We love hearing from the people who use our pens every day — and occasionally, a story lands in our inbox that genuinely stops us in our tracks. This is one of those stories.
Danny is a contractor who has spent over a decade working offshore in the oil and gas industry, carrying a Tombow Airpress through some of the harshest conditions on the planet — from freezing Canadian nights in Newfoundland to the scorching deserts of Oman. Recently, on a return trip to a North Sea rig, he found an Airpress he'd lost three to four years ago. It had been sitting in a puddle of oil-based mud near the drill floor.
He picked it up, clicked it, and it still wrote.
We sat down with Danny to find out more.
Danny, you've worked offshore in some of the most extreme environments on earth — from frozen Canadian nights to scorching Omani deserts. What does that kind of conditions do to ordinary equipment, and why does a reliable pen actually matter out there?
Harsh environments have a habit of finding the weak point in just about anything (and usually it's my job as an inspector to find it). Offshore you've got sea water, humidity, driving rain, drilling fluids like grease, mud, equipment is under constant abuse. Onshore Oman it was extreme heat and dust and sand. In Canada we had rain freezing on contact with the handrails and walkways. If something isn't built to last out there, it usually doesn't.
The lads will laugh when you start talking seriously about a pen, but to me they are as important to an inspector as your eyes. I'm using my pen and tally book to record everything I'm seeing in situ, dates, times, serial numbers, component names and locations, the type of weld, the grade of steel, the thickness of paint sometimes to the micron! Be that at the top of the derrick suspended on ropes or crawling about in the inside of a huge piece of machinery that's covered in grease. Add to that the permits I've needed to sign that morning, and the inspection documents I'll be signing later on…I'm relying on that pen to be working as hard as I am every single day.
You recently found a Tombow Airpress pen on a North Sea rig that you'd lost 3 to 4 years ago. Can you describe exactly where it was and what state it was in when you found it?
It was sat in a puddle that had been contaminated with oil-based mud in a drainage run off up near the drill floor. You'll rarely spot something in a drainage run off that's worth a second glance but this was definitely one of those times. Nice pens are fairly rare on an oil rig outside of the client offices and I've found that those ones are often more a status symbol than practical tool. I knew this was my lost pen and I was glad to have found it.
The metal clip had seen better days though and had begun to break down and corrode, I would later find the nib was starting to corrode too, but the rubber body and plastic parts looked OK. Most importantly, when I picked it up and gave it a quick shake, it wasn't full of water, which I feared it might be.
And when you clicked it — what happened?
When I clicked it, I laughed. Half because I wasn't expecting much to happen or that it would be seized up and half because it felt almost exactly as I remembered. The mechanism still had that positive feel. When I put it to paper it wrote immediately, I didn't have to scribble to get the ink flowing or anything it just wrote as it always had and in this industry I've seen equipment that cost millions fail in far less impressive circumstances.
When I brought it inside to show the lads they laughed at first but were every bit as impressed as I had been when I handed it around and let them try it for themselves. The real surprise was when we worked out the last time I'd been onboard that particular rig was almost 4 years ago.
You've been recommending the Tombow Airpress to colleagues and even giving them to clients for years. What do you tell people when you hand one over?
I've given a spare pen (always new) to a few clients as thank you in the past, when they have been extra helpful or good to work alongside during some particularly gruelling projects. I've found that most people love a good, decent pen and they've always been accepted with genuine gratitude.
After everything you've put this pen through, across a decade working in some of the harshest places on earth — how would you describe the Tombow Airpress to someone who's never heard of it?
I'd describe it as a cleverly engineered pen that actually does exactly what it was designed to do, that it's a great bit of kit that won't let you down, and as long as you look after it, it will look after you.
And in my experience, sometimes even when you don't!
