I wanted a small fountain pen to add to my everyday carry. Although such category of pocket pens indeed exists, most of the options are, well, ordinary. Fortunately, Gravitas pens produces pens which are anything but ordinary, so I didn’t hesitate for too long and went with Gravitas Pocket Pen in Raw Copper. It’s a raw copper pen, not some copper trim or copper spray finish. Why did I go with copper? In general I prefer warm coloured metals, but mostly went with copper because it will patina like crazy and I’m a fan of patina journey, especially for the items which receive some significant (ab)use. Anything in the everyday carry does, sorry, pure fact. Back to the pen though, new it comes coated, so all shiny and nice looking. Ben, founder and the man behind Gravitas has is education in coatings, so I bet we can trust him on this. Gravitas pocket pen also comes in other finishes such as raw brass, stainless steel or even titanium, next to more usual choices of anodized aluminium. Most eye catching of all, I think, is their Rainbow Skittle finish, definitely worth checking out. Surely pocket pen category deserves some play.
So a quick summary of my first impressions on what I like about it and what I had noticed. No dislikes as such and that’s a good start.
The likes:
- Let’s start by the fact that it’s made by Gravitas Pens, based in Ireland. Direct-to-consumer model brand and I try these to surround me. Whole company is the result of one man’s passion and you can definitely tell the attention to detail on this one too. I don’t want to get too carried away with going through the details, but they are there. Sort of silent communication between the human behind the product design during which the details are being encoded and the consumer who hopefully is able to read it. I feel the messages are being received, Ben, thank you.
- A lot of pen for the buck. It retails at 110 euros at the time of writing this and for this you get full size nib, titanium section, machined body, raw material and other goodies mentioned here or not. Anything but some plastic injected mass production.
- Speaking of the nib – let’s just appreciate not only the fact that we can have an in-house manufactured piece of clean design here, but also the fact that we have a full size Jowo No 6 nib in a pocket pen! And it comes in 7 nib sizes to choose from! I went with steel size ‘fine’ just to keep it on the small side when in need to fill-in various forms. Will try a stub on the next pen from them. The nib performs very consistently and really impressed me with the performance so far.
- Size of the pen is a worthy topic for conversation. Conversation with myself as apparently its only me writing this. Always a challenge with the pocket pens to find that perfect balance between keeping it small and yet usable. Having a full size nib brings this challenge even further. Overall uncapped length of the pen is 98 mm, however more importantly is the length with the nib excluded (section to an end) as one will not hold on to the nib. Here we are in pocket dimensions territory of 76 mm, which is just about enough to sit in my hand and be able to use the pen uncapped. Surprisingly writing uncapped with this pen to me is more convenient, admittedly I do have quite small hands. However as the pen caps, this shouldn’t be an issue for the most.
- Pen section is metal, but not slippery which is not to be taken for granted. Gravitas machined micro grooves onto the section and went ahead and bead blasted them not be sharp when holding the pen. Indeed feels nice to touch, doesn’t slip nor is sharp as the result.
- Although the pen takes international cartages, rumour is that one can fit Kaweco mini converter into it, albeit not fully extended. My plan is to use inks in copper native colours with it (browns, greens), so converter is a worthy 5 EUR add-on.
- Reverse writing gives beautiful think line and is actually usable, should one care.
What I’ve noticed:
- Couldn’t help myself thinking that my particular piece could have benefited from just a touch of high grid emery paper as the last stage of machining process of the pen body to remove those visible tool marks.
- Capped vs uncapped dilemma. Interestingly cap alone is 34 g which is half of the pen’s weight. So when capped, to me pen does feel a bit back-weighted which I do not prefer. Luckily, as mentioned previously it does fit to my hand uncapped just fine.
- Pen comes with the nicely designed Gravitas pen sleeve, love the old alphabet imprints, although it’s a standard pen size sleeve, which is way oversized for the pocket pen. Not that I would complain about another upcoming leather project.
I really like this pen and can’t wait for the patina to develop. Never thought I’d add a fountain pen next to raw denim, boots, belts and leather jackets journey of ours.
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