Okay, okay, this one is kind of a cheap shot.

Not just because this knife is cheap per se, although it definitely is: Only $6 at the moment. Rather, it's because I kinda-sorta posted it already.

But not really.

This knife has no real designation other than it's non-brand name, "Treszen(R)," and we are led to believe its model name is literally "EDC Pocket Knife." I have to wonder if that (R) there means whoever the hell is flogging these things on Amazon actually bothered to register their trademark in the US. Do you know, I'll bet you a nickel they didn't.

This knife bears more than a passing resemblance to one that I showed off in one of my very first Weird Knife Wednesday posts. That was the "SDOKEDC SD604A," and both that and this are very nearly clones of the Scorpiodesign Shapeshifter.

All three of the above are strong contenders for the king of knives that the uninitiated are guaranteed to never be able to figure out how to open. Just let motherfuckers find out you have one of these on you and they'll stop pestering you about borrowing your knife in a big hurry.

The action is this Rube Goldberg triple-jointed nonsense that achieves, at least according to the design goals of the Scorpiodesign original, a knife with an effective blade length longer than the handle is once it's deployed. If you find somehow that this was a void that absolutely needed filling in your life, well, here you go.

The product description goes on to describe it as, "Special Folding Method."

Yeah, that's for damn sure.

It doesn't really feature a lock as such, but when it's all folded out your grip on the handle forces the two halves to cam together, which effectively holds it open and prevents it from folding up on you.

The critical difference here is that the Treszen here is much, much smaller than its inspiration. Small enough that you realistically could actually carry it if you were so inclined, which means I like this incarnation a lot better than the others -- which, novelty aside, are entirely too large and doofy to actually keep on you. That's the SDOKEDC on the right, there, which is near as I can figure identical in dimensions to the original Shapeshifter. And on the left, the bog standard Kershaw CQC-6K.

The Treszen is 5-1/4" long when open and 4" long closed, which puts it well within the realm of actual EDC friendly sizes. It's also only 0.320" thick.

It's way slimmer than the SDOKEDC/Shapeshifter. It's about as thick as a Bugout, actually. But despite this, your EDC aspirations won't be helped in any way whatsoever by the complete lack of any kind of clip, lanyard hole, or even perfunctory ratty nylon belt pouch. You'll just have to let it slosh around in your pocket, I guess.

If it helps you any, though, it is extremely shiny.

That's because it is constructed entirely of metal. What kind of metal? Who knows. The best anyone can tell us is "high carbon steel." But because of this it weighs 61.3 grams overall or 1.16 ounces and feels denser in the hand than you'd expect. Its 2-3/16" blade has a drop point-ish profile that's not too weird to use for things, and is 0.096" thick.

The near mirror-polished surface is, of course, a complete magnet for both scratches and fingerprints. But damned if it doesn't give the thing an unexpectedly grown up vibe. This could, at least in dim lighting perhaps, pass for a gentleman's knife.

Playing with it is strangely satisfying, too. But that's only after you figure out the inherent fly in the ointment, which is that the tip of the blade by necessity pokes through one of the sections of the handle as a part of the opening process. And if you don't know this and you're not careful about it, it'll poke you, too.

I'll tell you what's not so elegant, though. The Treszen's build quality is actually kind of crap.

The edge grind features this rather hilarious chicane in it at the tip, for instance. I figure whoever had this on the grinding wheel must have sneezed right when they got to that part.

And but of course, the edge is gloriously out of true. At this rate, I would almost be disappointed if it weren't. For $6, would you really deprive yourself of the amusement, nay, sheer joy of spending an hour with your very best diamond stones bullying the edge back into shape?

To its credit, the Treszen actually does away with the ridiculous gaps between all the moving parts that the old SDOKEDC featured. Despite not actually being built that well in an objective sense, this helps in making it at least superficially feel quite a bit less naff. The main pivot where the blade slides down along its track is spaced out with these nylon washers, for instance, which probably help reduce the mechanism's friction from completely untenable to merely absurd, and also result in a fairly low amount of wiggle in the blade once it's deployed.

I was going to take the Treszen apart to show you this, but I'm ashamed to admit that, well... I can't.

That's because while it's theoretically held together with Torx screws, several of them are pre-stripped from the factory and some of the others are so malformed that they don't fit any driver I own. Just look at them. I have no idea how the factory even managed to assemble it.

The Inevitable Conclusion

I've never held a knife so crappy that I liked so much.

I don't even really know why. At the end of the day, the Treszen really isn't any more practical than its larger brethren despite being markedly easier to carry. There still isn't any way to describe its method of operation that does not somewhere include the words "deeply silly." And yet.

I can say one thing about it, though, which may also be a result of its German roots: It is categorically impossible to open with one hand. That's not a benefit anybody, except for someone who lives in a place where one-hand opening and locking knives are illegal. Like, oh, Germany. Just a thought.

Strange as it is, ridiculous as it is, I think it would take a indefensibly unreasonable leap for anyone to claim view the Treszen as a weapon. You can't call it anything more than a pennknife. Hell, a Swiss Army Classic is just about John Rambo's Bowie knife compared to this thing. It's so stupid that it's completely nonthreatening.

I mean, just look at him face. How can you not adore that?

I took this photo and the one below for my post about the Dialog, but did not wind up using it therein.

From left to right:

• Platinum Curidas
• Majohn A2 Press (Modified)
• Lamy Dialog 3
• Pilot Vanishing Point
• Oaso K016

It may in fact happen to transpire that I, too, have a type.

Actually several, probably.

Left to right, top to bottom:

• Kershaw CQC-5K 6074OLBLK
• Kershaw CQC-6K D2 Version
• Kershaw CQC-6K 8Cr Version
• Kershaw CQC-11K D2
• Zero Tolerance ZT0630
• Zero Tolerance ZT0620
• Kershaw CQC-4KXL D2

You know balisong knives, right?

I mean, you're here. So of course you do. Two handles, two pivots, and the blade in the middle...

No, not like that.

...This is the "CIZPIROK Double Edge Blade Folding Knife," which comes variously plus or minus the usual mantle of edc-gadget-gift-cool-folding-knives-for-men. It's one of those. You know how it is.

The CIZPIROK, quite aside sounding like somebody who just sneezed in Polish, I think is considerably more interesting once you don't consider it to address the question of, "How do you make a knife with two edges fold?"

I mean, that much about it is glaringly self-evident.

The 4-3/8" long double edged dagger blade is there, plain as the nose on your face. That's barely interesting at all.

Rather, I think it's better as an exploration of this: What if someone who had never seen one before set out to make a balisong knife, possibly by having one described to them over a bad telephone line, but happened to get one critical parameter absolutely wrong?

The CIZPIROK, you see, has all the elements of a balisong knife. It has two handles, drilled through with decorative and lightening holes. Just like a Benchmade Model 42, right? And it has two pivots at the heel, one for each handle, and it's even held shut by a reversible latch on the tips of the handles that can lock it both open and closed.

All the ingredients are there, but somehow despite starting with some ground beef and a bun, the chef wound up producing a flan. And it's just wobbling away on the plate, damned if he knows how it got there.

You can even, with a fair bit of practice, luck, and a following wind, manipulate it somewhat akin to a balisong knife. Though overall the experience feels mildly cursed.

But rotating the entire kit and kaboodle 90 degrees makes the whole thing decidedly uncanny, if you try to think of it in balisong terms. The CIZPIROK's major defining feature, other that what we've already covered, could best be summed up as "flat."

The two handle halves are unitary flat slabs of steel, rounded over on the edges, and with the entire thing painted black. It's 9-1/4" long open including the latch, and folds up to about 5-1/4". It's precisely 1/2" thick either open or closed, not including the pocket clip. Said clip is mounted very far down on the side of the knife and leaves a huge 1-1/4" or so of it sticking out of your pocket. But it doesn't get in the way otherwise, because it winds up in between the handle halves, trading places with the blade, when the knife is opened.

There's a "thumb" ring in the tail where the point of the blade winds up when it's closed. Calling it that is a bit of a stretch, really. The hole is a shade under 3/4" in diameter which certainly makes it much too small to get my thumb or index finger through, and failing that I can't find any other use for it.

The entire thing has a kind of techno-dirk vibe to it, a cross between one of those classic diver's knives and an OSS dagger. If this appeared in a movie the femme fatale would have it tucked in her garter, and the directors probably couldn't resist making her try to use it as a throwing knife.

Being entirely made of steel, it feels quite dense in the hand at 163.6 grams or 5.75 ounces. The blade purports to be made of 440C which is plausible. As for the country of origin? Go on, you'll never guess.

The CIZPIROK's sideways design automatically engenders some mechanical weirdness. The pivots are riveted together so nondestructive disassembly is, unfortunately, completely impossible. So much for that.

Running the axis of each handle through the blade would otherwise require making the heel of the blade really thick, which obviously hasn't happened. Instead, there are two of these H shaped plates, one on either side, through which the pivot pins go.

You would imagine that this would make it awfully hard to keep the entire assembly within square and resist torsion, and that's exactly right. When it's unlatched, the whole thing can wiggle pretty significantly.

But at less than $20, you weren't really expecting this thing to be machined by Swiss watchmakers, were you?

As such, close inspection of the details reveals all the places wherein the crudeness lies. Here's the tip, for instance, which is definitely capable of administering a poke but the finish has been rubbed off in the process of grinding the edges. It works, but is decidedly unrefined. The bevels have highly pronounced machine marks on them, plus all the usual other hallmarks of cheapness. They're all here.

So as is tradition for these types of things I'm positive the edges have been ground freehand, and they're quite out of true. But in this case there are four edge grinds to contend with rather than two, so it can be twice as whacked. What a bargain.

From the factory the grind doesn't even make it all the way to the point. But then, given the hyper budget construction and unknown heat treating quality, this may ultimately be for the best.

With its all black finish, double edge, and crossguard-eque side protrusions which are really more finger guards than anything else, the CIZPIROK postures itself with fighting knife aspirations. It's a little big for EDC duty but not excessively large.

And of course, it can posture just as much as it feels like. That doesn't make it so. Here in reality, I think you'd probably prefer something that's a little less tough to open in a hurry.

The Inevitable Conclusion

The CIZPIROK Double Edge is a fascinating case study in bonkers knife design, and probably serves as a good example of why we don't do it this way. It's novel for sure, but I'm not entirely certain the problem it's setting out to solve is one that actually needed solving.

But just the fact that it exists means you don't have to ask, "what if?" Here it is, in reality, where you can hold it. Now you know. How strange.

If it looks like my bike has too many mirrors on it, it's not because I've converted it into a Quadrophenia tribute. My buddy's KLR is actually parked directly next to mine and at this angle it's unintentionally almost completely concealed...

Out on the road today I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.

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I'm going to 3D print a badge and pin it to my wall, or something. Right after I finish rolling on the floor and laughing. Just give me a few minutes.

1. Context: This guy creates an "angry" sub to bitch about things. Cool, cool.
2. Same guy posts a couple of troll-level ranty screeds filled with nonsense and bad faith "arguments," such as they can even be considered arguments at all. W/e, that's his prerogative. However...
3. Doing this in public means that this makes it to the .world front page as these things do, which invites people to comment on this silliness. Myself included.
4. Jabroni gets butthurt about his opinions actually having to withstand scrutiny and then, of course, hilarity ensues.

5. ...But bro is also under the impression you can't say "fuck" on the internet for some reason?

But that's not the actual headline, here. What's bats is, he actually went through and deleted pretty much every comment in that thread. Here it is.

He's, uh, really racking up the popularity.

TL;DR: User openly calls out a specific demographic (one that is prevalent on this instance, no less), is shocked when said demographic shows up, responds by throwing a tantrum and bans everyone from his playpen. Comedy gold!

Big whoop, right?

Well. Apparently I, uh, have "merch" now.

The Microtech Halo VI is stupid, and that's precisely why I love it.

Normally this is the part where I would say, "The Microtech Halo VI T/E is an unassuming aluminum bodied knife that..." and so on, and so forth, until I make you try to guess what its quirk is.

But that's wrong. Because it isn't unassuming in any way. Not even a little bit.

First of all, it's massive: 10-1/2" long open, 6-1/8" closed, with a 4-1/4" long tanto pointed blade that's got a devil-may-care rakishness to its point. It's not light either, at 141.6 grams or 5 ounces. And carrying it? Pfah! Who cares about such trivial details? It has no clip and no lanyard hole. Nothing. Suffice it to say, no one is going to discreetly tuck this into a shirt pocket.

You see, the Halo VI is a single action out-the-front automatic knife. Not -- and this is a very important distinction -- your typical dual action in-out mechanism. Those are for losers. Losers who are concerned with stuff like safety and practicality. Losers who didn't have to go completely bonkers designing a solution the very problem that they deliberately created for themselves, because they can and who the fuck is going to stop them?

I can only imagine what the design process for the Halo VI must have looked like, but I'll bet you it started with doing a massive line of coke right off of the boardroom table.

The Halo VI has this fat obvious fire button on it. It's big and chunky and has this fascinating sawtooth texture on it, and you really, really want to press it. The oblong dingus in the middle is a sliding safety, a button within a button, much like the safety on a Glock trigger. It's there because as a single action knife, the blade is always spring loaded, positively quivering with tension. Ready to launch out and ventilate your shorts, put a hole right through your dick, deliver you an express vasectomy.

A typical switchblade's spring only pushes the blade for a tiny fraction of its travel and inertia does the rest. That ain't how it works with the Halo VI. Its blade is full-time under power, all the way throughout its range of travel, and absolutely will not be stopped by such puny inconveniences as any part of your personage being in its way. Everyone who's ever owned an in-out switchblade has at some time, most likely while giggling, fired it at a solid surface like the top of a desk and found that the end result is that no real damage was done to the presumptive target and you're now just a chump holding a flaccid, unlocked blade flapping loosely in its track.

That is not how the Halo VI works. Hence, the safety.

So you light the thing off, and the blade rockets out the front and slams open with an thunderous cacophony, and locks there. It's glorious. Everyone in the room knows when you've triggered it. Even when they know what's coming, it makes people jump. Watching such an enormous length of steel spring into your hand with such viciousness would surely take the fight out of anybody.

But, uh. Now what?

On a normal limp-wristed switchblade you could flick the switch the other way, and the blade will slither back into the handle aided by its wimpy little excuse for a spring. But the Halo VI is a single action auto, so reloading it requires stuffing the blade back into the housing somehow, against the spring. That seems... safe?

Ah.

So on the other end, the Halo VI has what can only be described as a goddamn AR-15 charging handle on it.

You pinch the two little spring loaded grabber tabs to unlock them, and yank this aluminum bar...

...all the way back, which pulls in the blade.

There's no getting around it. The verb you're looking for is "rack." This is a knife you reload.

Here's a complete demonstration of the action.

A random unrelated consequence of this is that, aside from all the machine work and fine tolerances in the latches on the tailcap and its fitment against the handle body and so forth, the Halo VI's mechanism is caveman levels of simple. It consists of a big spring, a button, a little spring for the button, and a blade with two notches bitten into it. And that's it. Unlike a double action auto which requires a multilayered sandwich of sliding plates and extension springs and little latches and ramps and all.

All those people who are annoyed by the fact that every single double action auto in the world has an off-centered blade in it will thus be pleased to note that another side effect of the mechanical design is that the Halo VI's blade dispensing port is exactly in the middle.

And it's an attractive thing in its own weird way. It's flawlessly anodized and held together with Microtech's stylish but baffling triangular headed screws. Clearly much care went into the design of the ergonomic yet alien curvature of the handle and the diamond pattern on the trigger button. Never mind that you have to buy a special tool to take it apart, and the warranty will be voided if you do. Who has time to care about that?

It's massive. Gargantuan. Vulgar, even. I'm running out of words for it.

I told you a lie earlier. It actually comes with this Kydex holster thing. It's cool, though; the holster is also wildly impractical. It does offer just a soupçon of retention, and it also holds the knife proudly erect and high on your belt, clearly visible at all times so people can see what a cool guy you are. Probably from space.

The Inevitable Conclusion

I don't think there's any way to fully -- let alone succinctly -- sum up the completely bonkers nature of this knife. It is an entire gallon of moonshine, a four wheel burnout in a billowing cloud of tire smoke all the way down the street, Hendrix blaring on the stereo unironically, on fire, wearing shades.

You can't carry this knife anywhere because it'd be illegal. You can't hand it to anybody, lest they unavoidably find a way to injure themselves with it. You can't keep it around your desk, because you'll always be playing with it and never get any work done. Its design is so purposeful, and yet it can have no purpose. It's too weird to live, but too rare to die.

It's terrible. It's perfect.

As in cheap, perfunctory, and thoughtless.

In a previous column I mentioned owning only two knives, or suitably knifelike objects, that I received without actually wanting them. This is the second one.

This presents the usual difficulty in showing off a generic knife, because typically I can just say that I have a Manufacturing Co. Model XYZ or whatever and there is at least some hope that A) people will know what the bleeding hell I'm talking about, and B) find an example of it out there in the world, even if it is just in the form of more reviews of now-discontinued knives.

With this, I have no such capability. I have no idea who makes this or what it was called. You can't ask for it by name even if you wanted to. And it's certainly old enough that I can no longer find incarnations of it being sold via any of the usual Chinese drop-ship bottom feeders. The closest I can find in these modern times is this "Elk Ridge" folder, and this "Sarge Knives" model, both of which are clearly the same idea but neither of which are an exact match.

So rejoice; this knife may be well and truly extinct.

It's all academic anyway. You don't want one of these. It's absolute flea market crap of the worst kind.

I ordered a couple of knives from somewhere back in the day and this arrived as a "free gift," unannounced and unsolicited, with my purchase. I think it was from BudK, but I could be wrong. Obviously its shtick is that it has two blades on it: One absolutely ghastly mostly serrated blade, and one "razor" blade that is of course astoundingly useless for its implied purpose.

The "razor" blade is just a regular cheap pocketknife blade, but with a square profile. It predates the current stupid Joker razor fad by a couple of decades, but this arrived precisely at the time when the Johnny Depp/Sweeny Todd movie was the height of fashion so back then every damn fool thing was pretending to be a straight razor for a while. Notably, the razor blade lacks any of the features actually required to work for shaving. It's hilariously dull, for a start, but it also doesn't have the deep hollow grind that a traditional straight razor has and indeed requires to achieve its microscopic edge. A real straight razor doesn't have much if any of a secondary bevel, and certainly not one as thick, pronounced, and obtuse as this one. The surface finish is also so abysmal that it would actually be actively detrimental to its performance. I think more work would be required to get this shaving fit than it would be to build a new razor from scratch, so forget it. And even if you did, nobody knows what kind of steel this is made out of and that's usually a strong indicator that it won't hold any kind of edge for very long.

But that's not what it's for. What it's for is to bamboozle uneducated buyers into effectively setting their money on fire.

The normal blade somehow manages to be even worse. It's exactly 3" long and about two thirds serrated, of course with the usual trashy chisel grind. It is poorly machined, has a terrible surface finish just like the other blade, and because it's got those dumb 1-2-1-2 serrations down most of its length it'd be a hassle to make sharp even if you wanted to.

This is a slip joint folder, meaning that neither blade locks open in any way. The mechanism is very crude and the action is extremely stiff. Opening the serrated blade with one hand is tough, but opening the razor blade with one hand is downright impossible. I suspect the pivot is riveted rather than utilizing any type of screw, but it's underneath the rubber overmould which doesn't come off, so I can't tell.

The entire knife is wonky. The assembly is off-kilter, and neither of the blades open straight. If you peer down its length you can see it's slightly corkscrewed. A simple brass sheet divides the two blades when they're closed, although...

...The mechanism is so twisted that if you try to open both at the same time they actually collide with each other.

There is no model, but the country of origin is obvious even if it didn't say so. If "Stainless" is the most compelling feature a manufacturer can tell you about their knife you are probably looking at a problem. The medallion on the handle also just says "Stainless." It looks like it ought to be a brand, but it isn't. This is surely a case of monkey see, monkey do. Real knives put a shiny emblem there, so we'll put a shiny there, too. Never mind what it says.

The Inevitable Conclusion

It's clear why these were being given away, since obviously its vendor was having trouble selling them for actual money. So why, then, do I even keep this piece of shit around?

As a warning from history. You see, this is an inglorious time capsule, describing the way all cheap knives used to be back in the bad old days. It still serves as a concise illustration of most of the design and construction details you'll find on a shoddily constructed knife. Absolutely everything about it is wrong. Every single aspect is a warning sign, and to see it -- or better still, to hold it -- is to immediately and intuitively understand what all those signs are. The awful surface polish, the pock marks and rust spots fresh from the factory, the halfassed edge grind, the lack of serviceable hardware, the shoddy etching, totally nameless, and with the grinning implication from its anonymous origin that it's more than it actually is. Oh yes, it's all there.

You've heard of the ur-example. This is an un-example. Precisely not what to buy, under any circumstances, for any purpose. No matter how desperate you are. You'd be better off sharpening a rock.

So in retrospect, I'm glad I got this one for free.

Salutations, squawkers and waddlers. I haven't done one of these in a while.

The reason for that is, well, boring old pragmatism. I like fountain pens, and I have a handful of them, but due to the majority of my work being digital by nature one way or the other I don't write a whole heck of a lot down on a daily basis anymore. I do a little, and because of it having a pen around is still essential. Obviously I prefer to use a fountain pen. But I don't write enough when all is said and done to justify having more than one fountain pen inked up at a time. I know how some of you do, but an ink fill for me can easily last a couple of months. If I kept multiple pens inked up I'd never get anything done in between all the time I'd spend unclogging and cleaning them out.

Therefore my pen rotation schedule is pretty slow. Lately I've been using this:

This is a Majohn A2 Press, and yes, it's that pen. You know the one.

The A2 is, let's call it... inspired by the Pilot Vanishing point to a significant degree. So much so that parts between the two are actually interchangeable.

The A2's a damn sight cheaper, though, and has several construction differences starting with a plastic body (in this variant, anyway; they make a metal one now) with a faceted look. The facets do in my opinion give it a very subtle Art Deco/1920's sort of vibe but it's understated, not totally in your face like so many things are these days that are trying hard to evoke whatever bygone era.

The A2 is, of course, retractable. No cap. You press the long plunger on the end like a regular ballpoint clicker pen and the point retracts into the body, with a little trap door closing behind it to keep it from drying out. Because of this the A2 is just as long "posted" as it is put away, minus the length of the point itself. That's about 5-1/2" in total when retracted. You can neither make it any shorter nor any longer.

The A2 is a fairly fat pen by the standards of my preference, but it's not as fat as any of the turned wood or trendy brass models I seem to see on display these days. The thickest point is at the silver band in the midsection where it unscrews, and it measures 12.33mm or 0.485" at that point. So strangely enough, that means it is a few thou thinner than an OG Vanishing Point, which is: 13.38mm or 0.526". It's slight, but enough to be noticeable.

I prefer a slim pen, and preferably one with a straight body, and the A2 is neither. The whole thing is tapered down at both ends like a very emaciated football. This carries on all the way down to where you grip it to write, which I found a trifle disconcerting at first (and the Vanishing Point is exactly the same way). You get used to it. Right along with getting used to the pocket clip being on the "wrong" end of the pen, up by the point rather than at the tail, and totally immobile. This is presumably a hedge against leakage since the pen'll always be pocketed with the tip up in this configuration.

The elephant in the room? What elephant? Oh, yeah. That elephant.

Apropos of nothing, you can get an entire replacement mechanical assembly for the A2 for about $19 online. The point and nib assembly, metal cap for behind the cartridge, a little cleaner bulb, a spare converter, the works. This enables the possibility of committing violence to your A2's nib that you would never in a million years consider inflicting on your Vanishing Point, and clicking undo on that if you fuck it up will cost you less than a single Jackson.

The problem, you see, is that the Majohn is one of those newfangled Asian pens whose maker assumes the sum total of your desire in life is to have the thinnest and sharpest needle point on your fountain pen in the history of the universe, and to hell with all other considerations. The A2 comes in "fine," which is extraordinarily fine, and "extra fine," which is so sharp as to be practically useless. At least by my standards. I understand this sort of thing is very popular in hemispheres where people write tiny in pictoglyphs and need to cram them into little boxes on forms, or something. But that's not what I do. I prefer an italic or, even better, an oblique nib. There's no sense in being anachronistic if when you hand someone a written page they can't immediately tell. Where's the fun in that?

So I took a whetsone and I hacked a spare A2 nib assembly into the widest oblique point I could manage before I started to destroy the plastic feed and nib support. The net result is 1.3mm and, well, I prefer even a little wider. But it'll do.

Mine is therefore probably the only A2 Press in the world that'll put down this.

My A2 is now a pretty wet writer (evidenced by the feathering on the cheap copy paper I just doodled that on) but kicks out a line approximately a zillion times bolder than it did when it was stock. The stainless steel nib the A2 comes with is pretty thick vertically at the root, which I had to cut into to accomplish this. So there isn't a ton of line width variation between horizontal and vertical strokes, but there is some and I'll take what I can get.

I currently have it loaded with some Diamine Shimmering Seas, which is one of their "shimmer" inks that's supposed to present a metallic sheen. It works best in a broad pointed pen, so it does pretty okay out of this one. The effect is pretty tough to photograph.

The above comparison is inescapable every time the topic comes up. Yes, I do own a genuine Pilot Vanishing Point and no, I generally don't leave the house with it. The Pilot has a lacquered brass body and is significantly heavier than the Majohn, has a nice soft and refined click, and generally feels more premium overall. As you'd bloody well expect it to, for what it costs. It's a very fine pen (both in terms of construction and line width) and while Pilot does make a "stub" nib for it, the widest and only size you can get is a poxy 1.0mm, and a replacement unit is north of $100. That is, just for the nib assembly.

So for daily use I'll stick to my hacked up clone, thanks.