MS903 Cawl Pen bulb filler. (Soft Extra Fine)

MS903 Cawl Pen bulb filler. (Soft Extra Fine)

Date: c1950s

Size: Length - 122mm capped; 151mm posted.

I bought a job lot of old Japanese pens from the Cawl Pen company.  They are all old-stock and, as far as I can see, have never been used.  These pens are not top-tier, but good, usable middle-tier pens.  It is very unusual to find these pens in the UK. 

This is a rather unusual bulb-filled pen made from very nice, slightly translucent, glossy black celluloid.  It is in very good condition - I can see some bleed-through of the base metal on the cap bands, but the rest of the gold-plated trim is all nice and shiny, with no apparent wear, and the black cap and barrel are glossy with no noticeable scratches or other damage.  This pen has a robust-looking pocket clip imprinted "SPECIAL" down the stem.  It is held on with a shiny white metal "jewel".  The pen has a flat-ended barrel.  Around the cap lip are two gold-plated bands: a narrow band below a wider band.  Above the cap bands is the original paper sales label, which gives an original price of 300 Yen.  The barrel has a nice crisp and clear imprint.  It unscrews to reveal the bulb-filling mechanism.  This is similar in operation to Parker's Aerometric system.  You squeeze the clear silicone bulb at the end of the sac guard 4 or 5 times to pump ink into the sac.  The filling system is working perfectly, though the sac guard is a little bit discoloured by time.  The stainless steel nib is partly gold plated and in an extra fine point. 

I have fully serviced this pen.  It writes very well, producing a very nice, wet and consistent extra fine width line.  The nib does have some softness, and it will even provide for a tiny bit of line width variation as you write.