Today’s post is inspired by a recent piece by Anthony at UK Fountain pens, A grand new methodology: scoring my pen collection. The idea was to give pens a score, by awarding marks in four categories, namely Practicality, Writing Experience, Comfort and Visual Appeal. Two other categories, namely Rarity and Sentimental Value were discarded for reasons which he explains.

Having made a currently inked list today, of no less than 27 fountain pens in the pen cups at home, I thought to revisit Anthony’s post and try the exercise for myself, applying it to the pens that I have in use.

And so I made a list of the pens. I ignored duplicates. For example I have two Wing Sung 601s and another two Wing Sung 601As all inked. I included one of each in my table. I added four columns to insert my score plus a fifth column for the total. The pens were listed in no particular order.

I found it easiest to complete one column at a time, awarding marks to all the pens for Practicality first, and then moving on to score them all for Writing Experience and so on. Within a short time, I had all four columns done and was able to insert the totals at the end of each row, out of a possible maximum score of 12.

This exercise does produce some pretty bizarre results. First, no consideration was given to the value of the pen, so you might get a very expensive pen sharing the same score as a cheap one. Secondly a pen might score highly in one category but do poorly in another, for example having a wonderful nib and writing experience but being awkward to hold. I tried to be reasonable in my scoring but the method is very subjective. I seldom gave a zero but did so for the Platinum Procyon for comfort, (sharp metal threads just where I grip the pen) the Lamy CP1 for comfort (very narrow and slippy even though the pen is a marvel and a design classic) and to the Kaweco Perkeo for (lack of) visual appeal. But they all have other attributes which go to balance their bad points.

At the end of the exercise, I wrote up the list again, in descending order of total scores. I went one step further and converted their marks out of 12 into percentages.

The three winners, in joint first place with 92% were my Parker Duofold International, Waterman Carene and Kaweco Dia 2. These are all pens which should stop me wanting other pens.

Next came the Pilot Custom 823 and Italix Captain’s Commission in equal 2nd place, with 83%. The Pilot is a recent acquisition which had long been on my wish list. I love how it feels but it just loses a mark for ease of cleaning.

In third position, with 75%. were the Wing Sung 601 and 601A, a Waterman Expert and a Pilot Custom Heritage 92.

The biggest group were tied in fourth place, with 67% comprising six pens ranging from Montblancs to a Chinese Duke Dreamworld (re-branded as an Autograph) and so you can see how the rankings get shaken up when you take cost out of the equation.

I had more groups of pens, tied closely in fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth places but looking back over the results, I am not sure that the outcomes fairly reflect how I feel about the pens overall. Perhaps if you add more categories, the end results might start to look more fair.

This was an interesting exercise. I agree with Anthony’s opening comment that any attempt at objectively scoring fountain pens is doomed to failure. In my case, I like all of the pens in my pen cups, some more than others and for a host of different reasons.

I think I probably knew that my Duofold and Carene would come out as favourites. Of more surprise was the Kaweco Dia which is a steel nib pen and of much lower cost. I was surprised that the Wing Sungs tied with the Pilot Custom Heritage 92 and Waterman Expert for total marks, although I gave the Wing Sungs full marks for comfort and a 2 for all the other categories. Since I smoothed the nibs a little with some micromesh there is little to fault them. The later model, 601A comes with a plastic wrench to remove the piston mechanism for cleaning and greasing. They are lightweight, reliable and effortless writers and fun to own.

I have not tried yet to rank any other pens in my collection. I am very fortunate to own some excellent pens and also fortunate to find joy in many low and mid-range pens when they perform well.

Perhaps like being able to drive different types of car, it is good to be able to use and enjoy pens of all shapes and sizes. I am still discovering my own preferences but sometimes the reasons why I seem to write more neatly with one pen than another, can be elusive. Is it the weight, the balance, the width of the section, the length of the nib, the materials or some combination of all of these? In all, it is a question of whether you feel relaxed with the pen.

Certainly it is useful to evaluate pens in some way, to think about what we like and why. With the London Pen Show tomorrow I will do well to remember the many favourites that I already own and to try to think whether any new pens on sale are really going to add anything. Thinking in terms of specific categories of attributes might help with this but I suspect that in the heat of the moment the heart will rule the head as usual!