Review: Sailor Profit Fude (Sailor Fude De Mannen)

I was googling sailor pens, because I’ve heard such good things about them when I came across the Profit Fude with its snubbed nose nib. And I thought to myself, hmm . . . I wanna try that. The price didn’t hurt either, just over $10 on amazon. I thought it looked worth a try, so why not?

At first glance, the barrel of the pen looks black, but it’s actually a dark navy. See, the lighting in my house is terrible so it took me a full day to finally realize that small fact. But that’s neither here nor there. It’s a long, light pen, and it feels and sounds like a generic plastic pen, which isn’t surprising considering the cost. Basically it’s the quality of a supermarket pen, but cooler.

When you open it up, it doesn’t come with a converter but two black ink cartridges, which I should have guessed for myself. I did go the extra mile and buy a sailer ink converter because I dislike cartridges and most black inks. So it took about three days for me to really get into using this pen after I’d received it.

It also took me a minute to get the hang of writing with it, but once I did, I really really enjoyed it. It’s basically a fine, medium, and broad nib all rolled into one. And the writing is smooth. No scratchiness, no false starts, no stutter. It works well right out of the box. Which is more than I can say for a lot of fountain pens. Sometimes it takes forever for the ink to start flowing with a cartridge, which is one of the reasons I hate using them. But that was not an issue with this pen at all, in fact it started writing as soon as I put nib to paper.

Use the full length of the snubbed nose of the pen to write with and you have a very broad thick line. Use the tip of the nose and you have a medium line. Turn the pen backwards and you have a fine to extra fine line. With little effort you can thicken your lines in all the right places for some faux flex writing. Or you can use the pen backwards and try your hand at flourishing.

In order to really get a feel for this pen I took it to work with me and I used it as a regular pen. I mostly used the tip of the nib, in which case the pen sits a little more forward in the hand while writing and I never found it uncomfortable, or any more effort than a regular fountain pen. Although I can’t say I had any problems using it as a regular pen, it isn’t a regular pen, so I didn’t really see the point in purchasing it if that’s what it was going to be used for. Using it as a regular pen also made me feel like it wasn’t reaching it’s full potential.

Draw with it, and that’s where this pen shines!

It’s quite easy to control the thickness of the line you’re trying to make and it’s very forgiving when it comes to errors. Find the right paper and you’re golden. Above, I used it with the Baron Fig Unfinish journal and there was no bleed, even when I layered the ink. I find that this pen doesn’t use as much ink as I expected it would and is pleasantly conservative in that regard.

Then I decided to make some geometric shapes on Clairefontaine paper and again no bleed through even though I layered the ink.

In the end, for what it cost, I would consider this pen a steal.

Thank you for Reading!