Kaweco Sport

The Kaweco Sport is another pen that there isn’t really anything else that I can say that hasn’t already been said. It is a ubiquitous beginner-level pen and sort-of the quintessential modern pocket pen. There is already a lot of information about it floating around. My red Ice Sport was my second pen, so for the sake of staying in chronological order, here we go.

There are dozens of finishes for this pen–demonstrators, plastic or metal, gold trim or not, whatever one could want. Typically, the pen comes with a steel nib in sizes ranging from extra fine to double broad, but one can find all the nib sizes in 14k gold–in plain gold, rhodium-plated, and two-tone finishes–and stub/calligraphy nibs from 1.1mm to 2.3mm and a double nib that makes two lines at once. Several different types of removable clips, two types of converters, and the option to convert the pen into an eyedropper make the Sport a very customizable pen, although it’s all extra because the pen only comes with a blue cartridge.

I wear a large size glove and I can write with the Sport for a long time, but it’s not my favorite thing to do. The pens really were meant for quick notes, and for that they work well. I have a thing for matching sets, so I eventually got an Ice Sport ballpoint to go with my fountain pen, and it works as it should. The Kaweco double pen pouch makes a compact package for on-the-go writing activities, and the plastic pens are sturdy enough to handle whatever is thrown at them. My red Sport has been camping, kayaking, and hiking and has never had a problem except it likes to burp ink if I use the squeeze converter or convert the pen to eyedropper fill, so I don’t do that.

As far as the writing experience goes, Kaweco has a reputation for questionable nib QC. All my Sports wrote too dry out of the box, which is an easy enough fix but annoying, especially for beginner-tier pens, but they wrote. Frankly, I blame Bock–the OEM nib manufacturer for Kaweco and a bunch of other brands. I’ve had many pens with Bock nibs in them and none of them were good out of the box. Some of them simply didn’t write without extensive work on my part or professional nibmeister modification. I would advise potential buyers to proceed with caution in that regard.

I do, however, like my Kaweco Sports. They are cool, durable, compact, and very customizable pens.