Shopping Finds: Exercise books, BIC pens, Stabilo

Latest shopping finds, kicking off withe these exercise books, squared ruled 88 page staple bound books available from Poundland, invoking memories of school and coloring in the squares when bored.

Next up are some more memory invokers, the classic BIC 4 colour selector pen and a new "mint" colour version. I always wanted a 4 way colour selector pen when i was young, to this day I've still never got round to getting one. Both are currently on sale at Wilkonson's in the UK along with a larger range of BIC products, including the M10 as in the picture, which I never knew actually had a model name.

And here we have more BIC products available in the Wilkinson sale, these look to me to be the infamous "For Her" BIC colours that created a bit of a foray a while back, that have now been repackage and renamed as "Fun" Cristal pens. They are nice colours I'll admit, but the whole debacle with the previous branding incarnation will no doubt stick in my mind. For a lighter look at what people thought of the original pens and that marketing campaign, check out these reviews on Amazon: 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B004FTGJUW

Finally we have a sale deal on the Stabilo 10 fineliner pen set, I've always liked these pens, but found them to be too expensive for what they are, but this price makes them much more attractive. Give them a go, they are a lovely pen for drawing and general colour work, thought hey are not light proof or pigment inks so don't expect them to last too long on paper.

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Erich Krause Liquid Line 0.5mm

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So here we have a new make to me, Erich Krause from Germany.

They seem to have a diverse range of products and types of pen that I can find in my local stores.

This pen is a liquid ink 0.5 mm nib fineliner, that writes very fine indeed for this size nib, but surprisingly not in a scratchy way, a big surprise considering the cost, just 0.99 pence.

The ink in the barrel is very dry with great fastness very soon after writing, unusual in my opinion for a liquid ink pen, they tend to be much wetter with a tendency to smudge for a while and have a wetness about them I usually find difficult to work with, whether writing or sketching.

The size of the pen is very nice, for me, not too long or short and has a nice weigh to it, the barrel and pen holding area is comfortable size. The barrel itself is finished in a slightly rubberized covering, only time will tell if it stands up to use or deteriorates quickly, I have a feeling it will, more on this later.

Here we have the cap and nib, the cap is unusually long, the recent trend seems to be for very short caps, personally I like a long cap, just feels more premium, the nib as you can see is short and very fine, I sometimes find with these needle type nib fine liners that that actual nib is too long meaning it can flex under pressure or rapid writing.
The pocket clips seems very strong on first impressions and is firmly attached to the cap barrel, lets hope it delivers what it promises.

Standard method ink delivery to the nib, the usual veined spiral system, the slight gap between nib casing and grip area is a slight puzzle, never come across this before, could this be a design flaw? I suspect it may start leaking from here at some point in the future.

And here we encounter the "issues" with the pen, the barrel unscrews, as I first assumed for refill insertion, but on closer inspection it became clear that the ink reservoir was actually molded into the nib carrier and ink veins, so while it may look refillable, it certainly is not.
Secondly, this pen was used only to write the test card, straight out of the packet, and as you can see the ink level is considerably below half way, in fact I would say there was only a quarter level in ink in the barrel. No doubt another cost saver and indicator of overall build quality and likely length of life. 
What started out as a promising looking pen, whilst it writes nicely and has some promise, ultimately disappointed, perhaps the maker is just starting out and waiting for some uptake before improving their pens, who knows, one to watch for now but I could not recommend a purchase or to but for regular users, the build quality slightly disappoints and the ink supplied would render the pen useless as a daily writer or every day pen.