The Franklin-Christoph Amber-Orange & Cinnamaroon Model 02 was an impulse purchase while I was browsing the site. I ordered it at the same time as the Tiger Red Model 20 but it shipped a few days later as the needlepoint nib was out of stock. I already had two pens in my cart so I was in a buying mood. I already have two Model 02s, both a 1st gen and a 2nd gen) but the orange kept catching my eye. Anything orange usually catches my eye although it often ends up disappointing me. But in a moment of weakness I added it to my cart with the optional Mike Masuyama needlepoint nib.
I did feel some buyers remorse when the pen arrived. First off, the acrylic is translucent, heavily frosted but translucent. I’m not a fan of translucent pens, although there are exceptions. In many cases I think they look like cheap plastic. In this case that’s not an issue, the Model 02 looks like a quality build. Second, I don’t like seeing converters or ink cartridges in the pen. This pen isn’t too bad, I know it’s there so I can’t not see the chrome converter in the pen. At a distance or angle, and not knowing it’s a converter, it probably just looks like a more heavily frosted area. This can be avoided completely by converting it to a eye drop filler. The frosted look comes from a rough interior so this could be harder to clean since there’s more area for the ink to cling to. I have a clear “ice” F-C pen that was a pain to clean after I used it as an eye dropper and there was some staining (of course this does depend on the ink). I want to use several different inks relatively quickly so I’m avoiding the eye drop fill option for now. A full body with the needlepoint nib would last me well over a month or I’d waste a lot of ink if I flushed it early.
Despite my buyer’s remorse I do like the look of the pen so I inked it up. For the first ink I picked a nice dark, and well-behaved, Pilot Black ink. As the “This Just In” title suggests, I haven’t used the pen long enough to review it, it’s just my first impression.
I was shocked with how smooth the nib was. It’s a Mike Masuyama nib so I did expect it to be good, but being a thin needlepoint there’s not a lot of surface area to be lubricated with ink and to ride above the rough areas of paper. It’s even smoother than the needlepoint in my Pocket 40 which did cause me to hesitate before ordering it with this pen. My use so far has been on various Doane papers (Jotter & writing pads) and it’s been very smooth.
My buyer’s remorse has vanished and now I’m happy to have the pen, even though it is my third Model 02. I’ve already reviewed both my first generation Model 02 and my second generation Model 02. I liked the second gen model a little more and I expect this to be about the same. The nib is the only wildcard. I didn’t really like it in my Pocket 40, but so far I’m liking this copy of the nib a lot more.