Fountain Pen Review: Rubato Map Nib Fountain Pen

Rubato Pen Studio is a one-woman pen maker who I’ve met at each the California and SF Pen Present. I’m completely enamored with the designs she creates and the experimentation she is using in her pen growth. She comes from a calligraphy background and is certainly an artist (she drew the lovable cat sketch pictured above) so what she is creating are pens that assist artistic folks use fountain pen(-ish?) pens for his or her artistic endeavors. I used to be initially taken with her use of color and inclusions in her resins. There are pale translucent colours with glitter and creamsicle swirls. She has added wildflowers, leaves, seeds and allure inclusions into a few of her pen designs.

The pens are tiny however the caps thread onto the physique to create an extended, extra snug writing expertise.

The costs for an entire pen vary from about $90-$150 relying on the pen, nib unit and add-ons.

What continues my pleasure and enthusiasm for her work is her improvements in nibs and her superb ink caps fabricated from a transparent plastic materials with pyramid-like hollows just like the again of an alligator that maintain ink and look SOOOO COOL!

When ink is flowing, the ink swimming pools into the folds of the ink cap (What ought to this be referred to as?!?! Based on her website online, it’s an “higher reservoir” however I like Ink Alligator!) permitting the pen for use for longer durations of time as a dip pen or with the ink cartridge with out as a lot of the railroading that may typically occur with extra versatile nibs if the feed can’t sustain.

The map nib unit holds a smaller than regular dip nib referred to as a map nib for its extra-extra high quality traces typically used for particulars on (you guessed it) maps. The map nibs will be fairly scratchy and will not be for the faint of coronary heart. They’re nice for detailed linework in sketching and drawing.

I completely love utilizing the G nib unit. I had no points with railroading whereas utilizing it and I discover the G nibs to be fairly easy to make use of. The map nib is scratchy for me (lefty right here!) however it was not ink starved, simply very freakin’ pointy. The extremely high quality line of the map nib has its attraction in some instances however I might not advocate this as an on a regular basis author or for a beginner.

Normally, there’s some play to the flex nib items on the Rubato pens so I wouldn’t advocate them to a brand new fountain pen person on the whole. When you love the look of those pens, I might advocate beginning along with her normal Schmidt nib unit to get the nice appears to be like with a extra conventional nib. When you’e able to experiment with versatile nibs, then the G nib unit is superb however might require somewhat adjustment right here and there (the nib and higher reservoir/alligator are friction match and held to one another with a silicone rubber band which might require being reset or adjusted if it’s been cleaned or bumped. It’s not an enormous deal however it’s one thing extra skilled fountain pen customers will likely be extra accustomed to (“are the feed and nib totally inserted into the housing?” kind of data) and should require getting your fingers somewhat inky.

General, the Rubato Pen Studio pens and nibs are a number of the most original and revolutionary that I’ve seen within the maker markets this 12 months. Hopefully, Rubato Pen Studio will likely be on the California Pen Present in February subsequent 12 months with extra of her superb, distinctive creations.

DISCLAIMER: The gadgets included on this evaluation had been offered freed from cost by Rubato Pen Studio for the aim of evaluation. Please see the About page for extra particulars.