Pens I’m Liking These Days–Parker Jotter

Parker Jotter with crisp CI by Henry Dolin

This is a new pen- My buddy Henry turned me on to it during one of our coffee shop pen geek-outs. I’d seen it at Staples and passed it by– I don’t need another cheap pen, who does?

He had one at the shop and I wrote with it– he’d put a really crisp cursive italic grind on it, and I was convinced.

Next time I was at Staples I grabbed one. Within a few days Henry had it ground to a nice crispy italic. I’m still rocking the first of two small carts that came with the pen, it’s a boring blue. I’ll either refill the carts or see if the Lamy carts/converters will work in here.

The clip goes all the way up to the cap finial, another feature I like on clipped pens. When you clip it to a shirt pocket, the entire pen disappears into the pocket- there’s no protruding part above the clip. Not sure why I like that so much.

The pen posts deeply and securely, which is nice. I like deep-posting pens, I won’t lie to you.

This one lives on my shirt most of the time these days, and the cap stays behind on my collar when I’ve got the pen out for writing, so I don’t post it very often, and had to get it out and post it to write about it.

So, make no mistake, this is a cheap pen. There are some things I like about it, and I like it enough that it’s been riding along as my shirt pen since I got it. I’d recommend buying one if you know Henry or someoneelse who sits around grinding nibs for people for free all day.

 

I like:

• It’s light enough to ride on a t-shirt collar without exposing either of my nipples
• With the clip out of sight it looks like a small featureless steel cylinder.
• The brushed finish on the steel looks really nice.
• The nib has a cylindrical shape that is almost cool.

 

I don’t care for:

• The clip is cheap and is almost guaranteed to bend and become useless.
• There’s a largeish breather hole behind the clip that I didn’t notice for about a week. When the clip gives out it’s going to be quite obvious.
• The section has 2 raised lines on it from the injection molding process. They are not subtle and it really cheapens the look and feel of the pen.
• The nib, while proportional to the pen, is very small and plain. More like Are you serious, nibbage?

 

So I’m enjoying wtiting with it and carrying it around for now. I don’t know how long it’ll last on my shirt pocket, and I’m expecting to destroy the clip taking it off my shirt one of these days.

When that happens I’ll probably give it to someone unfamiliar with nibgrinding so they can enjoy a really nice crisp cursive italic nib.

 

Bang for the buck: high

Special out of the box: low

Looks: good

Writes: VG