J. Herbin Straight Body Frosted Glass Dip Pen - Small - Amber Tint

I bought this for testing fountain pen ink samples. There's a knack to learning how to angle and rotate this pen and load it with ink, but if you're having trouble with ink flow, or with getting more than a sentence out of it, it might not be the fault of the pen or how you're using it--it might be the ink. I'm finding that some inks just will not work at all with this type of pen. Not surprisingly, since it's a J. Herbin pen, the J. Herbin Perle Noire ink writes smoothly and for a full paragraph from a single thorough dip. So far, Diamine Poppy Red ink flows well with it too (but not Registrar's Blue-Black, which won't even start). The Noodler's inks vary: Widowmaker was not completely hopeless, some of the others would give me a few words, but the V-Mail inks would not play with this pen at all. The Noodler's inks left particles in this pens' spiralling grooves.

Other than that, it's slender and a little short, but has a solid, comfortable weight. Mine is more pale orange than deep amber, but it's such an attractive pen, I don't mind. With the right ink, it's inspiring to write with something this lovely. Makes me feel classy, ya'know?

Just got this pen a few days ago. It's comfortable to write with when testing ink samples, and I like the weight of it (being all glass it's similar in heft to an all-metal pen). It does seem to have issues with Noodler's inks, but works perfectly well with the Peikan and Sheaffer inks that I've tried.

It's a fine pen and I'm very happy with it as an inexpensive way of testing inks.

Mine came chipped (JetPens offered to take it back, but I thought I'd try first to rehabilitate it.) Follow the simple directions on the side of the box to rub the tip over sandpaper & it works!
At first I over-thought it & carefully gave it a rounded tip with fine emery paper under a magnifier: it wrote very broad but spottily. The I formed it into a sharp conical tip & it didn't write at all.
It seems that the pen relies on a relatively blunt tip in the manner of mechanical pencil lead, wherein you write with the edge of the base of a cylinder shape, turning it just slightly as necessary to maintain flow down from the grooves. Rubbing it briefly tip-down on fine sandpaper -- with a natural motion -- achieves just enough convexity to function well.

This is a little beauty! Easy to clean and perfect for testing out different inks. It would take some practice to get a good flow going to write with this pen solely but it cannot be beat for testing ink.

Love it and the customer service from Jetpens.

This type of pens works amazing for ink testing, is not 100% accurate how it will look on your fountain pen but gives you a general idea of the color