Stephen Brown aka sbrebrown

We gave a Conklin Gilder fountain pen to Stephen Brown, sbrebrown, to get his thoughts on the pen. Here is the video he created along with the text transcribed below. Pen Chalet would like to thank Stephen Brown for his honest opinions of the pen. Hope it helps. Here is his Conklin Gilder Fountain Pen Review.

Hey there! I got a pen from PenChalet.com. I had a good contact with Ron over there and he sent a really nice Conklin Glider.

Conklin, established 1898 was one of the big 4 of the American pen companies at some point along with Parker and all the other ones. Sheaffer, wasn’t that one? Ah, a little rusty.

This is an interesting pen. It’s the gilder in ivory. It has a stub nib and it’s quite nice.

So we open the box. Out comes another box, which looks like this. Open it up, this falls out. It’s a little Conklin sheet which explains you something about Conklin, tradition, etc. Then you have the pen.

The Pen is fascinating. Here we have the actual pen. They come in a bunch of finishes. This is the ivory finish. I am going to talk about the pen. What I like about. What I don’t like about it. Then I will do a writing sample.

Lets start at the very top of the pen you get this sort of nice brass colored, maybe more copper colored, which says Conklin established 1898. You get the clip. The clip has that same color. It’s a bit shinny and says Conklin. We have a center band. The center band says which says and is again the same color Conklin USA.

Then you have the whole pen. The pen has an interesting texture. Not sure you can see that but the pen has an interesting texture. I’ll try to get the lighting as good as I can. You can see the
interesting texture.

The barrel is just slightly tapered and the end is the same color so there is not end cap or anything.

You can post the pen and then you got a pretty big pen. It is definitely a bit top heavy. Not super so but still a bit. Here you got the pen section. Traditional hour glass threads. I don’t really feel those threads when I write so that’s good. It is very comfortable to hold. It is a decent size.

And we got the stub nib. It’s a steel nib and it says Conklin, Toldeo USA. It’s a 1.1 mm stub. That is all there is too it.

You open up the pen you get a cartridge converter. You can put in standard international cartridges or this converter that comes with it. The converter has a threaded end so you screw it into the section instead of pushing it in. Be mindful of that. And that is all there is to the pen.

What do I like about it? What do I not like about it? Well, I like the looks. I think it’s an interesting pen. It reminds me a little of the LaBonte. LaBonte has a couple of designs of this color except that there are multiple finishes. I enjoy the ivory color and this sort of copper colored clip, etc. and that looks nice.

I like the size, it’s ok. It feels a little bit plastic. It’s a bit of a, I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like an extremely high end pen. It doesn’t meant it’s not a good pen but that’s my impression.

As to the nib, the nib gives a nice line variation. A 1.1mm stub is a width of a nib. It works well. It writes smoothly. No issues there. My one issue with the nib is that it runs dry. I wrote an A4 page of text because I was taking notes. Just in one go and at some point the nib stopped writing so I may have to tune it up a bit. The main gap between the tines a little bit but it’s defiantly a bit of a dry writer. I talked to someone else who had a Conklin model. She had also a broad or stub on there and she said it has the exact same thing. I am not sure if that is a Conklin thing but in any case be prepared for that. Try out the pen at a store if you want to avoid that.

Having said that it’s a nice nib, a smooth nib, good line variation. It is not a huge issue to while I am writing it just unscrew the pen and prime the feed a bit with some ink from the converter. But of course you could ask is that something you should have to do with this price point? That is something that you could ask yourself I suppose.

Having said that. I think it is a pretty cool pen. First Conklin I have ever used. I think this is a good example of their pens. They look nice. They work fairly well. It also says Glider by the way. I just noticed that on the center band.

So I told you what I like about it and what I don’t like about. Let me take some quick measurements. I get 30 grams as to the weight. Length is 140mm capped, it’s a big one. Then we get 122mm uncapped. Section diameter at the narrowest point we get about 11mm, at the end there before the end of the barrel I got 12 mm.

I hope this was useful. Writing sample and I will see you later.