As some of you will know I make items out of wood for my business. Over the years I have been sourcing pens which will write on painted wood and leave a nice finish. Whenever I enquired about which were the best pens to use people would recommended Sharpie's. I bought some and they were really disappointing but people still continued to recommend them so I actually ended up buying two packets in case there was something wrong with the first set I bought! I wasn't wrong though, these pens are a disappointment.

=== The set ===
In this set you get four different pens which are 'fine'. These are green, red, blue and black. I mainly use black but thought it would be helpful t have other colours too in case I need to have a variety. The set comes in a cardboard packet with a plastic covering on the front, there is nothing fancy about it but at £14 for the set at the time I thought that surely the expensive pens must be reflected in the quality of the pen itself and not the actual packaging.

=== The pens ===
The pens are said to work well on wood, fabric, card and other surfaces. They are quite thick and round, far thicker than a normal pen and they are the same roundness and thickness of the medium and thick nibbed ones which is a little confusing when you glance at them, there is nothing very obvious which will tell the difference between which nib is which. They have a grey barrel with the word 'sharpie' written on them and the lid is the colour of the ink. The fact that they are rounded and quite large make it quite a comfortable pen to hold when writing and you can hold them lower down and still have a good grip, I do tend to hold them lower down so that I feel like I have more control over them when writing. The nibs are thicker than you would expect from something which is a 'fine' nib. Granted, it is thinner than the medium and large ones but it's still not as thin as I would expect from a fine liner which is quite disappointing.

=== Using them ===
When I use these on paper they flow fine, so I then move onto the wood and begin to write on wood which has been painted with acrylics. This is where the problem then shows, the pens are really not suitable for use on wood. Sometimes they will bleed very slightly into the paint, this tends to happen if I use pearlised or metallic paints. When I use mat paint I find that the pen scratches over it so that there are little lines where the ink hasn't taken and it looks really messy, with part of the paint showing through in various places and because it is scratchy like this it feels really horrible to write with it. I sometimes have to go back over the words and do a second layer of pen which again will scratch but I hope that it will cover up the other scratches and eventually look nice but it doesn't, it just look ridiculous. They take a while to dry too, I leave it a good few hours before adding varnish. The effect when it does work (I would say about 20% of the time) is nice but it is not what I would expect of this brand at all.

=== Conclusion ===
This is a pen which is very disappointing. It states on the packaging that it can be used on wood but it clearly can't be, not to an extent where I would be happy selling my products. I have had to make several items up before one will be of a decent quality enough for me to sell and so these pens actually cost me money. I have since tried out lots of other brands and found better ones but this is a brand which is a big let down. Perhaps on other materials it is fine but for anyone who is relying on them to write on wood, don't have high expectations. I also don't like how 'fine' isn't actually all that fine at all either. I am disappointed in these pens and won't be buying them again.