I got the Sailor Compass 1911 as a Christmas gift. It's been on my radar because it's the least expensive Sailor pen, and it looks nice. It's the budget version of the significantly pricier Sailor 1911, which has a gold nib instead.

The Compass is made of clear colored plastic that has the fun kitsch of early 2000s technology without looking cheap. It comes in a wide array of fun colors, but I had my eye on the olive for obvious reasons. It even comes with a matching green converter.

The pen has the usual Sailor cigar shape and is slightly more compact than pens with a similar profile like the Platinum Plaisir or Pilot Metropolitan. The body is plastic, so it's very lightweight. The feed is made of clear plastic so you can see the ink inside of it.

I love the look of the Compass, but it's virtually unusable out of the box. The ink flow on this pen is dry to an abnormal degree. It's difficult to get ink out of it, and even when ink flows, it skips. The problems seemed to get worse at certain angles, so I also have to constantly rotate the pen to find a good spot, only to lose it if I put it down.

I wasn't the only person with this issue (refer to Gentleman Stationer and Well-Appointed Desk), but other people found theirs worked great out of the box (Pen Addict). It's unclear if this is due to preference or if the quality control is just inconsistent?

Well-Appointed Desk found that the tines (the two halves of the nib) gradually close off as you go up the nib, choking off ink flow. She said gently flossing the nib with metal and lightly wiggling the tines with her fingers loosened it enough for her to write comfortably. I don't have any metal to floss with, so I just pulled the tines apart by hand and found that was sufficient to make the pen usable.

I'm still not a huge fan of how fine this nib is, and the ink flows a little drier than I like even after my attempt to fix it. But it works well enough that I can find it in me to put up with it.

Note from the future: The Compass has been discontinued, so this writeup is mostly just here for documentation of my struggles. Or maybe you found it used and this will help you at some point??

Another note from the future: The Compass has found new life for sketching and is no longer sitting unused in my desk!