Deccan Pens have been into existence since 1928 when they opened first outlet in Hyderabad at Abids and has been one of the oldest fountain pen manufacturing company in India. The firm was started by Sabih Akhter Siddiqui who used to sell fountain pens door to door with the help of DURO agency which used to produce fountain pens in 1920’s. Today Deccan Pens has 32 year old manufacturing unit and they only make fountain pens.
They have now 3 stores at Secunderabad, Ameerpet, and oldest one at Abids.
Deccan Pens have been covered and reviewed lot by HARI, SHRUJYA, & JAISIRI.
And this particular review is about one of the largest selling pen from Deccan stable which is “Deccan Advocate”. There have been lot of iterations of Deccan Advocate over many years.
I must thank Rakshit who lives in Hyderabad and he helped me in getting this pen. He also is a fountain pen connoisseur and you can check his blog here. I got this pen almost 7-8 months back and have been using this only for past 2 months. So the review is about my experience with the pen for past 2 months.
DESIGN & BUILT: 5/5
Deccan Pens are notable for impeccable built quality and this Deccan Advocate again stamps their authority of quality built pens.
Advocate currently comes in two variants : Round End and Flat End. The model that I am reviewing is the Round end one in green ripple colour and I was told that it is difficult to get hold of the round end advocate and I was lucky enough to get this one.
The pen is made of high quality ebonite and is available in black, matte black , mottled brown, rippled brown and green ripple and also olive brown ripple.
My pen is extremely well made though it was religiously inspected by Rakshit before he bought this one. The ebonite has no perforations its solid without any specks and perforations. The quality of rod is really great.
The pen is a simple and elegant cigar shaped pen with slight tapering towards the bottom end. There are no bands or trims used on this pen. Only metal part or thing you will see on the pen is clip apart from the nib.
The pen is very well executed and polished though you might see some marks just below the threads which is due to cap being capped and uncapped regularly and has not received thorough cleaning and polish from my side.
The grip section is made of same ebonite material and is in concave shape. The length of grip section is 22 mm and this I beleive is quite good as it helps in good grip on the pen.
The pen cap opens in 6 turns which I am not happy with but its still acceptable as most of the Indian pens take almost around 5 to 6 turns to open.
The cap has chrome finish clip which gives you a look of look of something between matt and polished finish but it is not polished with some sorts of coating.
The cap clip narrows down to bottom and is quite sturdy and can easily fit in to shirt pocket firmly.
The thickness of ebonite is thinnest near the bottom of the cap or what we call as cap lip which you can see in above picture. As the cap tapers at the bottom but it is still sturdy.
Below are the few images showing the comparison of pen with other pens:
Overall, its a beautiful, cigar shaped elegant pen which has impeccable built quality. Its a quality finish from Hyderabad. Yeah I must tell you that there is no branding of any kind on pen anywhere be it clip or nib or even barrel.
BALANCE & SIZE : 3.5/5
The pen is around 140 mm including the nib when uncapped and I don’t see any reason to post the cap at back and also I prefer to write with cap unposted. The pen is very much balanced when writing unposted but becomes bottom heavy when cap is posted at back, moreover it becomes uncomfortable at 184 mm when cap is posted at back, thus it is unbalanced. The pen length is 155 mm when it is capped.
Below are the images showing the comparison when writing posted and unposted :
What I find most comfortable about the pen is the grip section which is at 9 mm and is in conical shape. It provides perfect grip. The length of grip section is also substantial at 22 mm.
The pen weighs around 30 gm with cap and around 20 gm without cap (with ink filled).
Few specifications are as follows:
- Length capped: 155 mm
- Length uncapped and posted : 184 mm
- Length uncapped and unposted : 140mm
- Length of grip section : 22 mm
- Barrel Dia Avg – 14 mm
- Cap Dia – 16 mm
- Section Dia (Avg) : 9 mm
- Weight with cap : 30.4 gm
- Weight without cap : 20.53 gm
NIB & INK FILLING MECHANISM: 4/5
Nib currently being used on this pen is 35 mm (#6) Gold Finish Steel Nib and this is a stock nib and there was no other option of the nib on this pen. The nib is famous ambitious fine nib which is friction fit and it writes very well and is paired with good wet ebonite feed. Ink flow is quite good.
The nib is set just a bit inside more, thus what you see is less of 35 mm nib because the grip section is bit flared up as visible from image below.
The filling mechanism is via eyedropper and it holds approx 3 ml of ink. It has not burped on me even once.
Below are the images of my handwritten review which shows you the writing sample:
CONCLUSION: 12.5/15
I recommend everyone to have at least one Deccan Pen and buying ADVOCATE is the best pen to get hold of at reasonable price of otherwise expensive Deccan Pens. Well yeah i did not like the combination of chrome clip with gold finish nib.
I bought this pen for Rs. 1000 (approx 16 usd) which does not include shipping as it was bought by my friend who paid for Shipping.
What I Like:
- Classic Cigar Design
- Well Finished
- Very Good Quality Ebonite
- Lot of Ink Capacity
What I don’t Like:
- Eyedropper only
- Only one nib option
- Combination of Silver chrome clip with Gold color nib
Comments and feedback are welcome.
Regards
Vaibhav Mehandiratta
mehandiratta 