Skip to main content

Kuretake's Dream Galaxy Pen - part 1: the unpacking


Kuretake's Dream Galaxy (夢銀河)

I have a fountain pen from the company Kuretake (Japan). Kuretake is a famous maker of brush pens and seems to have decided to enter the fountain pen market (disclaimer: this is my speculation). Cronicas Estilograficas has reported already about their offer some time ago.

They are from the area of Nara (Google Maps). Nara is not only famous for their old temples but also for the many deer roaming freely among temples and tourists.
Deer also means that deer antler is abundantly available. And Kuretake has started using it as material for part of their pens. It is the white material at the barrel in the picture above. This material can also be died and Kuretake has additionally an indigo-died pen and a red one - see their catalogue in an earlier post LINK.

The pen I would like to show you here is called 夢銀河 (Yume-Gin-Ga) in Japanese which translates either as "Dream Galaxy" or "Dream Milky Way".

When I unpacked the parcel, I first saw the beautiful blue box made from Japanese paper and died with indigo (I don't know). Blue is a traditional colour in Japan which is highly valued. Inside the blue box is another box made from some light wood, it reminded me balsa-wood.

Opening this box then brought to light - the pen. My first impression was: "Wow, it looks better in nature than in their catalogue".

In the picture on the left, I show it together with a Sailor ProGear21 (left) and a Sailor Profit21 (1911 Large).

Lengths:
Capped: 140 mm
Uncapped: 125 mm
Feed section: 43 mm
Nib: 23 mm
Barrel: 81 mm

Diameter:
Barrel: 13-15 mm
black end: 10 mm
feed: ca. 11mm

Weights:
Pen total: 25.2 g
Cap: 9.3 g
Barrel: 10.6 g
Feed section: 3.0 g
Converter: 2.6 g







The nib is a 14K Bock nib, size 6, M.

(I will try to retake the pictures with a better camera.)

































The pen comes with a converter and a set of 3 small cartridges - certainly "international size small" cartridges - length 38 mm.

You can also see in the picture above that the cap is screwed onto the barrel.


The cap is made from black resin and has a gold-plated clip and trim band, at the onset and the end of the barrel is also a gold-plated ring.


The barrel is made of natural materials, so probably each pen is unique and every "side" is different.



First conclusion: an interesting pen, not cheap, this one costs 50000 Yen plus tax, but it would be unique in your collection.

I will start using it from today, using different inks, looking how it behaves with cartridges and converter. I will report back about my findings.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Slimming down

Update: I started selling - see my sales pages : In order to sell most of my pens, I first had to made up my mind what I want to keep. May I present here my target collection, the ones to keep. It is a page in progress, there are still many holes in the data. Waldmann Pens Counting from the left, pen 1-4, 7-10 are the same model: the model Precieux (Deep Wide) Lines in Sterling silver. Pen 8-10 are the original model (fountain pen, mechanical pencil and ball-pen). Pen 1-4 are the yellow-gold vermeil version of it (mechanical pencil, rollerball, ball-pen and fountain pen) and pen 7 is the rose-gold vermeil version of the fountain pen. The rose-gold fountain pen has a rose-gold-plated 18k nib. Pen 6 is the same model in steel, coated in black (Waldmann P2000). But it is not a typical steel, it is  a recycled steel from gun barrels recycled by the German police. It is a limited edition, meanwhile sold out. Read more about it here . Unfortunately, the silver model is meanwhile also ou

Pen box - Japanese style

My rotation pens rested in several boxes here and there on my book shelves. I always wanted them to be together in one box. So, I bought one at Yahoo Auctions. It is a wooden box lacquered with urushi, unused, stored hidden for many years in some drawers.  Nice, isn't it. It is an old storage box for writing tools and paper. But to use it as a pen box, there is some protection necessary - otherwise the lacquer will soon suffer.  But such an inset is probably not commercially available. So today, I decided to make one by myself - using Japanese paper "Washi". I chose a paper in which gold and silver flakes are mixed into the fibres. It is quite thick and, additionally, the backside is coated with gold. (This gold and silver is certainly made from aluminium.) I folded the paper that the valley is 15mm broad and the crests are 5mm high. The backside then looks like this. Some adhesive into the crests.  A little bit of persuasion with some clip

Otto Hutt Fountain Pens: Design 06

When I visited Germany recently, I had the chance to buy my first Otto Hutt pen . It is a Limited Edition which was produced for the 250th anniversary of the arrival of the first jewellery and watch factory in 1767 in Pforzheim (Germany). Details of the pen see it's brochure: LINK . It was available with a steel nib or with a 18K gold nib, which o f course, I choose. A gold pen needs a gold nib. I also had the chance to borrow a standard model of this pen, black matte with a steel nib in F for comparative tests.  Design OH left, CdA right The name of this pen is Design 06 - for further information see the homepage at Otto Hutt - Link1 (Design 06 page) and Link 2 (Configurator page).  The pen is cigar-shaped, 14 mm at the belly and 9 mm at both ends. I like this design. I have some highly valued Caran d'Ache pens (modell Geneve from the 1990s) with very similar geometry (see photo left).  Goldpen left, standard right The photo on the right shows the Gol