From the category archives:

Reviews

Battle of the Pens

The Pilot Frixion is the undisputed king of erasable pens but now Uni-Ball has thrown down the gauntlet with its Uni-Ball Fanthom erasable gel pen. We have tested both pens in today’s battle of the pens to try and find out which is better.

Frixion Vs Fanthom

Writing Performance

Both Pens write very smoothly and the Fanthom probably edges it over the Frixion. However the ink is laid down straight away with the Pilot Frixion but the Uni-Ball Fanthom took a few strokes before the ink was flowing freely. Although this is not a major issue it is slightly annoying.

Comfort

The Uni-Ball Fanthom has a slim hard plastic grip area that is quite smooth with indentions cut in to it. I found it quite slippy to hold and not particular comfortable.

Whereas the Pilot Frixion has a thicker grip area made of rubber with indentations in the rubber. The thicker rubber grip of the Frixion I personally found more comfortable and easier to write with, but I do prefer a pen with a thicker barrel.

Choice of Ink Colours

Both pens have a good range of ink colours and at the time of writing this the Pilot Frixion is available in eight different ink colours in the UK and the Uni-Ball Fanthom has a choice of six different ink colours. The ink for both pens that we tested is a little bit on the pale side but this is a characteristic of erasable pens in general.

Erasability

We carried out a couple of tests to check the erasability of both pens.

1 The first test was to write a test sentence and then erase it.

2 The second test involved writing a new sentence over the erased area.

First we tested the Uni-Ball Fanthom; the writing is erased by rubbing the pens cap over the writing. Quite a bit of energy is required to erase the writing and although it does a reasonable job you can still see a faint outline of the original sentence where some residue of the ink is left.

We then wrote over the original sentence that had been erased which again produced reasonable results. The new sentence is clear to read although you can tell that it is written over erased text.

We then tested the Pilot Frixion unlike the Fanthom the ink is erased with an eraser at the end of the pen and the results were far more impressive. All the ink was erased and you have to look really closely at the paper to see the indentations from where the original text had been written.

Once we had wrote over the erased sentence with the Pilot Frixion it was virtually impossible to tell that this had been written over erased text.

Click to View Writing Test

Verdict

An erasable pen has to be judged on performance and although the Uni-Ball Fanthom does a reasonable job at erasing the Pilot Frixion is still the superior pen and remains the king of erasable pens.

I am sure that both pens will have their supporters and we would love to hear from anybody else who has used either of these pens.

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The Rhodia Boxset

by The Pen Warrior on May 19, 2010

A number of the blogs to which I subscribe have often extolled the virtues of Rhodia note pads. Up until now, it was not a brand that I used but recently saw a good deal that made me venture down the Rhodia path.

As you can see below, the set comprised of 2 pencils, 2 – A5 No 16 blocks, 2 No. 08 blocks (7.4 x 21.0 cm) and 2 – No. 11 Blocks  (7.4 x 10.5 cm). All had 80gm high grade vellum graph paper. Normally, I would go for plain paper but at the price I paid, I was not complaining! As you can see they all came in Rhodia’s familiar gold trademark covers.

Rhodia Boxset

The 2 pencils were not graded but I suspect they would be B as they were somewhat darker than HB (No.2). Triangular in shape, they are really comfortable to hold and providing the chance to have a form grip. They wrote smoothly and using the eraser located at the end left very little debris on the paper so from my perspective the eraser was not too soft.

The quality of the paper is excellent having a good smooth face that did not show damage when the eraser was used. Using a Pilot G2 rollerball pen left a sooth line with no ‘feathering’ of the edges and there was no bleed through the page.

I then tried the new Uniball Fanthom erasable rollerball and achieved the same result. Again, there was  very little break up of the paper when using the eraser. It is quite clear that this is paper of the highest standard and writing glides over the paper leaving a very crisp presentation (perhaps better than my writing deserves!)

My final test was with a recent acquisition of a Pilot Capless fountain pen that I will talk about another time when it has had some solid use. I used some Rohrer and Klingner  Verdura ink. Now I normally take the view that green ink is for crank letter writers but have been doing some reconciliation, so it’s a good colour to use. The result was first class in my opinion. No bleed at all and the colour, already a vibrant one did not lose its depth of colour at all.

What will I use the pads for? The smallest sits nicely in my pocket for the jotting down phone numbers, email addresses etc and the long narrow versions have been ‘stolen’ by my wife for her endless lists! The A5 is being hidden in my briefcase and it is perfect for meeting notes and so on. Overall, I am really pleased with the purchase and my Rhodia library will undoubtedly expand over the coming months.

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Check out the 10th Carnival of Pen, Pencil and Paper

May 4, 2010

The new edition of the pen and paper carnival is up at the Whatever blog, and there’s some great reading to be done.
The cool thing about the carnival is that it always leads us to brilliant new blogs we haven’t seen before. The bad thing about the carnival is that it leads us to brilliant [...]

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Pen Blog Review: Whatever

May 4, 2010

We’re starting a new feature here at the Tiger Pens Blog: Reviews of our favourite pen, pencil and paper-related blogs. We’ll be telling you about the ones we read to keep up on pen news and tips and hopefully will also be be bringing you interviews with some of the top pen bloggers on the [...]

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Gel Stick Pen Face-Off: Pilot G1 Grip, Pentel Hybrid Gel Grip and Uniball Signo Gel Grip

April 5, 2010

Gel stick pens are great to have around the office because they’re inexpensive, simple and tend to write so well. Plus, they’re typically nice-looking pens. But not all sticks are created equal, and we decided to put three popular office models to the test to see which one came out on top.

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Pilot RexGrip: The Underrated Ballpoint Pen

March 29, 2010

The Pilot RexGrip is one of those pens that just doesn’t get a lot of mention. Probably because it’s a ballpoint and most pen enthusiast are strictly gel, liquid ink or fountain pen users. But that’s unfortunate, since the RexGrip is an extremely comfortable and surprisingly reliable little pen.

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My First Fountain Pen…the Parker 51

March 25, 2010

I shall start with a confession: Until quite recently I had never used a fountain pen.
Somehow I had managed to get to the wrong side of 40 without ever having written a single letter using this particular type of pen. Contrary to popular belief, it is not compulsory to be taught how to write with [...]

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A review of the classic Pilot H-1010 ‘The Shaker’ pencil

March 23, 2010

I have had a variety of vintage pencils in the locker but have refrained from using any of these at the office as I do not want to lose them or they are getting a little fragile. As a result, over the past couple of years, my workplace pen has been the standard HB pencil [...]

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Handwriting Contest Winner Reviews Pilot VPen

February 3, 2010

Julie B, who was the 2nd place winner in our handwriting contest last year, has posted a review of the prize she won, a Pilot disposable fountain pen. She also has links to instructions on how to refill the “disposable” VPen and its American version, the Pilot Varsity. Go check it out.

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Pilot B2P – The Official Pen of Climate Change

January 13, 2010

A familiar brand of recycled rollerballs got a little recognition last month when they were designated as the official pen of the international climate change conference in Copenhagen.

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