Comparing the Sailor Fude de Mannen Fountain Pens: 40° vs 55°

A fun type of fountain pen is a fude pen, which has a bent nib that allows you to make thin or broad strokes, depending on how you hold the pen. Some people love it, and some people hate it! Which will I be?

Comparison of 40° to 55°

The most widely available fude fountain pen here in the US is the Sailor Fude de Mannen pen, which comes in 40 degree or 55 degree angles. I have heard conflicting things about which one to choose:

• School of thought #1: Caution. Newbies to a fude pen should start with 40 degrees because there is a learning curve.
• School of thought #2: Go big or go home. The 55 degree pen brings out everything that’s great about fude. If you don’t like fude, you won’t like either one; if you like fude, you’ll want it to be as angled as possible.

I am a “go big or ho home” person so I thought I would jump right to the 55, but I was sent the 40 by accident. Then I kinda liked it, so instead of exchanging them, I kept it and got the 55 too, to compare.

Note: I wrote “45” below but it should be “40.”

As you might expect, the 40° pen makes it easer to get thin lines, and the thick lines are not as thick. The 55° pen is more extreme; you can still get the thin lines with a little skill, and the thicker lines are thicker.

Drawing Appearance

When I look at the drawn lines (especially the scribbly lines along the lefthand side of the page), I feel like the 40° pen is giving me a nicer line for drawing. The maximum thickness of the line is a little less, but the variation is still dramatic, and it’s easier to get the thin lines as well for contrast. The transition between thin and thick is also easier to achieve.

I found with the 55° pen that I experienced more weird jumps between thin and thick, as if I had suddenly switched between two different pen widths. You can especially see this on the right side of my 55° fude lines: there is a sharp break where I was trying to rotate the pen evenly, but it just seemed to suddenly skip from thin to thick. (Note that I am left-handed and I drew the lines from right to left, so this was at the beginning of drawing the line for me; the taper at the end of the line, along the left, was easier to do gently, though I did not get back down to as thin of a line as I wanted. Right-handed people might find an inversion in direction.)

Writing Appearance

Both pens are nicer to draw with than write with; writing is a bit odd with both of them. You can write legibly, for sure, but they are better for headlines than everyday note-taking.

In this notes page from a Claire Giordano class, for example, I used the 55° fude for the headline and the first letters of each line, and a normal fountain pen for the body text.

Between the two, the 40° pen is more plausible as a text-writing instrument, though I would probably just get a standard fountain pen if writing body text if your primary use case.

Pen Appearance

Both pens are made of lightweight plastic in fairly muted colors. The 40° one comes in a few different body colors (navy blue, peach pink, white), while the 55° one only comes in a muted green called Wakatake (bamboo sprout).

Feel

Both pens can get thicker than even the broadest fountain pen nib I tried, and so have great ink flow. Because the 55 degree pen gets thicker, the ink also tends to flow even smoother and wetter. I really enjoyed the flowiness of them, especially the 55 degree pen.

Ink

They come with the same black Sailor ink cartridge. It is not waterproof. Sailor converters can be used. Anecdotally, I have heard that the broad nib makes it less likely that waterproof ink will dry in the pen and clog the nib, compared to finer pens.

Comparison to other pen types

Fountain Pen/Dip Pen

In both weights of fude pen that I tried, I found that the variable line weights you can get from rotating or angling the pen are quite extreme compared to what you might be used to from typical fountain pens or even flexible nib dip pens. Pressure does not matter, so you can get a wide line without stress on your hand.

Both pens’ boldest lines are bolder than a typical broad nib. Compared to my similarly priced fine fountain pens, both pens gave a very smooth ink flow which I found satisfying.

Brush Pen

Both a fude and a brush pen give variable line weights with minimal stress on your hand, but through different mechanisms; the fude’s width comes from the width of the nib tip, while a brush pen responds to the slightest pressure as the bristles expand when pressed against the page. They both require a knack/muscle memory to master, but it’s a different knack.

A brush pen can get even wider than a fude nib and can more easily fill in large, dark areas. A brush pen feels softer and more organic. Fude lines typically have a squareness or angularity to them while brush pen lines tend to be more rounded.

Conclusion

I surprised myself by preferring the 40 degree pen. The variation in line weights is still noticeable, but looks more balanced to me. You can get quite a thick line, but I find it easier to gently angle between the line weights without abrupt jumps.

Wanna buy it? I bought mine from the fine people at Paper & Ink Arts, and they’re also available at St. Louis Art Supply (USA); Stylo.ca (Canada); and Cult Pens (UK). US folks can also support the blog by using my affiliate link:

Value set of both pens (Amazon.com)