The debate about re-blacking hard rubber pens has died away of late, largely because no effective method has been publicly available. However, a new re-blacking material has appeared on the market and you can find out about it here:

http://www.lbepen.com/deoxidizer-instructions

I have seen the results of using this method of re-blacking and I confess that I am impressed. A very thin layer of oxidised rubber is removed from the surface of the pen, exposing the black material underneath. Imprints and chasing appear to be unaffected.

I continue to have reservations. In the short term, the pens appear undamaged and it is even suggested that the process well make them less likely to oxidise in future. What of the longer term, though? Will bad effects appear somewhere down the road?

My advice to those who wish to use it would be to avoid employing it on rare or expensive pens for the time being. It would be prudent and fair for restorers to make buyers aware that pens have been re-blacked using this method.

This is my first pen review in quite a while. Sorry to start with a modern pen but it was what I had to hand. This is a Himalaya from Fountain Pen Revolution. Capped, it measures 13.4 cm, so it’s average sized for a modern pen. The acrylic is quite spectacular. The cap fits with a turn and a half but the section/barrel thread is much longer, allowing for the pen to be used as an eyedropper filler, I assume.

It is an inexpensive pen. Allowing for the extra $3 for the “flex” nib, it cost $32 or about £24.75. I put flex in quotes because I wouldn’t really regard it as very flexible. It’s semi-flex at best and that requires a noticeable amount of pressure. That said, some line variation can be induced and it is a very pleasant writer. The nib is very smooth and writes very well on the medium-rough paper I have used here.

It comes with a plunger-type converter which works well enough, though it is impossible to get a complete fill. It holds about as much as a short international cartridge, or maybe a little less. I would have preferred a better converter but for the money I can hardly complain. All in all, this is a really excellent pen, comparable with models that cost five times as much. It doesn’t skip and starts immediately after not being used for a day. Time will tell how robust it is but I can’t see much to go wrong.

I don’t know for certain where these pens are made but I assume China. The Fountain Pen Revolution website states “Each FPR pen has been manufactured to our specifications and fitted with high quality German-tipped nibs.” Yup. That sounds Chinese to me. How times have changed! 10 years ago Chinese pens were almost a joke. Most didn’t work well and many didn’t work at all. Even those that worked tended to fall apart after a few weeks of use. Now, many of the pens that are coming our way from China are very good indeed. Though the nibs are not up to European or Japanese standards, they are not bad at all.