Review: Sailor 1911 Profit Fountain Pen with 21K Music Nib

Elegant and classy looking in style, the Sailor 1911 Profit fountain pen is a product of the renowned Sailor Pen Company in Japan, which also produces some of the finest and most exquisite nibs in the world today.

This beauty comes with a lifetime guarantee. The Sailor 1911 Profit is housed within a beautiful dark blue box with faux leather surface. Inside, there are also a manual, ink cartridge and converter.

The Sailor 1911 Profit is available in various shades, but you definitely won’t go wrong with the perennial favourite – black body and gold clip and rims around the pen-cap as well as grip.

It's priced reasonably for it's superior writing performance and beauty, great for avid fans/collectors of exquisite, premium-quality fountain pens.

Design

The body is streamlined with a polished shine. The torpedo-shaped black body is proudly crowned in gold trims along both ends of its pen-cap (top & bottom) as well as tail-end and along its grip.

The metal-clip of the pen-cap is also made with a gold finish with closely-spaced linear engravings running on it. At the bottom of the pen cap on the gold trim are exquisitely crafted words reading ‘Sailor Japan Founded 1911’.

This is a standard size pen that's has a nice balance and is really nice to hold, alone or posted.

Difference choices of nibs are available with the design of the trademark anchor-logo symbolizing the Sailor Pen Company. Below this logo, you can spot the beautifully engraved words ‘Sailor’ and ‘21K’ or ‘14K’ (depending on the type of nib you have chosen). The nib design is very beautiful.

Excuse my dirty screw threads. LOL.

When you unscrew the barrel to reveal the threads, there's a small piece of rubber ring on the section just above the threads. It slows down the barrel when as it's about to close tight. It's a nice feature. You can turn the barrel fast, and the threads are so smooth the barrel will continue turning on its own until it reaches the rubber ring where it slows down, and then you turn it tight. It's like when you're pouring water quickly into a glass but you slow down when the glass is becoming full.

Nib

The Sailor 1911 Music Nib comes in either 14K or 21K gold. The nib has a single slit as compared to two on the Platinum 3776 Music Nib fountain pen that was recently reviewed.

On this music nib, there's a little 'MS' carved to the side of the nib.

The 14K gold nib is available in varieties ranging from Extra Fine, Fine, Medium-Fine, Medium, Broad, and in more unique specs, Music and Zoom.

Performance

Since it's a music nib, almost like a calligraphy nib, thickness of the strokes depends on how you hold the pen and how the nib is aligned on the paper. If the nib is pointing to the left, the vertical strokes are thin and horizontal strokes are broad. When the nib is pointing upwards, vertical strokes are broad, and horizontal strokes are thin.

This music nib slides over paper smoothly. Ink flow is great and allows its user to enjoy an easy and pleasant writing experience. However, if you run the nib across the paper quickly, then the stroke might skip. Ink flow is not as good as the Platinum 3776 Music Nib which has double slits.

The nib is not totally stiff and with a bit of force, you can open up the slit just a bit for a slightly, almost not noticeable, thicker stroke.

This is the smoothest fountain pen nib I've ever used. I love drawing with it.

These are strokes the pen can produce. Thin horizontal, thick vertical.

The paper used for the 3 sketches above is quite lousy and prone to absorbing too much ink, so there's some feathering and the strokes appear thicker.

Drawing with a music nib is not different from other nibs actually. Pick an angle and keep to it. However, in the sketch of the rooftops, I turned the nib to produce thin strokes for the texture (tiles) of the roof.

This is a sketch I drew on the train while commuting to work. I used Noodler's ink on the 12 by 9 inch Strathmore 400 Series Mixed Media paper 300gsm.

Conclusion

The Sailor 1911 is a beautiful pen. The music nib is quite fun to use but it's not suitable for normal writing purpose because the broad strokes. I use it for drawing mainly because of the strokes can vary in thickness, and that provides some visual interest to the sketches. However, sometimes the difference in stroke thickness may not be that obvious, especially if I were to draw on a big piece of paper and scaled it down for web display.

One minor downside could be the small size of the converter. The music nib uses a lot of ink and depletes the converter rather quickly. I've to bring extra ink out for the purpose of drawing.

The only thing to note would be that drawing with a music nib would need some time to get used to as it functions like a calligraphy pen.

Another pen to check out would be the Platinum 3776 fountain pen with music nib.

Availability

Here are direct links to see the Sailor 1911 fountain pen with music nib at:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk

Here are direct links to see the standard Sailor 1911 Profit fountain pen with other nibs at
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.co.jp