Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen

[terriko]

This is crossposted from Curiousity.ca, my personal maker blog. If you want to link to this post, please use the original link since the formatting there is usually better.

I picked this pen up at the same time as my TWSBI pens (Making this pen 5 in my collection), with a similar vision in mind: trying the big stub nibs. This one sports a CM / Italic / 1.0mm stub. My first impression upon getting the pen was overwhelmingly positive: this is a solidly built pen and the Retro Pop Red colour was very much like a larger version of the red Fisher Space Pen which had been my stalwart companion through the huge amount of solo travel I did in my 20s as a graduate student.

Image Description: A pair of red pens with scissors and washi tape also in the picture. the pen on top is the Pilot Metropolitan Retro Pop Red and the one below is a Fisher Space Pen. Both pens share a similar “cigar” shape and red metallic body, but the Metropolitan is wider and longer.

I was even delighted to see the bladder filing mechanism, as that matched the pen I’d used as a teenager and I didn’t even know anyone made those any more!

My first day writing with it I was just as happy as I was with the TWSBI pens. I was imagining buying a small set of different colours and having them inked up in thematic colours for each month of my journal. It was going to be elegant and perfect.

And then the next day I went to use it, the pen stopped working.

I’ll save you the journey of frustration I had and say that there were a few things in play here:

1. The ink I chose was not a good fit with this pen. I hadn’t realized when chose an ink sample in lower light that it was going to be so sparkly. I spent a lot of time cleaning the pen.





2. The reservoir was small enough that I was also running out of ink.





3. I couldn’t always tell which thing was going wrong.

After a month of fighting with it, I felt like I’d spent more time cleaning and refilling than actually writing with the thing. I kept “running out of ink” (or getting clogged) halfway through journal entries. The low ink/dried out feel was leaving me with a scratchy, unpleasant writing experience, and I was starting to wonder if I had a bad pen or what. So I swapped in the ink cartridge that came with it, thinking it was probably going to give me the best experience with the pen anyhow.

… and it promptly ran dry in the middle of the sentence the first time I tried to use it.

In hindsight, I probably needed to wait for the ink to saturate the nib more, or maybe I got unlucky with a bubble? I hadn’t used a cartridge in years and the instructions basically just said to give it a gentle squeeze or two, which was clearly not enough. I put the pen nib-down for a rest and left it there for a couple of days until I was done being mad at it.

And it’s been perfect ever since.

Image Description: A pair of red pens with scissors and washi tape also in the picture. the pen on top is the Pilot Metropolitan Retro Pop Red and the one below is a Fisher Space Pen. Both pens share a similar “cigar” shape and red metallic body, but the Metropolitan is wider and longer. This time the pens have both been uncapped into a regular writing configuration for me, showing that the space pen with the cap “posted” on the back is of similar length to the unposted Metropolitan.

It would be funny to just end on that note, but I’ll add a bit more: I am slowly falling back in love with this pen now that it’s got appropriate ink in it. I picked up some Pilot Iroshizuku ink samples since many people recommended them as being better “behaved” so I’m hopeful that I’ll have a good experience when the cartridge runs out, and if those work out I’ll spring for bottles. I’m unlikely to buy cartridges but I’ve got a syringe so I might try cleaning and refilling this one — I think it’s holding a lot more ink than I was getting in the bladder-thing. I guess I could try using the syringe to top up the bladder so running out of ink doesn’t happen as often? I also picked up a clear converter so I can try that out and see if being able to check ink levels quickly makes my life better.

When it’s writing well and not having ink issues, the Pilot 1.0 stub is very similar to the TWSBI 1.1stub that I loved (see previous post) but being a bit thinner, it fits better in my calendar pages and results in a slightly more legible handwriting for me. I feel like it’s less smooth, but I can’t decide if that’s because I keep expecting it to run out of ink now or a real thing.

In summary: this pen and I had a really rough start, but I learned a lot about pen cleaning and ink and I think we’ll work well together now. I still kind of want to collect all the colours, but this one highlighted that I should probably try a few more nibs and that maybe the Pilot wasn’t going to be the pen of my dreams for trying all the most sparkly ink. But wow, it’s a lovely pen, and I’m glad I can finally understand why it makes so many people’s beginner fountain pen lists.