Ohto Tasche Fountain Pen - Fine Nib - Black Body

Perhaps I am luckier than others here...but it works really well and smooth first time I tried it! I was prepared to work on tines of the nib to get the flow going (as mentioned somewhere else on internet) but this is great instrument! Like the metal build and look. fine nib is fine like everything else out there....although not as fine as my Pilot VP

For a long time, this was my favorite fountain pen. The design is gorgeous and slick, with a small size, well-engineered. My first one wrote great for a year or so; I refilled the cartridges with Noodler's Nightshade ink. There was a bit of nib creep, but I really don't care as it doesn't seem to affect writing at all.

I bought a second one, and from the outset it was scratchy and barely wrote 75% of the time... really frustrating. Then my first one quit - I opened it one day and it leaked all over the place, and never wrote the same afterwards. Very sad; I'll probably try to resuscitate it eventually, 'cos I love these things.

If the definition of a pen is to write with ink, then the Ohto Tasche is not a pen.

After a week of trying to get this pen to write a line, I gave up. Although ink does flow (erratically, at best), the only way I could get this pen to write is by applying lots of pressure, making the nib dig into the pager. This was even more uncomfortable than using a cheap bic ball point. I tested this pen with the Ohto black and blue-black cartridges on various paper types and qualities (from 100g printer paper to japanese notebooks) with the same crappy results.

I also bought the Ohto Fine fountain pen at the same time, and had the same problems (although, the Fine was even worse!).

Maybe I'm a poor fool that received two unusable Ohto pens at the same time. Sorry, never buying Ohto again.

The look of the pen is great and I like that it closes to such a small size. But the writing is not too great. The ink flows slowly so that it lays on thin on the paper and even falls behind if I write too fast. I even tried it with different brand of ink and it still was the same problem. Then after a couple weeks of moderate use the ink started leaking at the top of the nib. Thus, though it looks nice, I'm not happy with it since it leaks and doesn't write well.

I own this pen and consider it average, but there are better alternatives--especially if you can spend more. Although 1/3 longer, the Pilot Capless "decimo" pen is far superior with an exceptionally well-made iridium-alloy tipped 18K rhodium-plated gold nib. Also, Pilot's Stella 90s is a great, little pen that is, unfortunately, ignored.
Please note that on the OHTO Tasche and other OHTO fountain pens, the steel "iridium point Germany" nib is actually made in China and quality control isn't the best. Just because it says "Germany" does not mean that it is "Made in Germany." This fact has been documented by the famous pen repair and nib expert Richard Binder in a recent issue of Stylus magazine.
BTW, there is, in fact, a very short International-sized converter that probably fits the Tasche although using one defeats the pen's 'portable' design. I believe isellpens.com may carry the correct converter.