well, though. The weight is a bit on the low side – I like that, but it wouldn’t please Sam so much.

Pulling the cap off takes quite a lot of force, and pushing it back on takes some doing. There’s no nice reassuring click as it gets into place, either – it’s just friction holding it.

I find the balance good unposted. If you prefer a heavier feel, posting the cap seems to give it that, but without pushing the centre of gravity too high.

In Use

Writing

Let’s not hold back for suspense here – the Parker 45 writes well. Very well. The flow is fast and smooth, and never seems to fail, even when you’ve sat staring into space for a while, and have forgotten to put the cap back on. The ink flow is as good as any pen I’ve used, but it’s smoother. My previous favourite, the Lamy Safari also writes perfectly, but with a very slightly scratchy feel. It’s not unpleasant at all, but when switching between the two, the 45 feels positively buttery. There’s two small downsides I’ve found so far…

• The nib likes to be the right way up – twist the pen at an angle, and it won’t write. This is true of all fountain pens, but the 45 seems to be a little bit more fussy about it than the Safari. There’s not much in it, but it’s caught me out a couple of times. This may also be because the Safari has a grip that you can only comfortably hold the right way up.
• I find the paper in my Filofax doesn’t take ink too well when it’s got hand prints on it. Sometimes, I get to the bottom part of a page, and find I’d rested my palm at that point, and the ink actually fades in and out with my hand-print. For some reason, the 45 seems more susceptible to this than the Safari – maybe it’s just laying down slightly less ink.

Filling

The 45 came with a single blue cartridge and a converter. Cartridge filling is just a matter of pushing in a new cartridge when the previous one runs out, same as most modern fountain pens. (The 45 was actually the first Parker to take cartridges.)

The converter is the now-standard Parker converter, with a plunger for filling, and a tiny ball-bearing inside to help keep the ink moving. It works well. According to the instructions, you should operate the plunger down and up three times, with the pen dipped in ink. I only did it once on the first fill, and it worked fine. Maybe it would have taken a little more ink with more plunges, but it seemed to fill up pretty well.

Not only is there no viewing window to see how much ink is left, but even when you unscrew the body of the pen, you can hardly tell. The converter fits mainly inside the section, so only a small amount of the clear ink reservoir can be seen. I can tell my pen has ink in it now, but beyond the fact that it’s got at least half a centimetre, I don’t really know how much is in there. Not too much of a problem if you keep an ink bottle handy, but it may mean you need to be a bit more careful about filling regularly.

Removable Nib

One small point, that probably won’t be relevant to most people – the nib unit is removable and user-replaceable.

Compared with Others

I was very surprised to find that this pen beats the Safari, for me. There’s not much in it, and the Safari is around half the price, though, so I’d still recommend the Safari as a great buy. If you want the chance to own a piece of fountain pen history, though, this could be it. OK, so you’ll get more genuine history by buying a real vintage pen from a second hand dealer, but as new pens go, this has as much heritage as almost anything.

Related

• Pens
• Lamy Safari Fountain Pen Review
• Fountain Pen Inks
• Parker 45 Review at Stylophiles Magazine

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It’s been too long since I last talked about the cats. And since it’s Sweeney’s 6th birthday next week, and there’s always plenty to say about her, I thought I’d indulge in a bit of good old-fashioned cat blogging. Because she’s there, she’s cute, and she’s a total nutjob.

Sweeney came into our family in October 2000, replacing the still-much-missed JessPuss. When we met her for the first time, she was in a cage at the Radcliffe Animal Shelter, waiting patiently for a new home and a new name (at that time she was called “Ethal”). She somehow managed to persuade us that she was the cat for us, none other would do, and we had to take her home there and then. Which we did. When we introduced her to her new home, she ran around the place, knocking over anything that was in her way and generally tearing around like a cop car in a cheesy 70s TV car chase. It was at this point we realised this cat was no Ethal, she was either a Bodie, a Doyle, a Starsky, a Hutch or indeed, a Sweeney. And lo, from that point, the mad little furball was renamed Sweeney.

She’s developed many odd interests since she came to live with us. She loves to sleep on dirty laundry. She likes to lick carrier bags. She thinks my arm is the best scratching post in the entire house. And she loves to play fetch – preferably with balls of rolled-up masking tape. She loves her sunbeams and will do anything to reach the optimum position for enjoying them. Her aim in life is to be where she shouldn’t be, and to eat what we’re having. She’s as daft as a brush and we love her to bits.

Happy birthday, you mentil kittin. Now get down from there!

You may notice some new ads on the right, from Performancing – we’re experimenting with their new advertising network. Looks like it should run alongside Google AdSense safely enough (they don’t look like Google ads, and they’re not contextual, so they should stay on the right side of Google’s ToS). They’re just in the process of launching (haven’t even officially announced yet), and don’t have any advertisers, but it might be kind of interesting to experience something like this from the beginning. Plus, they seem like nice guys.

If you have a blog, and fancy giving it a go, you can read more at Performancing Partners, and if you go there from here and sign up, we should even get a bonus as a percentage of what you make.

The way it looks like it’s going to work is that they’ll give advertisers a price for per-click and per-impression ads on your site, and try to sell the ad spaces you create. Options for layout seem to be pretty limited so far – looks like it’s just a tower of a number of ads. You choose how many ads to display, and they keep adjusting the price to make the most money. Of what they get, 70% goes to you, and 30% to them. They’ll also pay 5% out of their cut to the person who referred you (us?).

If you’ve got an available hole in the side bar, it could be worth experimenting with, but how well it works depends entirely on how they do at getting advertisers signed up.

So many things may change in our lives, it’s always nice to see that some things will forever be the same…

As long as there’s the top hat, the curls, the guitar and the ciggy, all will be right with the world.