Review: Hero 9018 Fountain Pen with Fude Nib

This is the other Hero fountain pen that I bought along with the Hero 7009 that was reviewed recently. This one cost USD $10 on eBay as well, which is really affordable.

The whole pen is made of metal which is then plated either with gold or for the black parts some paint finishing. It looks better than the 7009. I like the smooth black body with gold plated parts. It's slightly heavier but not too heavy, even when posted.

The cap's the click-on type. At the bottom of the cap's the logo for Hero. That black part at the top of the cap is screwed on and can be unscrewed.

Hero nibs generally look nice. They are gold plated steel nibs.

You can fully disassemble the pen for cleanly. To dismantle the nib and feed, just gently twist in clockwise and anti-clockwise manner, then pull them out.

Below are some of my sketches.

Like I said in other reviews for the Hero fountain pens, I'm wary of the inconsistent build quality of the pens. This particular pen has an ink flow problem for me.

For these two sketches, I actually dipped my pen into ink before drawing. I've also filled the ink converter. But when the dipped ink was finished, somehow, the converter doesn't continue to supply ink to the nib and so it dries up. This is a problem I've faced occasionally with other models Hero fountain pens. It's irritating and makes this pen unusable unless you want to use it only as a dip pen.

The strokes from the Fude nib are bold and varies in thickness. That's the selling point of Hero pens with Fude nibs. I like drawing with them as the varying stroke thickness creates visual interest in themselves. You can get thinner lines by using the tip of the pen, bolder lines when using the flat side of the nib.

The nib is bent smoothly and it writes smoothly on smooth or textured paper (I used the Schut Medium-Fine grain paper for the first sketch).

Conclusion

Hero Fude nibs are fantastic. The build quality of the pen however is questionable. In this case, I received a less than fine working pen. So it's a risk you have to take when buying the pen. At $10, I think it's worth the risk.

Or maybe you should just get the Duke 209 fountain pen instead.