Saturday, November 7, 2015

Sheaffer Snorkel Special (Medium) Review

Hello fellow pen and pencil enthusiasts,

I hope everyone had a great Fountain Pen Day 2015 yesterday. I decided to try out my "new" vintage lap desk for this review. The handwritten review is below, and I will transcribe it below. I also sincerely hope you enjoy reading about one of my first fountain pens that I ever purchased, as it is also one of my favorites.

Last night I looked through my pen collection and decided to ink up an old favorite. This was my 1st Snorkel that I bought at a book store, of all places. I remember getting it for an amazing deal, probably $20, if I remember right. It did need restoration, but it was so worth it! For being the lowest tier Snorkel, the nib is better than all of my higher end Snorkels, aside from my Statesman that needs to be repaired again.

This pen is a bit too slim for me, which is the only real issue I have with Snorkels. I much prefer the girth of the PFM, however, these are much more affordable.

This pen is the "Special" trim, which as I mentioned above was the entry-level, non-white-dot, Snorkel. The only real difference is that it has a basic Palladium Silver open nib. The rest of the pen is the same, I believe. It writes way better than one would think!

(I also wanted to add more to the review that I forgot to touch on, so what's below is not in the written review)

In the review, I forgot to mention that I also have another non-white-dot Snorkel in my collection, the Admiral. It also has a standard open nib, but in 14k gold. That one is also a fantastic writer, but needs to be restored again as well. There is one other issue with Snorkels that I forgot to touch on as well... they are very finicky. I have had my Admiral and Statesman restored before, but they need to be restored again as both stopped filling/working after just a couple of fills. In fact, I was only able to fill the Statesman once before it stopped working again. This Special has been restored probably 3-4 times now. When working properly, these are fantastic pens to use and the Snorkel tube used for filling really makes using up the last bit of ink in smaller bottles/samples much easier. 

- Derek (ThirdeYe)

Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge

Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge