6 Years Later: Wing Sung 3013 • The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

Added: 2026-06-10

[00:00:00]Hey, welcome back to JG3 Reviews, where we explore the world of fountain pens, ink, and paper. And every now and then, I have been taking a look at older pens in my collection. Some of them go back to the very beginning of this YouTube channel. This is the Wingong 3013.

[00:00:16]It's a pretty common pen, very affordable. Even after several years of inflation, this pen has only gone up to about five bucks. So, very, very affordable pen. But does that still make it a good deal? How does the pen hold up? and you can thank a viewer. I will also go over what it takes to clean one of these pens. Now, it is a vac filler as you can see. And all of them are demonstrators regardless of color. So, you can always see that cool filling mechanism at work. And we'll we'll do that here in just a minute as well. It comes with a steel nib that is I would say number fiveish. You can swap these out if you can get it out. They can be a little tough to pull, but you can swap that with Pilot nibs like are in the Kuno or the Plumix or the Penmanship.

[00:01:06]Those nibs will go in here or the the Prair for that matter. Although, why you would steal a nib out of your Prair to put in here, I don't know. But you could certainly do it if you want to, but we'll also do a quick writing test after we fill one of these, and I'll show you how that nib performs. Now, you can go and catch that old review. I don't necessarily recommend it because I don't know who that guy is in the video, but I will probably answer most of the questions you need right here. One of those is durability. Now, you can see I've I've used this clear one first for this reason. This is the pin that I have out of the four that has the flaws. All of the three of these are still in great working order. No problems whatsoever.

[00:01:42]But this clear one actually has bitten the dust. Now, it was my first of these pens. It saw several years of use. In fact, I think this was continuously inked for about three or four years.

[00:01:56]Now, I would I would give it a deep cleaning and things like that, but it was continuously inked for a long time and used heavily and perhaps not as gently as some of my other pens because at the time I bought it, it was just like three something, I believe. Very inexpensive. I wasn't really worried about it that much and I wanted to know how well it would hold up. Now you can see right here there is a crack in the section. Now this one really is not that big a deal. It doesn't leak from here or anything like that. It did not stop me from using the pen, but there is a fatal crack in this pen. As I roll it around, you will see it right there. And that is a stress crack and it's right there in the grooves. And uh yeah, that one is a problem. That will cause a leak. It also causes a problem with the cap going on as it should. I actually have to leave the body a little bit looser so that the cap can actually screw on to the body.

[00:02:53]So, that one is unfortunately a deal breaker. And this just happened one day.

[00:02:59]You know, I wasn't even using it. It was in storage at the time. I think it was actually cleaned out at the time and empty like this when this crack appeared. But unfortunately, that did put an end to the service life of this pen. And I kept it because I knew one day we would be having this conversation. And so I kept it so that I could show you what happened. There are no issues with the piston knob or with the uh steel rod or the rubber gasket there. No issues there. You'll notice it does come with O-rings, and that's not the only one. Never had any leak problems because, as I said, this crack appeared while the pen was empty. I went to go fill it up and obviously didn't.

[00:03:39]Because of that, the nib performed well.

[00:03:41]Even if I decide to get rid of this, I will be keeping that nib as a backup because I never had any issues with the nib in this pen. It's a fine nib. The flow was good and u I enjoyed the pen while it worked. It was a good-looking demonstrator and inexpensive pen that worked well for several years. Now, in the fountain pen community, we like our pens to last decades, not years. So, that often makes us look down on a pen like this. But if I treat this like say a Bick, I got way more years out of this than I would get out of a Bick pen. And I did. I did. So, you know, it it saved the landfill of a whole bunch of Bick pens going in there. And I feel like I got my money's worth. And you'll also notice that crack looks a lot worse now that I've zoomed in, doesn't it? So, you got that crack there, the large one, and then the small one here. And this one says three. Three total.

[00:04:33]And like I said, these this one probably was going to be a dealbreaker, but I actually think this appeared after the one here in the threads. So, I never worried about that. It was already too late. This one appeared earlier. So, how do these pins come apart? If you want to clean them, well, one, you know, since there is obviously a risk of cracking, do whatever you do very carefully. Uh, the easiest thing to do is to unscrew the grip section. And you'll notice there is an O-ring here. There's the O-ring there. Don't lose those. And to open this up and flush out that barrel.

[00:05:12]Now, you can remove this as well. As I said, just most light duty cleanings, you're going to clean this out, maybe use a bulb to flush some water through there. Uh, it's really not difficult at all. You do take this trim ring here and unscrew that. that. You'll see those threads as I open that up. See that trim ring comes there. And then you pull the piston and all of that out. Check to make sure that your rubber gasket is still good. Check these O-rings on the piston as well. Service those with silicone. And clean the pin out. And very, very simple. Goes back together, of course, just like that in reverse. I I think I don't I think I'm not going to do that on camera right now, but you get the idea. Now, as far as this goes, you can pull out that nib unit and clean that further if you need to. I I never did that until uh until today. I never needed to. But, you know, if you had ink in here that maybe had gotten in there and you wanted to clean that out because, you know, sometimes people that bugs them. Uh you can you can do that.

[00:06:18]Like I said, if you wanted to remove the nib, I'm not going to do that. Then, uh you could also do that. And I actually do again enjoy a lot of these nibs. Now, one thing about the 3000 series of Wingong pens is that this is their lower end. They're made in a different factory from say the uh 699 which has a great reputation or the 630 which has I think an even greater reputation. So quality control on these pens does tend to vary.

[00:06:51]And again, remember you're paying for a pen. And at the time I bought these, these were about three bucks, three and a half bucks. Sometimes you could get them even cheaper per pen if you bought them in a full set. So, uh, just, you know, keep that in mind. But it is a different part of Wingong and a completely different factory. And just even by reputation, the 3000 series or any pen that starts with a three has a lower quality control reputation. And like I said, all of mine wrote well as soon as I got them. Sometimes you might need a little bit of tuning, but I found that uh I didn't do any on any of these pens. Didn't need to. And far more often than not, I don't need to. Uh a viewer and I were just having that conversation. I almost never have to do much uh pen tuning when I get a pen out of the box. Just every now and then I need to do that. Watching YouTubes, you'll think you'll have to do it a lot more often than you might actually have to do that. Now, the second of these that I bought, I think I'm pretty sure this was the second one, is the purple pen. And this is a little bit different.

[00:07:54]So this is not branded as Wingong, but it's still the same, folks. And this is a PY. If memory serves, it's P A I L I.

[00:08:04]I'm not sure that I'm saying that correctly, so forgive me if I'm not. And it will sometimes be labeled 3013 or it will sometimes I think it's this one.

[00:08:14]Let's see here. It will just be labeled 013. Don't know what the reason for that is, but it is. Anyway, this purple one, I had this because our local school system, the color is purple. Purple and gold. I uh kept this one inked for a very long time, years, with an imperial purple ink. If I'm writing notes to uh a teacher or somebody in the school system, something like that, I would grab this and use that purple ink. And this pen has held up very, very well.

[00:08:46]There are no cracks, no issues whatsoever. Then I got blue because James really likes blue. So, you know, had to do that. I kept this obviously inked with blue. These are some of the colors I keep inked up anyway. So, the clear one was usually black. This was purple. This was blue. And this was always with Pelican dark green, which as you know, probably one of my favorite inks. No issues here either. no cracks that I have ever found. So, the colored pens are maybe one year younger as far as my ownership of them. I mean, they could have been cranked out of the factory at the same time, but it's not like I've it's not like these are new and the other ones old and so there's that big a difference. They've had a very similar life and almost the same amount of time. And none of these have any cracks, issues, or anything whatsoever. Sometimes people are concerned about these screws and rust.

[00:09:45]And I think that that has probably more to do with where you live, your climate, how much humidity, if you live near the sea, all that kind of stuff. I don't know because I've never had an issue with any of these rusting. I'm not saying they don't. I am quite sure that under the right circumstances they do.

[00:10:04]I'm just saying that uh I live in dry Texas and that just hasn't been at this point an issue. But hey, you can find old Impalas here that didn't rust either. So maybe climate. Okay, so let's ink up one of these pens. It's summertime here in Texas at the time of this filming. And one of my favorite summer inks is this Caribbean blue from Mont Verde. Really nice blue. It also gives some nice shading as it dries. And I like that a lot about this ink. So, I thought, let's fill up this blue pen with that ink. Now, what you do is pull up. You unscrew that and then pull that rod up. That then will bring in the air.

[00:10:45]As you push down on the pen, let me just show you this here before I put it in the ink. As you push down, then it comes to this wide, you can see it there in that barrel. You come to that wide opening and it will create a vacuum behind the piston. Once it hits that opening, it sucks that ink right up into the pen. Let's see if that works. Now, this bottle is getting low. Hopefully, this is not going to be below the uh filling angle there. Ready?

[00:11:15]Nope. That's a great fill. Look at that.

[00:11:18]That did a great job. We clean that off.

[00:11:20]And that's that. You have a filled pen.

[00:11:23]You can see about how much ink that took in. I think that's quite good. That also shows us that it's still working properly and everything is in great shape. Now, as far as the pen and its ergonomics, really, really good. Nice balanced. It's a longer pen. It does not post, but that's okay. And especially once it's inked, feels really good and balanced in the hand. It has just a round grip section. So, if you don't like ergonomic grips, that's not an issue.

[00:12:08]and I think that's plenty wet for a fine.

[00:12:12]Nice clean line from this particular nib. Ink, as I mentioned, is Monte Verde and it is Caribbean blue.

[00:12:30]Okay. So, something let me just go ahead and cover something while we're uh while we're doing this. And I got to stop writing while I'm talking about it. So, here's the thing. In preparing for this today, I knew what I thought about these pens. I know what my experience has been. Uh but, you know, I still want to go on and see, okay, what are other people saying about the pen and things like that? And it is it's mixed. I looked back at a couple of older reviews and I think these were the reviews that actually made me buy that clear pin in the first place and that was Chris Rap 52. Awesome channel if you're not familiar though most of you definitely are and then Doug Wthman at Inquiring Minds. Both of them gave this pen positive reviews at the time. I was looking for a pen in that $3 to5 price range just because I was really curious and it was going to be my first vac pen.

[00:13:23]So I was exploring vacilling pens and I saw this and thought can that really be that good at that price. And so then I watched their reviews and they both gave it largely a positive review and that for the price this is a really interesting proposition. This is several years ago. Both of them, their reviews were not new when I watched them, but several years ago. And I saw while I was researching for this review where Douglas had also compared it to the PinBBS 456. We'll look at that here in just a second. And uh I think there was another pen. What was that? I have forgotten now. But the 456, that was the important part really. Ah, the 699. I have both of those pins out here.

[00:14:04]Actually, I have a lineup of back pens that I want to show you. And uh while both of those other pins were more impressive, and I'm going to tell you the same thing, by the way, here in just a second, it still came out as a decent writer and a decent pen, every now and then. Some folks just, you know, they get their cankles in a wrap about inexpensive pens and obviously they're junk. They're just obviously junk. And sometimes, you know, uh again, quality control issues, it could be that they got one that was not great. I have one that wore out after uh six years, I think it is. Well, if it worn out after 6 years, then that pen wasn't junk. It wasn't heirloom quality. But did I expect that at $35? No. And neither do you, I'm sure. But was it a good pen for 6 years? Yeah. Yeah, it was. Well, I guess five really because one of those years it's been mainly sitting cuz the first of the cracks started to show. But five years of decent service and I think that's actually quite good. And then it was one out of four and the other three are still just chugging right along and they write quite decently. As I said, these are great pens to just keep at the desk at work where maybe you don't want your best, most expensive pen to be.

[00:15:17]This is a great pen to keep handy. Now, a lot of people compare it to the Twisby with good reason. It obviously echoes some things about the Twisby VA 700. I don't actually I don't have one of those because I opted for their piston model instead cuz I am more partial to piston fillers. But in comparing it to that Twisby, you're comparing it to something that costs 10 times the price. And maybe the same people aren't cross shopping those all the time. Both pins have a reason and a purpose. Both pittens have the ability to fill those reasons and fill those purposes and do those jobs well, but it's kind of silly to expect the same things out of both of them most of the time, isn't it? Anywh who, let's do a little bit more writing because this nib and this ink combo kind of making me happy. You might not have known that cuz I almost almost got on a soap box again. You read the coffee cup, right? Be careful or you might end up in my sermon. It might be a pen sermon. You never know. Anyway, I actually just I really enjoy writing with this pen.

[00:16:32]I'd say that was $35 well spent.

[00:16:38]Does that mean I think you ought to run out and buy one? Well, before you do, let's consider some things. What are you looking for? Are you looking for inexpensive pens that maybe you can treat as kind of a disposable pen? Not that you're going to use it one time and get rid of it, but you know, four or five years is great.

[00:17:00]That's that's as high as your expectation goes, then yeah, I I think maybe you might want to check this pen out. Maybe you want a pen to experiment with. You want to try a uh back filled pen. You want to maybe explore nib swapping with a Pilot pen. Maybe you want a uh Pilot Kuno in an inexpensive vac pen. That's that's quite a niche you've carved out for yourself, but you people are out there. I know you are.

[00:17:25]Then yeah, actually, I think that's great. Maybe you just want cheap pens because you want to be able maybe you're not that into the pens. Maybe you're more into the ink. The pen can, you know, be whatever and it's the ink you're excited about. Maybe you want a color color theme. You want a blue pen for your blue inks, a green pen for your green inks, a purple pen. And they got a brown one, too, but oddly enough, I don't have that. Lover of brown pens that I am. Uh maybe that's what you want. And so, you don't you just want a good reliable pen with a decent nib that doesn't cost a whole lot of money so that you can play with your inks. You know what? Good ink capacity. If you use Bayate Blue and you want a fine nib, Bay State blue, you don't want to have to worry about staining the pen. You see what I'm saying? You see what I'm saying? I know you see what I'm saying.

[00:18:12]then these can be a good option in those scenarios. If you're trying to find an expensive pen that will impress people who actually don't care, well, you know, then maybe maybe don't buy this one. It actually is a decent pen. It's not the best pen in the world. Let me show you some that if you want to upgrade from this pen, I uh would consider staying with Wingong for a second. Maybe you've got a little bit of Wingong brand loyalty. That could be a thing. Then the Wingong 699 is a vac filler. It has a safety stop, so you could fly with it.

[00:18:45]This does not have a safety stop. Don't fly with it. So, this could be a great pen, and it's really pretty if you get this one in blue instead of the uh Pilot looking brown. Anyway, this is actually a pretty decent pen. It sells for 20some bucks and uh I can I can highly recommend that one. However, the PenBBS does exist, right? The PenBBS 456. One of the best vac fillers out there. I don't care what you're paying. This is a fantastic steel nib vac filling pen.

[00:19:16]Plus, you can buy spare parts without having to buy another pen. It's fantastic. You can get it in different colors. You can even get this sometimes in galaxy blue. I don't know why I haven't done that, but I haven't done that yet. This is one of those pens that I did buy in brown. an excellent pen and everybody I know who's gotten one really enjoys it. Maybe you want something that is clear like that first one I showed you. This is going to cost you more.

[00:19:39]This is more in the $40 realm, but you've got a demonstrator with clear acrylic. You have the safety stop and all the metal you see except for the nib and that rod is titanium titanium knob clip and grip section. really cool pen and you get an excellent in this case medium nib which you you cannot get in that 3013. So you have all the options that Asmine offers in their pens available for this one and their number six nibs. Excellent pen. Really enjoy that one. Also cool style. Just a neat neat pen. That one again I think is about what did I say? Did I say 40? I think it might actually sometimes be closer to 50 but 40ome. We'll call it 40 something. So, we've done uh 20some and we've done 30ome and 40some. Still in that, I believe 40 something, you know, upper 30s, upper 30s, mid to upper 30s is the Asvine V1 169. This gets more interesting. This one has heft. This one is actually inked right now because it's in my uh carry pins at the moment. Also a safety stop. Uh really comfortable.

[00:20:50]Even though it's a metal grip, it's a nice comfortable and wellshaped grip.

[00:20:54]Wonderful nib. And that one just brings even more interest to the table, but still not a crazy expensive pen, but definitely a significant upgrade from that 3013. And then uh let me just show you something in still in that $20 range. Really approachable pen.

[00:21:13]Excellent pen. And I have two of these.

[00:21:15]And that is by sheer self-control because I haven't bought any of the other colors yet. This is an excellent pen, the Asbine V126. No, that's not an accident. That is Pelican brown ink with just a drop of ancient copper to give it a little bit more interest and get to the shade of that color that I really wanted. Really nice pen, number six nib, available in different sizes. And uh they pay me nothing. They pay me nothing. They didn't pay for this pen either. Uh, so excellent, excellent upgrade option and one that I think you're going to be really really happy with. If uh you're looking for an acrylic pen that is a vac filler, you can see what's going on and you want a nice number six nib, the E9V126 is excellent. There are lots of other options out there, too. I've also got a Navaler, formerly Narwhal here in the original plus. It's a good pen, too.

[00:22:10]Nice nib, very wellmade. good uh good materials in that pen as well. Lots of different options. But I'm telling you, you know what? I enjoy writing with this pen. I have not had issues with it. And I'm going to enjoy writing that Caribbean blue with this pen until I write it out this summer. So, there you go. Is it going to last the rest of your life? No. I bet it doesn't. If that matters, look elsewhere. Uh but if you are are willing to buy a pen, use it for five or six years. It's going to last longer than the tires on your car.

[00:22:42]everybody. So, uh, think about it that way. And it's it's still not a bad deal.

[00:22:47]And there are some use cases for it. And mine, all four of them, the nibs real great. I don't know what to tell you.

[00:22:53]Except maybe give it a shot. You won't have lost that much. It's five bucks and it'll be better than that nasty oversweet coffee you've been drinking. I bet you check it out. Check it out.

[00:23:03]Check it out. Like, subscribe, unless you were offended. and then like and subscribe just so you can be notified the next time that I'm going to say something you don't like. And you know what? We'll both enjoy it. We will. We will. You You know you do. Anyway, God bless you. Have a great week and I'll see you in the next review.