u/KaliPrint

New Q-Lear! I made a mistake when ordering and then I whined to Q about it so he kindly let me send it back and did some more stuff to it and now it’s just perfect. Loaded it up with a refill I’ve been patiently saving for it for weeks.

Also my Dark Pines order showed up! The multi color Ano is so pretty. I can’t believe these didn’t get snapped up immediately but I got lucky. I’m going to have to bill those boys for the half hour spent grinding off some of the knurling on the bolt handle so it’s not like some kind of James Bond secret weapon. Exfoliated my thumb right out of the box 🤣. (JK not going to bill you. This time.)

(They still have some available.)

When I first saw a picture of this model from The Right Choice Painting Co. I thought it was perfect and so efficient in its design and coloring, but of course it wasn’t available from the maker. Well, time went by and it didn’t come up on the secondhand market, so I put out my first WTB post and a stalwart redditor helped me out, thanks, u/jtkitano! Super easy sale.
Such a beauty! What a great deal these pens are. Popped a Pilot Juice Up Blue Black 0.4 in there, taking it to work tomorrow.
I think there’s even a Zirc and Blue ano Version of this design, can anyone confirm that?

Thanks to the most excellent crew here who helped ID this pen. Even though it was disparaged by some as the worst I’m finding the action to be very smooth and positive, and the condition is quite amazingly flawless for a V1, I think.
I’m glad I went for it, and even though I paid more than the $50 I’m told it sold for originally I think a good deal is how much it satisfies me, and I’m enjoying it a lot.

It’s a great writer!

Is it possible to ID this pen definitively from these pictures? No finial pics unfortunately.

There are any number of copies being cranked out in Chinese shops of pens whose makers we know and support by (I hope!) not buying the copycats.

Here’s one I don’t recognize though! Is it (gasp!) an original design out of Shenzhen? Or is it one I just haven’t seen the original of? Comes with a concealed double sided torx driver under the cap! If it’s not a copy I’m tempted to try it out…

Thanks to Lee and Liz at Nottingham for making my Saturday morning more fun than it’s been since Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snork used to visit!

(The TiButton feels much less chunky in my hand than I was worried it might be. It’s really about the same as my Billetspin and Focusworks pens.)

Pens: Tactile Turn bronze with Zr, Grimsmo Saga.

Story: It was the worst of pens, it was the best of pens. It was an unscrupulous seller, it was an honorable seller. It was a disaster, it was a victory.

I bought these two pens from two different sellers on Reddit. When the Tactile Turn arrived the bolt would not actuate except with some serious force and wouldn’t retract without pushing down on the tip.

I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I assumed it just needed to be worked a little and maybe seller just hadn’t used it in a while. Nope. So I thought, well it’s a TT, designed to be the world’s simplest machined pen; I’ll pop it apart, clean it, and Uncle Robert.

Nope. The top cap wouldn’t budge. At all. Frozen. With limited options, I soaked the pen in hot soapy water, hoping to loosen either the bolt or the cap and maybe both. It worked—somewhat. I freed the bolt, with some scrubbing and running hot water through it. The unmistakable smell immediately told me that the bolt had been stuck because the pen had had beer spilled in it and let dry. Once I washed it out and blew it dry, the pen was fully functional. Except the frozen top cap. That bothered me.

The beer told me the seller was not a good actor. No way that he had tested the pen before he shipped it and it had been okay. He had known. Fine. Forget him. I tried to get the top cap off in the wrong way (soaked in Kroil, wrapped in tape and used pliers) and damaged it even through the tape—bronze is soft. Went the second route, boiled it, used pliers (no tape, since already damaged) got it off. It had been epoxied on. I ordered a replacement cap from TT, upgraded to Zirconium to match the nose. And that’s the pen in the picture. Looks nicer with Zr top and bottom, I think. All the work and frustration makes me feel like I earned this one, and it writes beautifully with a blue Pilot Juice in it.

The Saga? Seller priced it low because it had wear on it, even told me I could send it back if I thought it had more wear than shown in his post—totally above board and honest. Of course I’m keeping it; I love the very slight worn-in look, to be honest. The fidget factor is next level😍.

Both pens are on my current favorites/heavy rotation roster now! Such different paths getting there, though.

(And if you read all the way down to here, you’ll be happy to know this is the edited-down version!) 🤣🤣🤣

Never thought I would have one! Off EBay. Seller sold it to me FOR WHAT HE PAID FOR IT. Said he didn’t want to be like those people trying to make a big profit off Mogs.

Yes, there are such people out there, still!

Also this week off EBay, found a good deal on an OHTO Horizon. Yeah, it’s not a machined pen, but related to this post…because I like to call the two together: Mog and Proto-Mog! Neander-Mog? Cro-Mognon? 🤣

The retracting action, sound, and feel are almost identical.

Autmog 38 Clipless Ti with conical tip, bronze mech, C-305 refill (original)

OHTO Horizon ballpoint (discontinued) 895NP refill (original)

My first RCPC pens! 🤪 Some folks might not be as excited as me about these little babies, but that’s why my flair is what it is…🤣😇

Nothing elaborate, just excellent ink delivery systems! Grip, weight, balance, bolt operation, refill fit: all perfect. Very satisfying. 🫠

Incidentally, the frag is slightly heavier, If you‘re curious. Makes sense, of course, but I was surprised. Both handle beautifully. I appreciate makers who give you something to grip while writing!

I have a question for all of you Magnus Pens Clickshift owners.

Magnus, of course, makes his own springs. Out of titanium, I believe. Anyway, I was writing with my CS late at night and I noticed that the pen was making more noise than I liked, very noticeable in the still of the night.

So upon inspecting the spring I noticed it was not symmetrical, one end had a cap and a tiny hole therein, and the other end was open, no cap. (See picture)

Now I couldn’t guarantee myself that the way it was, was the way it had come from the factory, as Magnus designed it to be. So just for the sake of experimentation, I reassembled it with the spring reversed, and I felt the pen made less noise when writing than before!

I have been careful about not contaminating the data by telling you how mine is oriented now or was before, so anyone who want to try it can make up their own mind. What do you think? Which way do you think makes less noise and/or writes better, hole towards tip, or hole towards user?

And unrelated (mostly): has anyone swapped in a different spring in their Clickshift, and if you did, where sourced?

it’s been a while since I actually thought of having to do this, but I used to do it fairly regularly to determine the reliability of any LLM.

Can anyone verify that they’re getting the same result as in the screenshots because that means the Google LLM is two years behind in its training data.

That’s really a lifetime in this context, and I can’t reasonably use this model for anything.

I guess it’s back to checking every LLM on Venice at the beginning of every chat to see how out of date it is.

Not a fan of Aluminum pens, but this one has a nice heft to it!

What do you think of the finish? I find it very touchable. Their Cerakote outsource is Aaron at Area 51, so he gets a 👍🏽 too.

(edit: It’s a Billetspin Gen 2 oil-slicked Zr Soul Pen.)

Just arrived. I hate waiting for nice stuff so I appreciate that it only took four days and it got here on my day off too.

Feast your eyes! look at that oil slick finish, just perfect, not garish, not ”you have to have just the right light to see it 🤣”.

The weight is great, but the forward balance is really what makes this pen feel so good, it’s almost as if the point is homing in on the paper. know it sounds like I’m exaggerating, but it really feels like that. And the grip texture is interesting because it is very secure, my fingers don’t slide at all, and yet I can’t actually feel the pattern at all. It looks decorative, but it functions like some kind of ergo engineered pattern.

The included refill is a Schneider Gelion+. That’s like a $6 savings right there because I actually had one in my Amazon cart, destined for this pen.

Anyway, TLDR, it’s really the most instantly satisfying pen. I’m a little frugal/stingy, so it often happens that I get a pen and think, “Nice, but not quite worth what I paid for it.” For this one, I went to the website to make sure I hadn’t mistakenly ordered a really expensive one.

Thanks u/devaspotato and Sue (whose u/ I don’t know).

Maxmadco—the new incarnation—off EBay, and my first Focusworks, courtesy of u/abhishekmalyala. It’s pretty amazing how the MMC feels good in the hand but the FW feels…great. Better than great. Balanced. Poised to write. Special. Smooooth. Thanks for the good deal, Abhishek.

The original Maxmadco pens were before my time, never tried one. The bolt slot on this one is sharp as stepmama’s tongue! Well, it was, before I took a ruby polishing stone to it and knocked the blade edge off it just to even up the odds between my finger and the pen.
To those of you have or had one: was the original one like that? Must be a little embarrassing for Max if it wasn’t.