Scriveiner EDC Fountain Pen review – Short, but big-sized performance

REVIEW – The Scriveiner EDC Fountain Pen is from a company that touts itself as “UK’s leading luxury pen brand”. They kindly sent two fountain pens to review. The EDC Fountain pen, and one of their standard size. Scriveiner also makes ballpoint and rollerball pens, but to a fountain pen fan, well…

What is it?

The Scriveiner EDC Fountain Pen is a slightly shortened, but fully functional fountain pen with a normal ink supply.

What’s included?

• Scriveiner EDC Fountain Pen in presentation gift box
• One blue and one black Schmidt disposable ink cartridge
• Refillable Schmidt ink converter
• User Guide and warranty extension card

Tech specs

Design and features

First some information on ‘fountain penning’ for those who may be considering them.

Part of the adventure of fountain pens is finding the right inks for the pen you want to use. If you get into fountain pens you’ll have more than one, even if you don’t become a collector.

It can be fun to search for the right ink that works with the nib on your specific pen, on the paper type you use the most. But it can be a challenging search in that it involves multiple ink and paper purchases. Not every ink will work great on all paper types. Then there’s nib width. The medium nib on a Scriveiner pen may or may not write the same width as a medium on other brands of pens. One brand of ink can behave differently with the same manufacturer’s variety of nib widths.

Excellent paper can make even cheap ink look pretty good, coming out of most any pen. Cheap paper, like low quality, inexpensive copier paper, can make excellent ink coming from an expensive pen look terrible. Feathering of the written letters or lines and bleed-through to the back side of the paper are the main negatives with cheap paper.

So, you have to choose a pen, a nib width, an ink, and a paper.

Here’s a fun fact. Standard composition books made in Vietnam or Egypt usually have paper quality that performs well with almost every fountain pen and every ink. And they’re cheap as heck. Since the lined versions of these notebooks tend to use wide lined paper, I use ‘quad ruled’ or graph paper style comp books.

For two years I used a composition book as my daily planner, agenda and journal. They were a pleasure to write on. I made covers for them from red, blue and green file folders to hide the cheap marble covers. My problem was finding important notes later, in spite of trying to carefully log items into a table of contents.

It can be a trial and error process to find a journal that works well with your pen and ink. It’s a shame to buy blank books that don’t work well with your pen and ink combo. You buy a journal and the pen and ink just don’t work with it. A second brand of ink may fail too. Now you own the book. And maybe another. Avoid Moleskine journals for fountain pen use and go for Rhodia journals, pads and paper, or other high quality paper makers, or use comp books. There’s a great resource in fountainpennetwork.com for research and getting questions answered.

I eventually moved on to digital plain text journaling on computer and phone, and searching now takes only seconds. But I miss writing on comp book paper and nicer journals. This, and Scriveiner Pens, has me thinking about getting back into using an annual planner and journal notebook.

After lots of experimentation I settled on two inks from Pilot, the Japanese pen manufacturer. Both their ‘Pilot Blue’ and ‘Pilot Blue Black’ inks are semi-permanent and water resistant. I like the water resistance, especially for items that get mailed. They aren’t archival quality inks but for my daily use they have been great performers in a wide variety of pens.

Ok, back to the pen review.

The Scriveiner EDC pen writes smoothly on a variety of papers. The medium nib is perfect on excellent paper and is very good on standard copier paper. On cheap paper it makes a very wide line, feathers and bleeds, but that’s no fault of the pen. It’s the issue of cheap paper vs. fountain pens. Those issues would be decreased if I had a fine nib, but I like the bolder line from medium nibs. I simply try to avoid super-cheap paper.

The EDC Fountain Pen cap screws on and off. For writers who like to post their cap on the end of the pen for writing, it screws on the back of the pen as well. The threads are perfectly aligned so that the pocket clip aligns upright with the upright nib. That’s nice engineering.

I carry my fountain pens in a felt pen protector when I have them in a pants pocket. That protects the finish from other items banging around in there. If I’m in a dress shirt and suit I clip the pen to the shirt pocket.

The size of the Scriveiner EDC pen makes it very ‘pants pocketable’. I thought the shorter pen size of the EDC Fountain Pen might make a dress shirt pocket sag as it tries to rest at the bottom of the pocket but that doesn’t happen. The pen isn’t heavy enough to make a pocket sag.

Ink supply is not sacrificed in the EDC pen. The converter is the same size as those in Scriveiner’s regular size fountain pens.

Assembly and Setup

The Scriveiner EDC fountain pen comes assembled with the ink converter in place. I like to flush a new fountain pen with water plus a couple of drops of liquid dish soap. I draw up the mild soap water into the converter then express it out, back and forth several times. I then give it a good rinse with plain water using the same process. Once I’ve shaken all the water out of the converter I hold the nib’s top side and its tip to a paper towel to absorb water from the ‘section’ and nib. When no more water shows inside the converter or is coming from the nib on a paper towel I then fill the converter with ink.

Performance

The Scriveiner EDC pen (and its full length sibling, reviewed separately) are the smoothest writing fountain pens I’ve used. The nib didn’t ‘catch’ when writing on even cheap paper.

Ink never leaked from the pen during carry or writing so I call this a very pocket friendly pen.

The only problem I had with the EDC Fountain Pen was with the matte finish. It is a very nice finish in appearance, but is slick to dry fingers and prone to drops. It would be nice if Scriveiner made the grip surface near the nib more grippy. I even find shiny, lacquered pens to be more secure in my hands.

What I like about the Scriveiner EDC Fountain Pen

• Excellent nib for very smooth writing
• No ink leaks or burps during my testing
• Perfect appearance, fit and finish
• Cap screws on back end of pen for those who like to post the cap when writing

What needs to be improved?

• The matte finish is slippery, making the pen easy to drop

Scriveiner EDC Fountain Pen compared to their Black Green Medium Nib Fountain Pen with chrome trim. (To be reviewed soon.)

Final thoughts

The Scriveiner EDC Fountain Pen is a perfect performer. If you can hold onto the finish it’s a great writer and easy to carry with a normal sized ink supply.

Price: $49.99 Amazon, $54.99 Scriveiner
Where to buy: Amazon and Scriveiner
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by Scriveiner. The company did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.