Red, White, and Avengers Blue: 3d Printed Fountain Pen

It was pre-assembled

I came to the US during Covid because that was the absolute best idea ever in the history of absolute best ideas ever, which means this was my fourth Fourth of July, and by now, I have gone through stages of wearing Old Navy shirts with American flags, watching my wife grill hot dogs, dozing off during Independence Day movie, to just making sure my cat is fine with fireworks (he is, he sleeps through them). As I was spending copious amounts of money on fountain pens for the ubiquitous 4th July Sales (Endless Pens will be the death of me), I asked myself if I should get a red, blue, and white pen just to mark the occasion… and then I remembered I already have the absolute perfect pen.

Namely, the pen that waited for me at the airport our home was a gift to feel more welcome — as fountain pens always do — and it was an amazing little thing from an Etsy store I can’t seem to find anymore. I present to you: the Avengers 3D Printed Captain America Fountain Pen!

Pretty, free, and blue: Captain America Fountain pen.

The pen is light and slightly bulky, but extremely pleasant to use. It came with a bunch of extra parts in case you’re like my wife and will lose everything you possibly can, and I believe that the maker also had a few options like accommodating for a Con-70 (i.e. making the pen longer) or adding the ballpoint attachment (why lol). Apart from the Captain America finish, there were also the Hulk, Iron Man (my personal favorite Avenger, I’m afraid), Black Widow, and others. What’s super cool is that the pen comes with a Pilot Metropolitan nib and grip section, but the maker also included the entire Metro with the 3D printed pen, in the off chance you’re weird and don’t like 3D printed stuff.

So, parts of the pen: M nib in Metro grip section, a cap with a clip, a converter, the body of the pen. The texture took some getting used to, but it’s super pleasant to the touch, almost tactile. Everything is disassembleable (that’s a word). The colors are striking; this is not the pen that will fly under the radar.

Avengers: disassemble!

The cap is quite large; it’s actually bigger than the body of the pen. Actually, uncapped, the Avengers pen is about the size of an Opus 88 mini, albeit not as girthy. The Metro is a solid centimeter longer (half an inch in Freedom units). I’m talking about the ‘smaller’ size; my pen doesn’t accommodate for the Con-70.

Size comparison left to right: Pilot Metropolitan, Captain America, Opus 88 mini.

It’s interesting to me how the small size of the pen is hidden behind that cap as if with a shield.

Uncapped pens.

As you can see, the Metropolitan is quite bigger than America (not throwing shade here). I personally love the fact the pen reminds me of Captain Rogers both before and after they turned him into the poster boy. Look at him go. Big and strong, yet inside, he’s still the same small framed yet diligent fighter. Brings a tear to my eye.

You can use the pen unposted — well, I can — but the cap screws back into the same threads that are used for capping, so you can opt for that. It takes the pen 3 and 1/4 turns to uncap, which would be a nuisance if you didn’t have that awesome white star to watch roll around the center of the pen.

Fits the hand pretty okay.

Side note, the clip is there just to look pretty, much like at least one of the Avengers I won’t name because I don’t want people to tell me that the bow and arrow is actually a super useful weapon against enemies in armor who carry laser guns¹. The clip itself doesn’t really touch the body, and if you were to try to bend it, it would probably snap off. Thankfully, as I said, I have spare parts so I wouldn’t be too worried about snapping off the first clip. I personally also do not care much about clipping my pens to anything, so it doesn’t make too much of a difference to me, but you may not like that.

I usually refill the empty Pilot cartridge to use in this pen. I probably should have clarified that the pen also takes proprietary Pilot cartridges alongside smaller Pilot converters like Con 50, Con B or Con 20. I refuse to acknowledge the Con 40, arguably the worst converter in the history of conversion, and that includes converting from Celsius to Farenheit (seriously America, Farenheit?). The pen writes super well, but that’s expected from Pilot Metropolitans. And yes, you can put any small Pilot-like nib in the pen, so any Kakuno, Prera, Explorer, or even those Wing Sung nibs that you can find on Wing Sung 3003, for example.

To everyone who celebrates Independence Day, happy holidays. To others, happy Friday and I hope you also got the day off because mental health and binging Avengers movies is far more important than working.

Let me know if you have any pens that remind you of any of your favorite characters from any movies. I’m also very curious to see if anyone else has a 3D printed pen, and if you can even find that super awesome store that sells these.

If you’d like to support my work, you can always convert from a free to a paid subscriber, and I promise I’ll learn to use Fahrenheits.

1. I bet you thought I’d say Black Widow. Nope. She is kinda cool though despite not having any cool powers. I mean have you seen Dr. Strange?