Wow, I have been looking at these pens and blanks for some time now. They are a new style that my favourite supplier William Wood-Write in Ontario brings in from the US. One is called the Victorian Style pen and the other is the Celtic pen. The hardware for these pens are really beautiful and make for a very elegant pen. These are twist pens with ballpoint pen refills.
The blanks are a new (to me) material called Trustone. I believe that stone (in this case turquoise) is ground up and then mixed with acrylic or latex resin. Because they are actually stone, they are quite heavy, but they polish up with the wet micromesh really wonderfully. I can’t really decide which one I like better. The victorian pen is quite heavy, but the celtic pen is a bit “thick”. They both fit my hand well and so I don’t think they are too bad. I prefer the proportion of the victorian and so I think it has a slight edge on the celtic. I love the quality of the casting on both of these kits. You can also get a Celtic Cross as an optional clip for the celtic pen. Here are a couple of closer looks at the hardware.
The celtic has a green cabuchon in the end of the twist mechanism. Makes for a nice touch.
A lot of careful thought went into the design of this pen kit.
I had a bit of trouble with both of the pen twist mechanisms. The victorian wouldn’t retract without manually pushing the nib in with your finger, but as I worked it, it has started to work for the most part. The victorian twist mechanism wouldn’t work at all originally, but I muscled it a bit. The refill nib doesn’t come out very far in the celtic. Certainly not as far as I would like. This would be corrected by making the barrel a smidge shorter but would take a bit of a trial and error. With the price of the kits, I can’t really afford to muck around this way. I will be sending feedback to Bill. Don’t think he can do anything about it but it is worth letting him know of my difficulties.
What do you all think? Which one is your favourite?
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