Pilot FriXion Erasable Pens: A Comprehensive Guide
jetpens.com
jetpens.com
1. The erasability is excellent. It's just as good as everybody says. If you're old enough to remember "erasable pens" from the 1980s, this is completely different.
2. Pretty good feel. Not quite as smooth as a gel pen, but it's like a nice ballpoint.
3. If you get the Japanese models from Jetpens you can get some really really fine tips, like 0.38mm
4. Great for lefties, little to no smearing. One of the best lefty-friendly pens I've ever tried.
5. I find I write/sketch more freely with these relative to regular pens, because I'm not scared of mistakes.
Con:
1. They seem to dry up really quickly. A few months sitting in my desk drawer, and they lose their ability to write despite being nearly full of ink. I stopped buying them for this reason.
Anybody else experienced this? Now that I'm thinking about it, I probably could have experimented more. Maybe the ball was clogged, and cleaning it with rubbing alcohol could have revived them?
I owned probably 20-30 Frixons over the years, purchased at various times, and nearly all of them had this problem.
The only constant (beside the human being using them) I can think of is that probably 75% of my writing was in Moleskine-brand journals, and maybe 25% on index cards.
The ink inside the pens could be clearly seen, so I don't think it was invisible. And the ball in the ballpoint clearly felt like it had locked up.
The ink in most of the pens was still visible and hadn't gone "invisible", so I don't think it was working but laying down invisible ink. It felt like the balls in the ballpoints had locked up.
Mine seemed to run out of ink quicker than normal pens, however that might be possible. And they're not exactly cheap either.
A fantastic use case though is in sewing. Ironing the fabric makes the ink transparent. These pens are far superior to chalk for that reason.
Pilot also updates the formula so a frixion bought today has much better colors than one bought 10 years ago
This is usually more of an issue when drawing or painting, and many cheap colored pencils for example will simply disappear if you keep them on the fridge too long. I don’t think any normal pen ink has this issue. But then again, this isn’t a normal pen, so…
That said, if they do fade, I’d be surprised if Pilot doesn’t clearly specify this somewhere.
Yes. Shake them hard to sling the ink towards the tip. That almost always fixes mine.
Then again, I write work notes, journals, and fiction that I need to last through coffee spills or accidentally setting the notebook on the heater (which could easily be the bottom of my laptop when it's driving high-res monitors.
https://www.jetpens.com/blog/Noodler-s-Fountain-Pen-Inks-A-C...
Baystate Blue also seems to be a cursed ink. It's not a matter of if you drop that bottle, but a matter of when.
If you drop it on a rug, or countertop or spill some while filling or cleaning a pen it's a major pain to clean up, if you can even clean it up.
It also has a reputation for staining the ink reservoir of your pen and if you have a fancy demonstrator to show off the ink you'll only ever see blue and none of the fun colors you're using.
Noodler's Ink Dark Matter is not. It is, however, a recreation of the official ink of the Manhattan Project. The ink wizard behind Noodler's was sent a bottle of the original Manhattan Project ink, and he chemically analyzed it, and reproduced it as closely as he could manage with modern components. Scientists and clerks were required to us it so any materials could be traced back to the project. The bottle has a picture of Oppenheimer on it.
Bottles of 54th Massachusetts and Heart of Darkness lurk in my closet waiting to come round in the rotation.
Platinum Carbon Black, Rohrer & Klingner sketchINK, and any of the De Atramentis Document Inks.
Noodler's ink is fun (especially the Lexington Grey) but not very water resistant in my experience.
The thing about them, however, is they are all dye-based inks, so they're generally safe for all modern fountain pens.
The sketchINK series is a pigment-based ink, if memory serves, so better for dip or brush pens. Platinum Carbon Black is a bit special. It's a nano-pigment black ink. Will not budge, and works well in fountain pens. I also hear great things about the Document Inks.
One of these days I'll pick up a few bottles of the different Document inks (which are designed to be mixed with each other). For black ink, though, my heart belongs to Noodler's Ink Heart of Darkness, followed by Dark Matter.
Rohrer & Klingner iron gall inks (Salix and Scabiosa) are on my list as well... one day.
One observation not mentioned in these discussions is that the ink tends to fade quite a bit over time. Its not just the heat. My rooms are temperature-controlled. But notes from a year ago for e.g are lighter & several alphabets show part erasure. Give or take a few years, they fade away almost completely. Personal observation but restricted to using the fine tips (0.38 & 0.4). Not sure if same problem happens in 0.5 & 0.7 too.
Japan government entities do not recommend using this pen when filling out any form or making any signature. The person in counter quickly tests the ink every time a form gets submitted.
When a friend discovered them he used it to do a puzzle (for a home scape room). It was a crossword than when solved it said something like "heat this", and when you did it, the black squares disappeared revealing the code. The squares were made with that ink.
The ink doesn't really go anywhere, even when you use the "eraser". It just becomes transparent. This can be reversed by exposing it to cold.
Pilot mentions this on their tips and tricks page: https://www.pilot-frixion.uk/uk/tips-and-tricks/
A friend has journals a few years old and on the right 2/3rds of the pages the writing is nearly gone (theory being maybe that side got warmer, but not certain)
In a similar vein - I had recipes disappear from a notepad because it sat too close to the oven. Also printing on a paper that has something written on it with Frixion with cause these scribbles disappear without a trace.
Extreme temperature sensitivity of Frixion is a very good rake.
Presumably a laser printer, which heats the paper to fix the toner.
Not sure an ink jet or dot matrix printer would do the same :)
One of those things I'd have ignored for ever if I hadn't been shown them by a fellow student on a language class. I'm a complete convert to these now.
I particularly love them for scribbling ad-hoc diagrams in my notes and then being able to move things around without redrawing everything from scratch.
Also, remember to have a normal biro or fountain pen for signing important documents!
If they accidentally left it in a cold car, the mismarking will come back. Needs to be fairly cold though. Or a freezer.
It was one of these Frixion pens. Didn't even realize what I was doing. It was funny in a slightly embarrassing kind of way.
What matters isn't that the signature exists on paper, what matters is that you actually signed it.
No - pens with pigment based inks (the ones that were advertised heavily for being great for writing checks and signing documents securely with) will stick around until the bleach disintegrates the paper back into pulp.
I tried the livescribe pen, but the app is hot garbage and wouldn't record audio unless the app was in the foreground and the screen unlocked. Their support recommended I disable my lock screen and sleep timer. I sent the pen back to amazon for a refund.
I've found the same issue - and I've discovered it's because of the pen. The pen they give to you by default writes poorly once your notebook has been used up. The clickable one and skinny ones are fine and write like day 1.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Pilot-Frixion-Clicker-Erasable-Ge...
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Pilot-FriXion-ColorSticks-Erasabl...
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Pilot-Frixion-Clicker-Erasable-Ge...
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Pilot-FriXion-ColorSticks-Erasabl...
I never use these pens anymore because of it's weird use case: writings which doesn't need to be kept long-term and at the same time you're sure will be handled properly (temperature-wise).
- The eraser literally never runs out. I've had 1 of them for years and gone through 5+ ink refills
- They actually erase well with very minimal smearing unlike the old "erasable" pens of the 2000's
- Writing in ink while having the erasability of a pencil is great
- The ink does disappear in high heat, but I have never lost anything important. I can almost always get it back using the freezer method
Highly recommend!
Oh man. "I used these pens a lot and now several years of notebooks are empty because there was a heat wave" is a tragedy waiting to happen.
Paper is pretty insulating (thinking about paper within a notebook here), so I suspect most people will be safe, assuming they don't leave loose sheets of paper in direct summer sunlight on their car's seat for long periods of time…
Though, when I learned about their incident, I immediately stopped using a FriXion for any writing I might want to come back to in 2+ weeks' time.
Highly recommend Jetpens for pens, ink, paper and more (and the Lamy is a great first fountain pen).
(tongue firmly in cheek :), though I did just finish the order.)
Great prices, fast shipping, and they really contribute back to the community with articles such as the linked article.
Also, back when I decided to go deep on writing with pencils, I asked for suggestions on Twitter and the JetPens corporate account gave me a crap-ton of great suggestions (and I bought all of them, since most pencils are pretty cheap)
Human subcultures are nested fractally, there's no bottom.
Neat. Disappearing, reappearing ink -- like the McGuffin in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.