Retro 51 Cioppino Fountain Pens

Bought this mainly because it looked so attractive. Have noticed other pens with similar material but this seemed the most appealing. Modest heft to the pen @ brass construction, but there are heavier. Threads are surprisingly rough.considering the price of the pen. However this is fixable. Because half the threads are metal (brass) and the other half are plastic the metal will wear the plastic down. This requires about 300 back and forth motions at each site of roughness. I had two major and minor spots. It's not as bad as it sounds since one rotation takes less than a second. You can feel the threads smoothing out as the rotation tally increases. Finally, add several coatings of human facial grease (nasal fold or temple area) to the barrel threads with your index finger and the threads become butter smooth.. I got the stub nib which added the expected attractive flair to the ink line. However there was a predictable significantly hard start after 24 hours of non use. This is readily solved by advancing ink column with the convertor piston (provided with the pen). Narrower nibs may not have this problem with less ink flow demand. Pen is comfortable to hold writing. Did I mention it's attractiveness? The eye is readily drawn to it either writing or wherever it lays.