Craft
Why an all-metal pen costs more — and lasts longer
The premium is structural, not a pricing decision. Here is where the cost sits and why the pen holds up.
Where the cost comes from
No mould tooling
No tooling amortisation
A metal pen is machined from solid bar, not moulded. Skipping the mould saves tooling cost but means every model needs its own programming, fixturing and tool path — which is exactly why small batches across many models are viable at all.
Material cost
304 bar costs far more than plastic
304 stainless or 6063 aluminium alloy starts well above engineering plastics such as ABS, and stainless cuts hot and hard — which also means longer cycle time.
Inspection load
260 inspection units spread across 7 models
Inspection is 43% of all equipment, and that cost is largely fixed. The fewer models, the more each pen carries — a structural consequence of the all-metal approach, not a pricing choice.
Refills are standard
Low running cost
Refills take the universal miniG5 format: available anywhere, fitted anywhere. The expensive part is the barrel; the consumable barely registers. The barrel is designed to last a decade.
Where the durability comes from
Solid metal, no seam stress
Barrel and cap are machined from the same stock; the closure is magnetic rather than threaded. That removes thread wear and jamming, and removes the stress-crack points that plastic bodies develop.
Patinas, does not wear
Oxidation on 304 stainless forms a very thin layer, usually appearing over weeks to months. It does not affect writing and can be polished back at any time.
Repairable, not disposable
The 10-year warranty covers barrel deformation, tip breakage, magnetic failure, thread jamming and abnormal anodizing. A failure is repaired rather than discarded.