Sheaffer Intensity Fountain Pen Review
Give me 3 minutes and I’ll give you a complete review of the Sheaffer Intensity carbon fiber fine point fountain pen and whether you should buy it…
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My Short Video on the Sheaffer Intensity
Sheaffer Intensity Fountain Pen Design
Researchers from NYU found that we make eleven major decisions in the first seven seconds of meeting someone, and I think you’d agree that we base much of our first impressions on appearance. We do the same with objects, some things you have a visceral reaction to… you are instinctively drawn to them – or not – right away.
My first impression of this pen before pulling it out of the gift box is that it’s attractive. I love the carbon fiber finish and metal details. It has a wide cap band imprinted with Sheaffer on the same side as the pen clip.
The pen clip is long, typical of Sheaffer designs, and tapers off to squared off ends. The pen clip is attached to a derby cap that is made of two (extremely heavy) metal rings on one end of the pen. The other end of the pen is also a smaller metal ring.
The entire silhouette of the pen tapers from the widest point at the top of the cap down to the narrowest point at the other end of the pen.
It takes two twists to unscrew the cap, then you’ll find an hourglass-shaped grip section made of metal. This hourglass grip leads to a plain looking nib engraved with Sheaffer and F for fine nib. (see photo of nib.) Even though the nib is rather plain without a lot of fancy engraving, it’s still an appealing design, form follows function.
Sheaffer Intensity Fountain Pen Performance
Hand Fatigue / Cap Fit
It’s only after you get to know someone, or a fountain pen, by interacting with it that you have the opportunity to flesh out whether your first impression was accurate or not.
Overall, picking the fountain pen up out of the box, it doesn’t feel heavy. But you’ll immediately feel all of the heft to one side of the pen.
The first thing you’ll feel is that this fountain pen has an extremely heavy cap… as soon as you post it on the back you’ll feel that. Weighing in at .55 ounces, not only is the cap made of brass, the Sheaffer Intensity is designed to only allow it to seat 17mm onto the end of the body. A majority of the weight rides in the widest point, the end of the pen cap. So when you post the cap, the pen pulls hard off the page. Your hand fights it, causing hand fatigue.
If you don’t post the cap when you write, this will not be an issue for you, it writes well without it. The hourglass metal grip makes it a comfortable ride.
At 1.25 ounces, it’s not an unusually heavy fountain pen, average for a metal pen |
The cap carries all of its weight at the top, which makes it feel unbalanced |
Different Types of Paper
This steel nib is stiff, like all steel nibs. It doesn’t flex at all but it does write well. I had a few instances of hard starts (when writing I’d need to scribble on a scrap paper to get it to start first,) but after a page of writing the ink flow was great.
The fine nib writes well and didn’t bleed through on notebook paper. The Sheaffer Intensity did bleed through a bit on graph paper, but how often do you write on graph paper with a pen?
It didn’t feather, the ink stayed where I wanted it to and the fine nib produced a fine line as expected. You can see writing samples of three Sheaffers above, the top two are both using fine nibs, the bottom is using a medium to see the line width Sheaffer produces.
The Sheaffer Intensity uses long cartridges, so they hold a lot of ink, or you can use a converter if you prefer bottled ink.
Maintenance
The Sheaffer Intensity uses cartridges or a converter and is plug-and-play. There’s not a lot to swapping out the cartridges. It’s kind of an interesting fit. You can see in the photo below that the cartridge butts up against the section, it doesn’t slide inside of it like most fountain pens.
There is a protruding, angled, stem inside of the section that pierces the cartridge to feed ink down the section. It works great, and a different design than most pens I’ve used.
Specs and Available Finishes
Specs:
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Available Finishes:
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Overall Value
Buy this pen only if you don’t post.
If you don’t post the cap on the back, this would be a great fountain pen. I experienced some hard starting, it doesn’t write immediately out of the box, but neither do many pens in this price range. You’ll need to scribble a bit to get it started then it will work great. The hourglass grip is comfy and the available finishes are beautiful, modern and professional.
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