When I purchased four cheap pens a while ago, each of them had triggered an urge to try it for different reasons. I talked about the fake Prera, and the extremely cheap and usable Jinhao 992 already – the former being a near perfect but shitty facsimile of the PILOT Prera – a pen I adore – the latter seeming cheap and useful. The pen I am going to talk about today landed in my shopping cart because it combined aspects of two pens I already own: The LAMY Safari – a popular German starter pen – and the Wing Sung 3008 – an entry-level piston filler from China. Since I have no idea what the name of this pen is, I will just call it ‘the Wing-Fari’ from now on.

The LAMY Safari is a brilliant and timeless pen. I own a bunch of them, used them in school and like it for its long grip section, its availability and the easily swappable nib. It also seems to be one of the most imitated pens on Chinese wholesale sites, with most fakes going for way under US$2. Most manufacturers focus on the key design features of the LAMY Safari original: The cross on the cap finial, the iconic clip and the barrel, containing the very recognizable ink window. Some go even further and try to rebuild and imitate special editions of the LAMY Safari that have long sold out – including the LINE special edition featuring the LINE messenger’s bear or the ‘dark lilac’ model from 2016.

I don’t like that because it seems insincere. More often than not, it is implied that it is the original product – even when the original name is not used. And all fakes that I got into my hands or have seen up close don’t even come close to being usable.

This pen, however, got me interested: It looks like a LAMY Safari to an extent but uses a piston filler mechanism. As far as I know – since its inception in 1980 – there has not been a piston filling LAMY Safari. Having the option to use a converter and the aesthetics of the pen suggest that this won’t happen anytime soon from LAMY. Still, I like to see someone not simply doing a copy of something but trying to ‘improve’ on it – or at least try to adjust it a little, making things interesting.

Taking a closer look

Let us take a closer look at this pen. The first thing that caught my eye were the gold metal hardware on the cap and the back mechanism. Together with the purple transparent body and the purple metallic mechanism, this gives off an impression of opulence to me which does fit neither the rest of the pen, nor the understatement the LAMY Safari is going for. The piston mechanism takes up about half of the barrel, which results in poor ink capacity for a piston filler of this size.

Here are some of the statistics:

Taking the numbers at face value, the Wing-Fari is a huge pen and not that light either. And with a usable ink capacity (more on that later) of only 1.6 ml, it carries only a little more than a cartridge filled LAMY Safari. In my book, a piston filler’s main advantage is its huge ink capacity and quite frankly: This pen doesn’t check that box.

Dancing on two parties

When comparing the front section of the Wing-Fari and a LAMY Vista (LAMY’s offering of a demonstrator Safari pen) it becomes clear – no pun intended – that the Wing-Fari’s producers didn’t just admire the LAMY Safari with eyes and heart but with calipers and vigor. The measurements of the cap and grip section line up almost perfectly. This even goes for details like the recess at the front of the grip, that snaps into the sealing ring in the cap, the width of the nib and feed or the diameter and taper of the cap itself (which I only noticed myself when taking measurements).

Both caps seal well – maybe too well. In designing a cap seal for a fountain pen, there is always a trade-off between making a good seal and preventing suction from pulling ink out of the pen’s breather hole when opened. LAMY solved this on their Safari by using a flexible rubber element that can compensate for the pressure differential a little. The design of their feed also seems to help with sucking the ink into the space between the fins and leaving enough room for air to prevent this.

With the Wing-Fari, I experienced ink blurts nearly every time I opened it. At first, I thought this was caused by excess ink from filling the pen still stuck in the feed. This can usually be solved by either using the pen or intermittently putting the ink on blotting paper. Both methods allow the excess ink to be pulled back into the feed. If that worked as designed, this shouldn’t even be a problem. The feed is there in part to deal with this problem exactly and compensate for pressure differentials.

When taking a closer look at the nib, feed and grip section, the Wing-Fari offers up even more feathers stolen from LAMY’s nest: The nib shape is a near perfect match, the characteristic black ring of the LAMY Safari/Vista is replaced with an O-Ring that has no practical use whatsoever – because it doesn’t seal anything, even the length of the feed inside the grip is almost the same. The Wing-Fari people went for transparent plastic, though.

The Wing-Fari imitates the two tapered indents of the LAMY Safari, too, forming the pronounced and long grip section that divides the fountain pen world. I, for one, like it very much because it supports the unusual way in which I tend to hold pens and helps me hold the nib in an angle that will produce a line reliably.

When it comes to the Wing Sung 3008, the similarities are not that accurate or obvious. Still, they are there. Both seem to use a simple telescoping piston filling mechanism. In both pens, it takes up a lot of room in the barrel.

The piston is pushed along the barrel, in both pens being stopped by a few ridges, protecting the ink intake of the feed. This will become important later. The o-ring that is used on the Wing-Fari for decorative purpose only is present on the Wing-Sung 3008, too, where it is used for making a seal when the cap is screwed on.

Both filling mechanisms have a lock. The Knob has to be pulled out, so it can be turned. With the Wing-Sung 3008, this is easily accomplished. The knob feels a bit cheap and loose, but this gives it enough room to be locked without moving the piston. The Wing-Fari knob can hardly be pulled out at all, even though this is required for the piston to be moved. I haven’t managed to do it without using a blade as a lever until now. It is hard to imagine that it will wear out enough to be pulled out without tools before the pen breaks.

With the Wing Sung 3008, the whole mechanism can be taken out by unscrewing the silver part, which retains it. That way, the barrel can be flushed and greased easily. It seems neither possible nor intended to be done on the Wing-Fari, which adds to a problem that I will demonstrate shortly.

Using the pen

Most cheap pens I bought so far are usable with a few drawbacks. There are a few pleasant surprises occasionally, so I wondered if this interesting combination of two nice pens was one of them.

After dipping the pen and a quick write test, I was pleasantly surprised by the nib. It is obvious that in this price range, the specified nib width has to be taken with a block of salt. This pen is no exception. It wrote well, without catching, just a hint of feedback and consistent line width, but this certainly isn’t an EF nib. Maybe the manufacturer went for imitating LAMY’s consistency issues with EF nibs as well … (sorry. couldn’t resist). The pen is pleasant to hold, balanced similarly to the LAMY Safari, the nib isn’t too bouncy or hard. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised up to this point.

Inking the pen was straightforward as well, after unlocking the piston knob with blunt force. An advantage of piston filler fountain pens should be that they have a self-contained filling mechanism that can be used without tools – spare a paper towel or something to clean it with afterwards. Sadly, the Wing-Fari falls short here already, and complaints on the product page and questions about how to fill it suggest that this is not a defect with my pen alone. That said, if left unlocked, the piston moves easily and filling the pen went easily. It required a few ejections of air to fully fill it.

It was when trying to clean it, that a problem emerged: The pen cannot be emptied fully using the piston. The feed protrudes a little into the ink reservoir and the opening, much like an overflow drain, doesn’t allow the ink on the bottom of the barrel to be expelled.

It should still be obvious, that a relevant amount of ink remained after trying to clean it. With no way of removing the filling mechanism and it being impossible to empty the pen through the feed, it is nearly impossible to remove the water. I was unable to wick it out as well[*], so the ink remaining in the barrel can’t be used either. It is stuck there.
[*] Update: 2020-04-03: I was able to wick some of it out eventually by holding the pen nib up with 10 pieces of toilet paper for an hour. Let us leave it at that, this is impractical.

Since I took the weight measurements before filling the pen, I was able to tell how much liquid was unable to escape. It amounted to 0.3ml … with a barrel capacity of 1.9ml, this counts for nearly 1/6th of the total ink capacity and leaves 1.6ml of ink for writing. This doesn’t only mean that 0.3ml of ink will go to waste, it also means that when changing inks, the new colour will be diluted with either 0.3ml of the old, or, when the pen is cleaned beforehand, with 0.3ml of water.

Also, when cleaning the pen, I actuated the piston a few times and the rod (black) slipped out of the piston (white rubber) several times. I was lucky enough to be able to carefully reinsert it without disassembly. I needed to empty the pen for that, which isn’t always convenient on the go. The tiny piece of glue visible on the rod suggests that steps were taken to prevent this, but failed. Also: I am cautious with my pens, aware of the forces I apply. This should not have happened.

I never experienced any of these problems with the Wing Sung 3008.

Summary

The Wing-Fari, while pleasant to look at, isn’t really fit for use in my eyes. It is an interesting approach of combining two popular designs, but it has too many problems for me to consider it worth the money and time.

While it is a decent writer, the quality of the piston filling mechanism and the oversights in the design of the ink barrel and feed interface make this unusable to me.

I appreciate the work that has gone into this pen, though. While I have seen many accurate imitations of the LAMY Safari’s appearance, this one is more than a copy. Someone took the time to be accurate about the imitation, and go further with it, building a piston filler and imagining what it could look like. While my imagination takes me down a different road when imagining a piston filling LAMY Safari, I see the appeal. Especially considering that none of the other clones are 100% accurate either. Nearly all of them copy the looks, but don’t copy the filling mechanism.

LAMY uses a proprietary cartridge system. So then copying the Safari, the availability of ink refills has to be taken into accounts. Most fakes I see come with a converter, that – if similar to the LAMY system – incompatible with it. They most often do not work with the standard international system either. So maybe someone wanted to forego the inception of yet another incompatible ink filling system and tried making it a piston filler.

What remains is to maybe try fitting a LAMY Z50 nib on the pen and see how well it works. But then: Writing performance isn’t the problem with this pen. So, why bother?

At its US$2 price point, I expected it to have many more problems with the nib, feed and sealing. Sadly, it still has too many problems for me to recommend it. If you ever come across this pen, I suggest you don’t try it.

If you want a LAMY Safari and can afford it, I would recommend going for a LAMY Safari. They are reliable, available in many colours, easy to fill on the go using a well-designed converter and if you like the way it feels in your hand, there are even good options for changing and upgrading the nib using LAMY’s own Z-series after market nibs.

If you want an affordable piston filler, the TWSBI ECO, or the Wing Sung 3008 (as seen above) provide good options – the latter being sold at roughly half the price of the former. Both implementations are excellent, the TWSBI ticking a few more options with quality control, consistency and overall feel. Both are easy to clean and available with different nib options.

The pen I want to mention of a kind of cross-over is the TWSBI Swipe. It provides nearly the ink capacity of a piston filler when using cartridges (~1.6ml) and at least that of a LAMY T10 cartridge when using a converter (1.2-1.5ml depending on model). If you want the flexibility of a cartridge converter pen and the ink capacity and ease of refill of a piston filler, this is the pen I suggest you have a look at instead. It is priced at around US$27, similar to the LAMY Safari.