u/pauldayco

You are on a date. THE date. Reservations secured months ago for a table in a room where the air smells like old money and secrets.

The lighting is a curated, expensive amber glow. They meet you in a stunning dark purple outfit so intoxicating it feels like a spiritual awakening.

Gawd.

Nobody has any business looking this good. You steal glances when they aren't paying attention. They lower their eyelids as you pass and look up just in time for your eyes to meet.

But as the appetizers hit, the conversation doesn't just dry up; it calcifies. You are left with nothing but the sound of your own heartbeat and the soul-crushing realization that you are paying for a beautiful stranger's dinner who has absolutely nothing to say to you.

That is the LAMY Safari AL-star in Black Purple.

A gorgeous, anodized 6000-series aluminum houses an EF nib which is a tiny, stainless steel scalpel seemingly designed to harvest fibers from my Clairefontaine. I really disliked how it slices on the upstroke with the clinical indifference of a guillotine. I repeated the same strokes with my other EF pens: a Platinum Prefounte and a Kaweco Brass Sport to see if it was perhaps my technique.

As terrible as my technique was, it wasn't the problem.

I actually even prepared a matching bespoked ink for it, a concoction of Kaweco Summer Purple with a dash of TWSBI Black and a hint of Diamine Writer's Blood for a bit of complementary tint and lubrication. It was a whispered prayer for intimacy, and it responded with the personality of a sidewalk.

I even tried fixing it, taking the nib to 2k-grade sandpaper as if I were an amateur surgeon trying to graft a soul onto a machine. It failed because you can't sand away a fundamental lack of charisma.

But what of the break-in period? Surely that’s why! You didn’t give it a chance!

My Brass Sport, any Perkeo nor Muji.. down to my Kaküno ever needed it.

I wished it was a slam dunk, guys. The Safari AL-star is a stunning yet hollow aluminum monument to a sensory betrayal. 6/10

I love my All-Black Perkeo. It’s cheap, it’s matte, and it’s peak goth goodness. I’ve even written a review of it in the style of The Raven. Needless to say, I have already put a disproportionate amount of effort into this $20 pen, but me and my undiagnosed ADHD  aren't finished.

Out of the box (actually, it’s a cellophane sheath, Kaweco doesn't even pretend it’s luxury), it’s weightless. It feels like writing with a ghost. So, I decided to fix the physics.

I sourced adhesive tungsten pickleball weights. If you’re on the wrong side of 40 or were born in the late 1900s, you might be familiar with these already (you can find them on Amazon).  For the uninitiated: Tungsten is metal you use when lead is too toxic and gold is too precious. Each strip is 3 grams (or, for my American friends, approximately the weight of five paperclips or 1/15th of a Solo cup or whatever ridiculous unit of measurement y'all use). That doesn't sound like much, but in the r/fountainpens community of high-precision writing, it’s the difference between a toy and a tool.

The Process:

1. Peel off the shiny black adhesive covers. You want the raw metal. You want this as thin as possible because the tolerances inside a Perkeo barrel are tighter than they look.
2. Take a standard hammer to the tungsten strip. Beat the shit out of it. Make them thin enough to wrap around the ink cartridge without seizing up the barrel.
3. Bind the cartridge in this hammered tungsten skin, effectively creating a weighted core.
4. Laugh maniacally. It’s ok, nobody can hear. Probably.

The result is a Perkeo with a nib-heavy bias that feels like a surgical instrument. When I hold it, it doesn’t just sit in my hand; it pulls it toward the paper. The weight distribution is now aggressively forward, pinning the nib to my Leuchtturm1917 paper with zero effort.

Oh and by the way, I am completely aware that this is all completely unnecessary.

It is over-engineered. It involved manual labour and heavy machinery for a pen that costs less than a burrito meal. But it does feel noticably heavier in my hand and I know it was the right call.

TL;DR: If your pen feels like a hollow plastic shell, stop complaining and start hammering tungsten.

I must thank the r/fountainpens community for helping to bring Diamine Writer's Blood into existence.It's easily one of my favourite inks so far. It’s the unhinged choice because it rejects the concept of friction entirely, flowing with the supernatural ease of a Victorian séance. It's a liquid that hates physics and loves drama.. A rusty saturated pool of sanguine crimson that makes your handwriting look like it was dictated by a very eloquent, very caffeinated vampire who’s seen the end of the world from a fog-drenched cab and decided that it looked better in a dark burgundy.

It coats the nib so well that it neutralizes the tooth entirely (ironic for this Nosferatu Ink), as if you’re gliding across the paper on a velvet slick from a velvet-lined coffin in a velvety noise-dampened room. 

Writing with it gives license to unleashing deep, moody thoughts you thought you’d expelled in a gaslit fever dream back in high school. You can almost channel Tom Cruise’s hammy, lace-cuffed Lestat with it; your life’s soundtrack becomes an eclectic mix of Bauhaus, Nine Inch Nails, and The Smiths played on a haunted gramophone. 

Committing to this ink is a commitment to a life of moody gothic chaos, a permanent state of mourning for a tragedy you haven’t yet experienced. You’ll be that person at a party with permanent ink stains on your fingers, looking like you’ve just finished redacting a forbidden ledger, trying to squeeze an Edgar Allan Poe or Lord Byron quote into regular conversation.

10/10.