At the office, one of my tasks is taking notes at meetings, some of which can last for most of the working day. For that you need a full pen and an empty bladder, as the arguments aren’t going to stop to allow you to fill one or empty the other. So I need a pen that’s easy on the hand and has a high ink capacity. So I when I saw the Konrad demonstrator on the Pure Pens site, I gave it a try.
Noodler’s presents itself as a practical, no-frills company, and that shows in their pens. The nib and feed are friction fit, meaning both can be adjusted to get the right flow. I like to write wet, as it’s the best guarantee against skipping. The nib is steel, but with enough flex to use it for calligraphy.
Made of vegetal resin, the barrel has a slightly rough feel. One vintage feature is the blind cap that covers the turning knob for the piston.
The instruction pamphlet goes into detail on how to maintain and disassemble the pen, but as I’m not especially handy, I’ll leave off doing the latter. I filled it with Visconti Blue ink, which is a strong color. At first I thought it might stain the barrel, but during refilling I saw this wasn’t the case.
The pamphlet also mentions the design is based on a German model of the fifties, so I knew the name referred to Konrad Adenauer, the West-German chancellor at the time, who oversaw the economic resurgence of his country and made it a member of NATO and the European Economic Community (later the European Union).
