A quick follow-up from last Friday's pen discussion:
- My JetPens.com order arrived much quicker than I expected, shipped from Mountain View, CA. I placed the order on Thursday, it arrived on Saturday, and I used their free shipping option.
- I'm pleased to say that my hopes for finer point gel pens have been fulfilled. The 0.38mm Pilot G-2s (Staples.com link) are fantastic. They eliminate all of my concerns based on past experiences with gel pens. Rands preferred the 0.7mm model over other pens half that size, but I soaked a dozen notebook pages with those and can barely read the result. My kids like the 0.7mm because they draw like markers. They can have 'em now that I have the 0.38's.
- The Pilot Hi-Tec-C black/red multi-pen writes very well with a satisfying ultra-fine tip, and feels robust with stout ink cartridges and a metal barrel. However, it's too small for my hand, in both diameter (0.25") and length (4.75"). I wonder if I could get used to it with proper pen holding technique. My wife likes it, so it'll probably become a $30 stocking stuffer.
- I ordered a Uniball Signo Bit because it appeared in Rands' review and I was interested in trying a very fine point gel pen. However, I accidentally ordered the 0.18mm model, not the 0.37mm model Rands tested. I'm glad I did, because now I know that no pen should have a tip smaller than the head of a pin. This pen is friggin' ridiculous. Useful for drawing blood, and not much else.
Hey I'll take that 0.18mm pen if you don't like it, I always wanted to try one of those ultra-fine pens, but it's hard to buy just one to test out.
I heard that those 0.18mm pens were part of a "features war" between pen manufacturers. The very fine point gel pens were hugely popular with Japanese schoolgirls, they could write tiny kanji notes in writing so small, their older, bespectacled teachers couldn't read it. One company came up with a .25 pen, then another invented the .18mm and trumped them all. I don't know how much smaller you could go, but surely someone will try.