The Tactile Turn Slider is my first bolt action pen. The bolt action was kinda fun to use for like 5 minutes, but the mechanism is more of a gimmick to me. I got this one through a Kickstarter campaign at the end of June. I've never backed anything on Kickstarter before, so that was neat to do. Tactile Turn made these relatively cheap for that campaign, $40 plus shipping, which is a great deal for the quality you're getting. The design is nice, but there are a few quirks about the pen that annoy me. I don't love it and will actually be selling mine soon.
First off, it looks great design wise. It looks very sleek and classy. It does have subtle grooves on the entire body that don't show up in the photo too well. I love the grooves. It reminds me of the grooves on the updated FourSevens Preons yet not as obvious. They don't dig into your hand uncomfortably at all and feel interesting as you slide your hand along them. I wish more companies would do the grooves instead of just a sleek body. The quality is phenomenal as well. These are machined out of aluminum here in the US I believe. I've had no issues with the build quality of the pen. However, mine has a ton of rattle when the bolt is not deployed. I'm not sure if that's inherent to all bolt action pens or just this one. It's annoying enough that I don't want to carry it. Other than the rattle, the design and quality are great. Also, how I could I almost forget to mention the color. The purple looks awesome! They offer these in practically every color of the rainbow. The anodizing is well-done and seems like it'd hold up well. You can also get damascus bolts I believe. There's a lot of customization/color options which I always love to see.
The bolt action mechanism is neat. I still prefer clicky pens or just regular ol' capped pens. I don't always get the pen "deployed" when I mean to because the bolt springs back to the starting place. It is very smooth, but if you even slightly miss it, you're not going to be able to get the pen out the first try. If you had gloves on or if your hands are numb/shaking, I could see problems trying to get the pen ready to write. It's kind of fun to play with, but it's not as effortless to do as I expected. The bolt is a good size and shape. I just feel like there's potential to miss it/not get it open when you need to, unlike a clicky which are typically always reliable.
These two photos just show the neat plastic tube that the pen comes in along with the info card. An extra spring is included which I thought was a nice touch. The packaging is a nice way to store the pen. For a more expensive pen, these details are what you'd expect.
The writing experience was mostly good except for the springiness with my refill. If you saw my Karas Kustoms Render K Mini post, I also had issue with how the refill and spring interacted. Whenever I'd write, the refill would always shift up and down with the spring. Since it happened on both machined aluminum pens I've tried, I'm not sure if it's a design flaw on machined pens in general or just bad luck on my part. The refill should not be shifting when I'm writing. It produces an annoying clicking sound where the refill hits the body. Plus it just doesn't feel like you're writing with a solid pen. It's not the end of the world, but for such an expensive pen, that shouldn't be a problem. I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has ever had similar problems. None of my cheaper ballpoint pens with springs have ever had refills that shifted when you wrote.
Enough of that though, the refill these come with is the Schmidt Easyflow 9000. It's a gel refill that writes smoothly. I love gel refills and was happy to see that it came with one. As far as other refills that fit, most Parker refills will work and some sort of Fisher Space refill does as well. There's a whole list on Tactile Turn's website (linked here) if you want to see all the ones that are compatible.
The Slider model is a little shorter than the Glider. It's 5.1" while the Glider is 5.6". Both are anodized aluminum, bolt action pens. I've never felt like I needed the extra length of the Glider. The Slider is still a full-sized pen and is more than enough to write with. I wouldn't want to carry either as an EDC option due to the length. Compact pens work out so much better in my carry than full-sized ones. You do have to be careful with which way you grab the pen to write with, as the clip can dig into your hand when you're writing. There's no machined grip section, but I'm fine with that. The grooves do add a bit of grip. I've never felt like the pen would slip out of my hand. It is comfortable in the hand, especially for longer periods of time. It's a very lightweight pen, just under an ounce at 0.9 ounces, so it doesn't weigh down your hand unnecessarily like some nicer pens I've tried. The feel in the hand overall was good for me.
The clip works as it should and carries well. I'd be worried about its longevity, as it does seem to get bent if clipped to thicker things or if it gets caught on something. I'm not sure what you'd do if the clip broke off. I like that it doesn't stick out too far.
These pens are going for $59 on Tactile Turn's website which is probably a fair price. I don't think I would've wanted to pay that much for one personally. It's neat but not as amazing as I thought. I've had cheaper pens that I've enjoyed writing with more, like the Fisher Bullet space pen and Zebra G-301s. I've seen other machined pens go for way more though. Pens are easy to lose or misplace, so that'd be a lot of money down the toilet if that were to happen.
Here's a size comparison to the Fisher Bullet Space pen for fun. It's always hard to find nicer purple pens out there. Most higher quality pens neglect purple as a color option. That's the whole reason I was willing to try it out in the first place. As you can see, it's about the same size as the Bullet in overall length. The Bullet is still my main EDC option due to the compactness.
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