czxwyst 601 Steel Cap Vacumatic Fountain Pen (army green with ink window)

Although the listing doesn't say it's a Wing Sung pen, rest assured that it is and that's a good thing. These pens always write well and they have an excellent filling system. These are the easiest and cleanest pens to refill! No mess! A very tidy pen it is. Pen aficianados know that these are modeled on the Parker 51 of days long gone. But this is one of the few cases where the "copy" surpasses the original. I have a few of these, but I had to get one more, for reasons. Bonus: pen comes with silicone lube for the filler and a handy tool for disassembly.

I have too many pens, everything from the old cheap 10-for-$10 Hero 616s to a pair of vintage Mont Blancs. I'm particularly a fan of interesting filling systems, demonstrators, and Parker 51s. This hits all three, without resorting to selling your house for an actual 51 Vac demonstrator.I've owned a few Wing Sung Sheaffer knockoffs over the years to keep knockabout, keep in your bag pens, and honestly, they were atrocious, but at least they wrote, and I didn't care if they inevitably got lost, dropped, or stolen. Last year, I found the Wing Sung 618, an odd hybrid of the P51 aesthetic with the user-serviceable design stolen from TWSBI, and picked up a few. The nibs were hit or miss, but the workmanship was superb for the price, and easy to clean out--perfect for my risky inks like pigment or sparkly inks, or the bottles of Baystate Blue everyone keeps dumping on me.So when I saw this, I was pretty jazzed. It gets rid of the weird Platinum-like cap that was prone to slipping, and swaps a piston for a vacumatic filler. Same nib, more or less. Ordered it, two hours later it was in my hands, and a couple hours of smoothing the nib and testing it out, I'm here writing this review.Like the 618 and the TWSBIs its modeled after, its completely disassemble-able for cleaning or lubrication. Comes with a small tube of silicone. Good luck finding individual parts, but you likely won't need them unless you want to tear it apart and are incredibly clumsy. Just buy a new one. The filler uses a piston, unlike the prototype parker's tear-prone rubber diaphragm. Big points for reliability. The plastic, whatever its composition, feels solid. Not like a Lamy 2000, but not a glorified Bic.The nib is nothing special, but no slouch like some others at this price point. It's fairly smooth, albeit dry, out of the box. Worth getting some mylar and smoothing it out. As always, wash out the innards before inking up or you might get flow problems. Writes akin to a western EF.Definitely a new favorite. Like I said, I like weird inks that I'm loathe to put in nicer pens, but other cheapies from (ahem) certain ink makers tend not to be up to the task. If this is anything like the other new Wing Sungs, I know I can throw this in my bag and forget about it for days on end and it'll still write when I fish it out. Get one, and you'll be mesmerized filling it up.

I'm rating this pen based on what it's supposed to be, at this price point. This pen goes by various names (Wing Sung 601, Hero 601, etc.) and is a Parker 51 "Vacumatic" clone. The original Parker vintage pens are much more expensive. Both this pen and the original design are a button-press vacuum-filler pen, with a hooded nib. Other Parker 51 designs have a squeeze-sac reservoir instead such as the "Aerometric" model, and you can find clones of that model online too, such as the Wing Sung 616. Jinhao also makes the Jinhao 86 that uses a more modern converter rather than the squeeze-sac. But Jinhao clones the modern Parker 51 with a screw cap and modern converter, whereas Wing Sung clones the vintage Parker 51 designs with the push cap and more exotic filling mechanisms. This 601 pen and the original Parker 51 "Vacumatic" have most of the same quirks, so don't expect they'll be as easy-to-use as other fountain pens.In the box of the 601 is provided a silicone grease applicator (that looks like a converter but isn't) and cylindrical black plastic wrench. To keep costs down, they didn't grease it for you, so you'll need to do that yourself when you get the pen to make the button press smoother and reduce chances of leaks. Twist off the blind cap at the back of the pen, which is meant to be indistinguishable from the rest of the pen so you might not know it's there. That will reveal the button vacuum-filler. Use the cylindrical black plastic wrench to remove the plastic sleeve around the rod, unscrew the plug from the silicone grease applicator and apply grease to the sleeve and rod, then re-secure the sleeve with the wrench. Don't over-tighten anything, just turn until it stops. To fill the pen, dip the nib fully in ink, and press the button to expel air, then release to suck up ink. Slowly repeat several times until you can see ink filling in the ink windows and you don't get bubbles. If this isn't working at all and you're desperate, then you can unscrew the grip section around the nib, dip the entire section in ink, and try refilling again and re-securing the grip section (but this method might cause burps at first). Cleaning "Vacumatic" pens and their clones is tedious, as you perform the same pumping action with water instead of ink. Use easy-to-clean inks for this type of pen. For example, Private Reserve "Infinity" inks resist drying out and are easy to clean. Both can be issues with this pen design. All of this is a quirk of the Parker design, so this isn't the fault of the 601 clone. In fact, the 601 includes ink windows that the original didn't. As long as the windows don't leak, it's actually an improvement over the original, while keeping the features of the original.In conclusion, these pens are for curious vintage pen enthusiasts or vintage Parker 51 addicts that want to have a cheap clone for everyday use. These are good pens for their price point, considering their job is to clone an expensive quirky vintage pen.

Giant tin cap fits in a scratchy way.The pen feels OK, posted or unposed, and the filler cap fits nicely -- but three gaskets? LOLIt's a junk wagon, basically, with a cheap nib... but it has a purpose.I bought this pen on a lark because it was cheap but it's good for testing ink. I buy a variety of ink types and this is a perfect tester.It would be better with a light, clear plastic cap that fits nicely.