J Herbin glass dip pen review

I will admit that I cheated a bit with this review. I tagged it as "fountain pen review" when it should have been "dip pen review" but I figured I wouldn't be reviewing a lot of dip pens on this blog so I might as well bundle it with my regular fountain pen reviews.

This particular J Herbin glass dip pen is part of the largest pen and ink order I placed over a year ago. I haven't reviewed it until now because I've had more important things to review. It turns out that there isn't much to say about a dip pen, especially one as simple as this.

There were two J Herbin glass pens for sale when I bought mine. There's a more elaborate one (which looks more fragile) and then there's this one. I opted for the simpler (and cheaper) one because I was more interested in the functionality than the aesthetics.

At $15.75 this pen isn't exactly cheap (considering that actual fountain pens can be bought for this amount) but on the other hand these pens are supposed to be hand-crafted so I guess that's where the bulk of the cost is. The more intricate pens are more expensive, at $20+.

The J Herbin dip pen is crafted from a solid glass rod with a colored spiral pattern surrounding it. This rod is on the thin side, about as thick as your average pencil. I can't say that it makes for comfortable lengthy writing. The rod (or body of the pen) ends in a transparent glass ball which, I assume, is there to help you grip the pen and also to prevent ink from getting on your fingers. Moving on, we have the tip, which is also glass, twisted tightly to form a series of spiral grooves.

The grooves serve a simple purpose: they trap the ink between them so that you don't have to dip the pen after every word, essentially acting as a reservoir. Thanks to this simple design, you should be able to write a whole line or two before re-dipping.

The tip itself is quite broad, if you will forgive the use of the term. It is not very precise and if you look at it closely you'll see that it resembles a cone, meaning that it is uniform on all sides. This is, perhaps, one of the reasons why this pen doesn't write very well. The other reason is that the part of the tip which touches the paper isn't smooth. Instead, it is rough.

The pen does write, as you can see from the sample below. However, you need to be careful how much ink you "load" on the tip, or else you'll end up with it pooling on the paper, as is the case with the last 3 letters of the word "Darkness". The very nature of the dip pen causes text to be uneven: it starts out thick and saturated and it slowly thins out and fades away as the ink is depleted.

Thanks to the rough tip, the pen feels raspy on paper. Is this design intentional? If you have any information regarding this I'd be happy to hear about it. The roughness doesn't bother me a lot because I'm aware I'm not using a fountain pen with a metal nib.

J Herbin's glass dip pen feels a lot like a novelty pen to me. It is pretty but there are dip pens which cost much less and write a lot better. I have found a good use for this pen. Virtually all my ink reviews have a small sentence written with this pen. The writing itself is ugly (because the pen distorts my already-messy script) but the point is to show the ink's saturation and shading (if available). There's another advantage to a glass dip pen: it cleans incredibly easy. You can use any type of ink on it (even Baystate Blue!) and it will never remain stained. It's glass, after all, and glass is inert in contact with inks.

Would I recommend it? Not really. I find it too expensive for its limited utility. But don't let that stop you from buying it if you are so inclined!

The inks used in the sample are all the bottles I own (alas, only 9 of them) and I have reviewed all of them in the past:

Noodler's Heart of Darkness
Noodler's Polar Brown
Waterman Havana Brown
J Herbin 1670 Anniversaire
Noodler's Nikita
Diamine Orange
J Herbin Vert Olive
Noodler's Gruene Cactus Eel
Noodler's Navajo Turquoise

1st Goulet Pens haul

With this post I'm almost up to date with blogging about my fountain pen and ink purchases. I know that I should probably review what I already have but since some of the pens I got at the beginning were filled with inks that I got later, I wanted to outline these purchases first.

Goulet Pens is a wonderful business run by a couple who are passionate about inks and fountain pens: Brian and Rachel Goulet. Their customer service is outstanding and they give a personal touch to each transaction that is almost unmatched in today's corporate-controlled market. What attracted me to Goulet Pens apart from the stories of excellent customer care was the fact that they offer a complete range of Noodler's inks (well, at least the ones that are currently being produced). Since I have quickly become a big fan of Noodler's inks, the Goulet store was the obvious place to shop.

This first haul was a significant one, if not necessarily in terms of cost, then definitely in terms of items.

Going from left to right and top to bottom, I have the following:

A 4.5oz bottle of Noodler's Nikita ink. I wanted a red ink and, after reading a bunch of reviews, this one seemed perfect, especially since it comes with an actual Noodler's fountain pen. The artwork on the bottle is a hoot.

A 3oz bottle of Noodler's Gruene Cactus Eel ink. This would become my "main" green ink. I planned to use this in the Sailor HighAce Neo fountain pen that I discussed in my previous post regarding my 2nd JetPens haul.

A bottle of J Herbin 1670 Anniversary Rouge Hematite ink, or in other words, another red ink. This is my most expensive ink to date and I decided to buy it despite the cost due to its unique bottle and even more unique shading properties. Oh and also because it is supposed to be a limited edition and I didn't want to miss out on it.

A bottle of Diamine Orange ink. I struggled a lot with the many choices one has when deciding what orange ink to buy and all I can say for now is that I don't regret buying this ink one tiny bit. In fact my very next review is likely to be of this ink.

A bottle of J Herbin Vert Olive. I wanted a lighter shade of green that I would use more for shading when drawing. Yeah, I'm not an artist but I sometimes pretend to be one.

A J Herbin glass dip pen. I bought this pen because I thought it would make it easier for me to quickly sample an ink without having to ink up a fountain pen. In this aspect it is very useful. On the other hand its writing qualities aren't much to speak of.

Next is the Noodler's fountain pen which came with the 4.5oz bottle of Noodler's Nikita ink. This is an interesting pen because not many people know about it. Usually Noodler includes Platinum Preppys in their 4.5oz bottles but this is an exception. This fountain pen is also an eyedropper so I promptly filled it with Nikita ink. It also has a "creaper" nib which in Noodlerspeak means that the nib doesn't have a breather hole.

Finally, there's my first true Noodler's fountain pen with a piston filling system. It has a non-flex nib and in retrospect I regret not getting the flex nib for the same price, especially since now they have been (and will continue to be) out of stock for a long time. In the photo it is filled with J Herbin Vert Olive ink.

I won't give any spoilers but suffice to say that after using all of the above for a few weeks, I am nothing but pleased with each and every one of them. To tell the truth, the dip pen is the only thing over which I'm not ecstatic, but given the choice, I would buy it all over again.

Rest assured that I will review each and every one of these purchases going forward, if all goes well. In fact, the next review that I have scheduled is for the Diamine Orange ink, so stay tuned.