Review: Cross Apogee Fine-Nibbed Fountain Pen with Frosty Steel Finish

An "apogee" is the point of orbit of a heavenly body in which it is furthest away from the center of the object around which it is orbiting. So, I take it Cross intended the name of this pen to mean a pen that has reached the highest standards.

I'd say that's about right in this case. I like almost everything about this pen. Pens being so personal, of course, I found a thing or two I don't particularly like, but my complaints are mere quibbles.

I could not capture the true color of this pen. See the Flickr photo
set at the end of the post for some better pictures.

First Impressions

Usually, I have this "first impressions" section because the pen I'm reviewing was ordered online and I haven't seen it up close before. This pen is an exception, because I saw and tried the pen at Flax in L.A. before buying it there. A first impression at Flax is a little different than a first impression opening a package at home, because Flax does such a beautiful job of presentation. It looks like you're viewing jewelry in the display cases . . . Joan could probably display a charcoal gray Lamy Safari in a way that would make it look worth hundreds of dollars!

Even out of the display case, though, this pen in "blue steel" finish is quite stunning. The name of the finish is probably meant to connote blue tint to the gray/silver color. The Cross website, describes the finish as "pale blue translucent European lacquer over guilloché-etched chrome." The resulting color, in my opinion, is  more of a bluish silver than a silvery blue, and certainly less blue than the pen appears online on my monitor. The true color is somewhat of a hybrid of the three views in the picture above. If color is important, I recommend you first see one up close.

The pen has a somewhat odd, but not unattractive, outline, with a very wide variance between its widest and narrowest points. A pen this thick (0.49 inches) usually doesn't narrow toward the end of the barrel as much as this one does, and you'll note that the contour of the barrel is far narrower than the contour of the cap.

Finish and Appointments

At first glance, the finish resembles a very tight carbon fiber weave, or maybe scales, but on closer inspection — I looked at it under a 14x loupe — the barrel has a series of longitudinal wavy lines engraved into the barrel, spaced so the raised ridges narrow and broaden along their length. This is very difficult, if not impossible, to see with the naked eye.

The sleekness of the pen is broken up by a very wide cap band. The appointments are chrome plated, but the cap band has polished chrome only on its borders, with a satin finish over most of its width. The cap and barrel ends are all polished (no satin finish) with engraved rings that also tend to break up the sleek outline. This is one of my quibbles: I think the pen probably would have had a sleeker look if the cap ring was all polished chrome or the cap and barrel ends did not have the engraved rings. This, of course, is purely a subjective factor.

Cap

The cap is not threaded, and goes on feeling like it will just be friction fit until it's almost on, when you finally get the somewhat soft click that tells you its seated. This is not a sharp click like you get on a Lamy Safari or Lamy 2000. It's a little mushy, and even more so when removing the cap. Not what I'd prefer, but there's no mistaking when the cap is seated.

Which brings me to another of my quibbles, this time a a functional one. The spring-loaded clip requires you to squeeze the top of it to open it before sliding it over your pocket. The clip is so tight against the cap and and shaped so there's just no way it will slide over a pocket without opening it first. I think Lamy Safaris have spoiled me on clip functionality forever.

Nib, Feed, and Section

Cross Apogee nib om the left;
Lamy AL-Star nib on the right

The nib is rhodium-plated 18k gold. It's not particularly distinctive, except in size: it's tiny on such a large pen. I think it's even smaller than the nib on my A.G. Spalding & Bros. mini fountain pen. Given the size of the pen, the appearance is somewhat the equivalent of a person with a noticeably small head. At right, it is compared to a Lamy AL-Star nib. (Check it out compared to the giant nib on the Monteverde Invincia Stealth here.)

The section has a plastic cover on it, so those of you that avoid metal pens in order to avoid gripping metal need not worry. The section is comfortable and has never felt slippery.

I know nothing about the feed except that you don't push the converter straight onto it. The converter is threaded, which I really like. Some of my other converters get lose after many uses, but the threaded converter stays in place with no wiggling, so I'm hoping that the actual connection to the feed stays tight for a long time.

For a while, I had a difficult time with ink leaking into the cap between uses, even when I wasn't carrying the pen around with me. That seems to be a thing of the past, though. I'm assuming that certain inks will and most won't.

Writing & Feel

Someone on the Fountain Pen Network has three maxims in his signature, one of which is: "Chase the nib, not the pen." I don't know whether to attribute the pleasurable writing to the nib or the feed, but I can tell you the one obvious benefit to writing with this pen that distinguishes it from most others I own: it doesn't skip even with quick changes of direction and long, fast lines. Many of my pens tend to skip a little if I make a quick circle or long line, but this one never does.

The fine nib is probably a little broader than the fine nib on my Lamy Safaris and Waterman Expert. It is wonderfully smooth and wet. This tends to smooth out the writing even on textured paper; you'll get less feedback from the texture with this nib than with some other fine nibs. I don't know if those characteristics are standard or a fluke, but I like 'em!

People not used to metal pens may find this one a tad top heavy when posted. I started writing with fountain posted, because that's the way I always wrote before using fountain pens, but that's because everything I wrote with was plastic. I now write mostly unposted with this pen and my other metal pens, and I find it more comfortable that way.

Bottom Line

As I said, I like almost everything about this pen.

Pros: Smooth, skip-free writer, threaded converter, nice aesthetics.

Cons: squishy cap closure and difficult to use clip.

Maybe you've been toying with $30 to $40 pens and want to see if a more expensive pen is worth it. If you're willing to spend around $200 (a little less at discount retailers), this pen is a fine choice.

As usual, more photos at the Flickr photo set.

Review: Cross Apogee Fine-Nibbed Fountain Pen with Frosty Steel Finish

Making the most of a parking ticket

Image via WikipediaNothing like getting a parking ticket right in front of your own house. But that's what happened to me this week. I usually park in the back, but after having my gas tank siphoned twice in a week, I decided to park in front of the house, where a gas thief will be more exposed, until I can get a locking gas cap.

Geez, didn't I just write something in my last post about trying not to bore people?

Anyway . . . because I'm not used to parking out front, I forgot that the streetsweepers come through on the first and third Tuesday mornings each month, and my wife wasn't here to remind me, so I got a ticket.

So, how did I make the best of it? I got out a nice Crane's envelope, my newest pen, and my wax seals . . . and sent off perhaps the most elegantly posted parking ticket payment the processing center will see all month (if you don't take my handwriting into account):

I'm wondering of the clerk who gets this will even notice it among the hundreds or thousands of others to be opened that week. But of course, I didn't do it for the clerk, I did it for me. It's such a pleasure to use the good stuff!

Making the most of a parking ticket

Where did that month go?

What month? The month that I didn't post, that's what month!

I know it's customary to return from such a lengthy and unannounced hiatus with a post explaining one's absence, but . . . I'm not going to bother, because it would bore you silly.

Suffice it to say I have some posts in the queue and should be back to 1-3 posts a week starting . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . now!

Where did that month go?

Exacompta A5 Index Card Giveaway Winners

The envelope, please . . .

The winners are Chia and Amber, both of whom, it appears from their comments, are teachers. What are the odds that the random number generator at random.org would generate two numbers between 1 and 16 that pick the two teachers from among the 16 entries?

Some of you might be saying:


 

But I did use the random number generator . . . honest!

Exacompta A5 Index Card Giveaway Winners

If the Statue of Liberty were holding an uncapped pen instead of a torch, would the cap be posted?

Since the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France,
I think it goes without saying that if she were
holding a paper tablet instead of a stone tablet,
the paper would be Cairefontaine

I've seen some people rule out pens completely because it is impossible or impractical to post the cap. They can love everything about a pen, but if the cap won't post or it makes the pen top heavy, forget it. That's a dealbreaker.

I was having a chat with someone at the pen show last month about non-posting caps. Her view: that the only people who seem to be bothered by non-posting caps are Americans. Everywhere else, she insisted, people overwhelmingly write unposted.

So, is posting really just an "American thing"? Given that the USA is, according to Wikipedia, anyway, one of only three countries that continues to hold out against the metric system, some stubborn nonconformity when it comes to posting would not surprise me. But it is true?

If the Statue of Liberty were holding an uncapped pen instead of a torch, would the cap be posted?

Review and Giveaway: Exacompta A5 Index Cards

My crappy photography really washed out the green

Karen at Exaclair sent me these index cards gratis for me to review, and I was thrilled. I've been dying to try these for some time now, but did not want to buy them because I was not sure I had a use for them. I had an idea or two, but wasn't committed.

After trying them out, I am going to find a use for them, even if I have to make something up, because they are awesome. 

And, I'm going to give some away! The sign-up instructions are at the end of this post.



The Review


The quality starts with the packaging. Index cards sold in office supply stores are sold in shrink-wrapped stacks. Once you open the shrink-wrap, your cards are all over the place. Exacompta came up with this ingenious idea to solve that problem. It's called a box (or, as they say around Exaclair headquarters, un carton). Which means you can take out however many cards you need and throw the rest back in a drawer and they all stay together. Man, what will they come up with next?

Better yet, the box is not a conventional box. The cards sit on a long piece of cardboard, the ends of which flip back over the stack. The whole stack slides through the outer sleeve, sort of like a matchbox, which makes it really easy to grab the cards you want. A cutout in the end of the box let's you see your supply.

The cards come in a 100-count box, with 25 cards each in blue, yellow, pink and green. They are marked on both sides with a 5 x 5 mm grid of violet lines. The lines are a little heavy for my taste (virtually all gridlines are) and not as pale as I'd like. I thought they'd interfere with readability, but even fine and extra fine ink lines read quite easily, at least so long as the ink is highly saturated. Also, the cards are nice and sturdy, made of 205g card stock.

The writing experience is everything you would expect from an Exacompta/Clairefontaine product. Very smooth, a real joy. I was a little worried when the very first ink I tried (Levenger Cardinal Red) feathered rather severely, but most of the other inks I tried didn't feather noticeably. The only showthrough came with a Sharpie marker, and even then on only the yellow and green cards.

Like Biffybeans, I saw performance differences in the four colors. Pink was noticeably better than the rest, and green noticeably worse. But even the green wasn't too bad. I'll just remember it for my drier writers and for gels and rollerballs.



You may find these cards to be a little pricey. I haven't managed to find the A5 size online, but a slightly smaller size goes for $10-$12, depending on the vendor. At more than a dime a card, you've got to really like using these to buy them. But considering that Levenger's price for multicolored 3x5 cards works out to more than 7 cents per card for cards barely one third the size of these, the Exacompta price (whatever it is) is a bargain.

There are more photos in the Flickr photo set.

Keep in mind that cards you find at internet vendors might depart from what I've described. The product photos I've seen on various websites do not show the packaging. Also, they appear to be packaged with five colors (adding white to the four colors mentioned in this review), and I've only found them on U.S. sites in 4x6 in. and 5x8 in. sizes. I've been unable to find the A5 size for sale anywhere on the net. Anyone?

The Giveaway

There will be two lucky winners. Each will receive a sampler pack of 24 cards (6 of each color). To enter:

1. Leave a comment on this post.
2. Email me at notebookeresqATgmailDOTcom (there's a handy link near the top of the sidebar). Your email must give the name you used to comment and the subject line must read exactly:

INDEX

(Sorry to be so picky, but the email assures that I'll be able to reach the winners, and the subject line allows me to apply a filter to keep all the contest emails together automatically.) Entries will close midnight (Pacific Time) on Wednesday night. The winners will be announced on the blog and notified by email. If a winner does not claim his sampler pack by midnight the following Wednesday, I will select and notify an alternate.

Good luck!

Review and Giveaway: Exacompta A5 Index Cards

Deadly Pens!

Want a pen that will make you feel like James Bond? Then check out these 5 Tactical Pens for Writing and Self-Defense, written up by Brett McKay of The Art of Manliness. What's a tactical pen, you ask?

"A tactical pen is a writing implement that can be used both for signing checks and as a last ditch self-defense weapon."

There's not a Lamy, Namiki, Pilot, Sailor, Mont Blanc, Waterman or Visconti in the bunch!

Deadly Pens!