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Pen Review-Pilot Prera

The Pilot Prera is most commonly found in the clear demonstrator version at most U.S. retailers, and that had always put me off from buying this pen. I’m also not a particularly big fan of the clear version, and at $56.00 at many online pen retailers, I find this pen is way overpriced. The heart and soul of a pen are the nib and feed, and the Prera has the same as nib and feed that come on the 78G, the Metropolitan, and the Penmanship. All of those pens retail for well under $20.00. I don’t see anything in the Prera to justify more than double the price of the Metropolitan. So until recently, I never gave this pen a serious look.


Then I saw that Jet Pens not only had the Prera in solid colors not normally available to the U.S. market, but the price was a much more reasonable $32.50. I bought one in the brown finish with a medium nib. Mine came with a black cartridge and a CON-50 converter.


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The pen itself is made of a nice sturdy plastic. The plastic feels nicer than the plastic of the 78G or the plastic section of the Metropolitan. The Prera has two more advantages over its less costly cousins. First, the section is a more comfortable diameter, closer to what one would find on a Pelikan M200. Second, the slip on cap is really nice. It glides into place with a very satisfying and secure “click.” It feels a lot nicer than the slip cap on the Metropolitan.
The pen is quite small when capped easily fitting into any shirt pocket or pants pocket. It’s so small that, like the Kaweco Sport, it really has to be posted in order to be an effective writer. Aided by the metal ring on the back of the barrel, the cap posts securely. Once posted, the pen is almost as long as a Pelikan M200 posted, and is longer than an un-posted Lamy 2000.

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The barrel unscrews to reveal the CON-50 converter. I really like this converter. This is one feature where the Prera excels over other small pens like the Kaweco Sport. The Kaweco Sport truly lacks a meaningful working converter. Even the newest push/pull converter available from Kaweco doesn’t work all that well forcing the user of the Kaweco to use cartridges or fashion some other work-around solution for filling the pen. Pilot’s CON-50 converter, while not having a massive ink capacity (~.4ml), is generous enough to mean that, at least for my purposes, I get about a week of use out of this pen before needing a refill. The wide mouth of Pilot’s converter make it easy to rinse it out under a running faucet. A bulb syringe can be used to flush the section. I don’t think I’ve ever spent more than four or five minutes flushing this pen out, if that.

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Now, to the heart and soul of the pen: the nib and feed. This is where things get slightly disappointing. The feed on this pen isn’t particularly generous. My higher end pens, Pelikan M200’s and a Lamy 2000, have much more generous feeds that lay down a nice wet line. The Prera has a somewhat stingy feed. It’s not super dry, but you will never get a juicy line out of this pen. This pen tends to run best with wetter inks. Think Aurora, Waterman, Diamine, or Iroshizuku over Pelikan, Montblanc, or Parker Quink. Yes, I have run those dryer inks in this pen successfully, but I find the wetter inks more satisfying.
The nib itself had a little problem when the pen arrived. It had a slight case of baby’s bottom causing the occasional hard start, and the tipping was unevenly ground. I lived with this for quite a while before deciding to work the nib myself. I would never do this with a better quality nib, but because the cost of having a professional tune and grind a nib costs more than the pen itself, I decided I would do the work myself. The results were quite good. No more hard starts, and the nib writes smoothly with a touch of feedback. Even with the nib writing properly it’s not particularly inspiring. It’s hard as a nail, which I actually find to be an advantage on rougher office copy paper, and simply utilitarian. It gets the job done without any pizazz.
Pilot’s medium nib here is very fine. I also have a 78G in medium, and my wife has a Metropolitan in medium, and all of them exhibit the same very fine line width that I would rate somewhere between an western fine and extra fine. I can’t imagine how narrow the fine nib must write. If you’re used to western medium nibs, you will find this medium surprisingly narrow. The very narrow nib combined with the somewhat dry feed actually make this a good pen for jotting notes on just about any paper. The pen won’t drench cheap office copy paper, and it writes wet enough that your ink still looks decent on Rhodia.

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Overall, I find this to be a very good pocket pen. I probably won’t be using this pen for extended writing sessions, but for jotting notes or shorter writing sessions, this a good little pen. There isn’t a lot available in the world of low-cost pocket pens, and the Prera fills that niche nicely. I would personally like a wetter feed and a nicer nib, but all things considered, the Prera is a good buy if you can find one at a lower price. If you want a small, well made pocket pen that has a fully functional converter, give the Pilot Prera a try.

 
Wow, great review! Here's mine that I use with my Midori Traveler's notebook (passport size). I agree it's a solid pen body, my nib worked well with no skipping issues, but it's nothing spectacular. I wouldn't mind having a full size version for daily use at a comparable price; of course, with the same awesome design for capping the pen!

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Nice review. Thanks. Very informative.

Richard Binder's theory about stingy feeds and dry-writing pens in general is that modern manufacturers are so afraid of their pens expelling ink when handled that they intentionally manufacture them with stingy feeds and tightly spaced tines. In previous times, he theorizes, people just knew not to shake their pens. I can't say that most modern pens write dry out of the box, but some (like your Prera) certainly do, and it's an interesting theory as to why that might be.
 
Have one in gray color and Medium size nib, like a lot, very comfortable to transport, the nib writes fine-medium for me, it's ok. It could have more flow, but it's my carry out pen, inked always in Diamine Evergreen Green.
I also have the 78G in medium size, but the Prera seems to me thinner than 78G.
 
Thanks, Erik.

I followed Richar Binder's nib workshop tutorial for working the nib. It's taken me some time to get comfortable with the process, and this was easily the most sucess I've had with it. I've long been comfortable with opening the tines to improve ink flow. That's relatively easy. I actually didn't need to do that with this nib. The tines were already opened to an acceptable degree right out of the box. (Incendentally, that's why I attributed the flow characteristics of this pen to the feed and not the tines being too tightly closed, as is the case with so many pens these days.)

The real issue with the nib was the baby's bottom caused by the unevenly shaped tipping. The tipping on one tine was actually larger and more rouned over on the inner edge of the nib slit than the other causing a baby's bottom like effect. The pen wouldn't immediately start on the initial down stroke. As I said in the review. I lived with that for quite a while as it wasn't really bad. But I eventually decided I would try to do something about it. I knew that I could easily replace the nib if I screwed it up.

Interestingly, I used the honing stone from an old Rolls Rolling Razor set to do the initial regrind of the tipping. It's not overly aggressive, and the scratches left behind are easily polished out. I used 2000 grit sandpaper and micro mesh as per Richard Binder's instructions for the rest of the job.

Of the three pens in our household that have this same nib and feed, this is the only one that needed regrinding of the nib. My 78G needed to have the nib opened up. It didn't write at all when I got it due to the tips of the tines being tightly closed. Generally, I think issues with Pilot's nibs are rare. I can't remember the last time I've read a post where someone was having trouble with a Pilot nib.
 
Interestingly, I used the honing stone from an old Rolls Rolling Razor set to do the initial regrind of the tipping.

Brilliant bit of Macgyvering there! I was thinking about getting a stone to practice grinding on some $3 pens, but no need; I've got a Rolls! Thanks for the tip (no pun intended there....).
 
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