Lamy Safari

Until a friend introduced me to the wonderful world of fountain pens almost two years ago I always used fine tipped ballpoint pens to draw my mazes. The mazes are drawn with somewhat narrow passages so when I use fountain pens they must have fine nibs. Up until recently I only had five pens, 2 Pilot Vanishing Points, a Ducati Limited and 2 Noodler's fountain pens. I had done well to resist buying anymore.

Anyone who hasn't become afflicted with the fountain pen bug would think five pens is quite enough. Of course they are wrong. Five is not even a half dozen or a six pack. How can anyone be expected to survive without at least a six pack. Plus five is not even an even number. So I went ahead and bought two more pens, to give me a total of seven pens. I know seven is not even, but even is in the word. Plus seven is a prime number. Of course, five is too, but six isn't. So once you have six, you might as well get seven.

Once I had a good enough reason to get them, my choice for these two new pens was simple. I got two Lamy Safaris. They are relatively inexpensive and they have the ability to use bottled ink if you purchase the available converter. They are available in a wide variety of nib sizes, EF, F, M and B. Mine are both Extra Fine. The Goulet Pen Company sells the nibs in steel and black steel. I like the look of the black nibs.

This pen design has been around for many years. It has been in production since the 1980s. Still it is new to me as almost all fountain pens are. Here are some pictures of one of my new pens.

The O-Ring at the base of the finger grip serves as the friction point to hold the cap in place when the pen is not in use. This seems to be an efficient design feature.

The pens are made of a sturdy, but lightweight plastic. There is a triangular shaped grip which happens to fit my hand perfectly. If you post the cap it shifts the balance too much towards the rear to suit me, but with the cap off it feels terrific. I could draw all day with one of these pens. If you look at the Lamy site you will see that the Safari is listed under their “Young Writer” category. I think that just means less expensive, or less snobbish. At 55 I think I'm still young enough to use one (or two) of these pens.

The Extra Fine nib puts down a line very similar to the Fine nib of my Pilot Vanishing Points. Here is a page of my fifth maze in progress. The orange part is drawn with the Vanishing Point using Diamine Pumpkin. The blackish part is with the Extra Fine Safari using J. Herbin Poussière de Lune.

I assume that as with any mass produced nib there will be variation in the smoothness of the feel when writing. This particular pen is very smooth straight out of the box. I haven't tried my second Safari yet to see how it performs.

I will be putting my pens to work on the August 2011 Ink Drop right away.

Jonathan