Don't leave home without it (a pen, that is)

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 18:51:35 +1000

As much as EDC (Everyday Carry) is basically a pastiche of performative masculinity, it remains true that some things are genuinely useful to have on you. One of these things is a pen.

Just as the pen is mightier than the sword, so is it more useful. Despite what the EDC bros might believe, I almost never, going about my normal life, have the need to stab, slash, or otherwise cut things. I do quite frequently need to write things down, however.

In my day job, having a pen somewhere within reach is essential. I have particular pens for this purpose, but sometimes the best pen, like the best camera, is the just the one you have on you at the time.

While not the most tacti-cool, there is a lot of love out there in the carrying-stuff fandom for the Fisher Space Pen. It can write on anything! It can write upside down! It can write in space!

Truth be told, I have rarely had to write upside down or in space, but I’ve also never gone to use a Fisher Space Pen and not have it work. I don’t love the feel of it when writing – it’s barely more pleasant than a 10 cent biro. But when it comes to the unfashionable job of putting markings on paper (or paper substitutes), it just works.

I have owned a bunch of Fisher Space Pens over the years. I have a soft spot for the bullet pens, and my favourite that I currently own is a raw brass one with a lovely patina. They are, however, hugely impractical and uncomfortable for someone with normal-sized hands.¹ I’ve also found the friction-fit barrel a bit hit or miss – frequently I end up pulling apart the pen when I just want to remove the cap.

After having tried many other options, the two Space Pens that I do carry with me everywhere (although not generally at the same time) are a hi-viz orange Cerakote Cap-O-Matic and a green satin Vortex (no links because neither of these models are easily available new any longer, but go do your own search if you’re interested).

The Cap-O-Matic was added to the collection for the colour alone. There aren’t a lot of bright orange pens, and it just so happened this one matched something important. I don’t love the Cap-O-Matic style – it’s easy to operate one handed, but it’s too easy to accidentally operate – but it’s not so big a hurdle as to negate the colour factor.

The Vortex was (I believe) a limited re-creation of a historical model. It’s a twist action with a very usable clip. This is my alway-on-me work pen (or emergency pen, if you like). Mine has also collected a bit of wabi-sabi, having kicked around in a pocket with a torch a bit too much which knocked off some of that lovely green satin finish. It’s okay, it’s a tool, not an artwork.

Three Fisher Space Pens: a green satin Vortex, an uncapped raw brass bullet and a hi-viz orange Cerakote Cap-O-Matic

To be honest, I don’t always carry a pen. You can be too religious about this sort of thing and the world probably won’t end just because you can’t write something down. If I’m not at my paid or unpaid work I probably won’t have one on me unless I expect to need it (if I’m going somewhere I might need to sign something, for example). But it’s also good to have the option to carry one when you need it.

I have a Kaweco Supra fountain pen in brass which is aesthetically quite similar and is similarly impractical, with the added complication of requiring a small fountain pen cartridge to make it work. ↩︎

Pens, of the non-fountain variety

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 18:18:21 +1000

I’m a long-time fountain pen nerd. I have a couple of dozen fountain pens from across the price spectrum, and maybe twice as many inks. Sadly, however, I can’t use them at work.

My job requires lots of writing, which would be an ideal way to use my fancy fountain pens, but for reasons too boring to elaborate on, most of my writing is in work-supplied notebooks. These notebooks use crappy paper that can’t hold up to the amounts of ink that even very fine Japanese fountain pen nibs put out. Basically it’s just not practical to use fountain pens for most of my work-related writing.

One could dwell on this tragedy, or one could use this as an excuse to dive deeply into the non-fountain pen world to find some regular pens that are tolerable. I chose the latter.

I’m not going to lead you through an exhaustive comparison of the options available, I’m just going to tell you what I settled on.

The best regular (non-fountain) pen in the world for writing with is the Uniball Eye rollerball.¹ Job done; we can all move on.

The problem with this is what I really wanted was a pen I could use a refill with, rather than throwing out the whole thing when it was empty. Environmentally conscious, and all that.

The answer to the question of what is the closest thing to a Uniball Eye but with a refill is the Pentel Energel. The great thing about the Energel is that it comes in a bunch of formats, from plastic to “metal" to really quite fancy. The refills come in (at least) 0.5 and 0.7mm, and a range of colours (for my work I can only use blue and black, but maybe you can enjoy some of the others yourself). Buy a bunch of them, and a few packs of refills, and you’ll never be short a pen.

But the best thing about the Energel isn’t the Energel at all. It’s the Zebra Sarasa Grand. The Sarasa Grand uses the same refill as the Energel, but it looks much more classy. It has a great heft and a nice finish and everyone I have ever lent one to has wanted one of their own. I have bough a bunch of them for colleagues, just because it makes me happy to see people using a good pen.

They don’t seem to be as readily available as I’m writing this, but the Sarasa Grand also had a Vintage series and the colours were just amazing. And they shipped with an ink colour-matched to the pen. I have a dark green one and it’s seriously good.

You could just buy a Sarasa Grand and be done with it, of course, but they’re significantly more expensive and it’s much harder to buy their refills (in Australia). Having a few cheap and cheerful Energels to loan to colleagues who don’t understand the concept of a boomerang², and a nice Sarasa Grand to use when you’re confident you can hold on to it, seems the perfect solution, to me.

So there you are, go out and buy an Energel (or a Sarasa Grand, if you’re made of money) and be happier with your pen than 99 per cent of the people in the world will ever be.

Blah, blah… personal preference and all that. You could have a different opinion on this, but you’d be wrong. ↩︎
It comes back. ↩︎

Pens damonism.net

Don't leave home without it (a pen, that is)

Pens, of the non-fountain variety