Size and perfomance of Sailor 1911 vs Pelikan 400 vs old m400 with 250 nib!

[Samer]

I had this in my post below about the sailor 1911 but I thought I'll put it in a seperate post...

What's the difference in size between the sailor normal full sized sailor 1911 and pelikan 400.

Ebay has a lot of good looking brown tortoise m400 from the 1980/90s whose nibs are the well reviewed 250 single tone god nib.

What are your takes on the writing style of each pen, especially if I didn't like at all the feel from a Lamy Studio. That was the only good quality pen i was able to sample, I prefered a cheaper Schneider!

And lastly what are the Pelian 400NN? They also seen to have the same nib with 2 parallel strikes on either side

 

[nemo]

There are two sizes of Sailor 1911, the full size is a large pen, 141mm (capped) and the 1911M is about 136mm. They write well but seem a bit lifeless when compared to most Pelikans. I must add that I haven't owned any of the S or soft Sailor nibs which seem to be somewhat scarce.

Pelikan's M400 and vintage 400 pens are smaller, coming in about 125mm or 5" when capped. The earlier 80s-90s pens with the single-toned gold nib do write nicely. They shared the same nib as the M250 but I wouldn't necessarily call it an M250 nib -- when Pelikan put that gold nib in the lower priced M200 it turned it into the M250.

The 400NN has a nicer nib in my opinion, much more flexible, some came with beautiful semi-flex nibs and the broad point is somewhat of a stub nib. These pre-66 nibs can be easily distinguished from the later gold nibs by the ebonite feed and that the nib size marking is a straight capital letter, not italicized ( M versus M). 400NN was also the longest of the vintage Pelikans at 130mm (capped) with rounded ends for the space-age 1960s.

I hope this helps, keep asking if need be.

 

[brianw]

Here is where Nemo and I agree to disagree.

My Sailor 1911M is heads and tails above any Pelikan I have owned. maybe its how it fits my hand , or the Nagahara nib, I do not know..... but it exudes goodness to me.

I sold my Pel 400, and am in the process of selling my 800. I guess they never rung my bell

 

[Mike H]

Photo of Pelikan M405 and full size sailor 1911. Both are nice pens, but I like my vintage Pelikan 140 much better.