3 and 8 K - pen sizes 3 and 8 with 'kanter' or edges. The facetted pens from penol.
These pens were, along with the "Penol De Luxe", the top of the line within the Penol brand from 1935 until well into the 40s. There may also be a somewhat blurred line between the 3 and 8 K as top of the line pens and their 'competitor, the Penol De Luxe. An indication of the that is the wildly beautiful light green 8 K that you can see som pics of below; it carries the inscription "Penol De Luxe" and the date mark "1143", that is November 1943. Nevertheless, and despite of the inscription on the body of the pen, it is obviously a 12 edged! So maybe, at some point, the costumer simply had a choice between a smooth and round pen and a facetted pen.
The pics on this page will let you compare colours and differences between the 3K and the 8K. They are both button-fillers, but the cap-design shows some notable differences.
Below you can see comparisons between the 3K and the 8 K caps, and you can also get and idea of the difference in size. Note the traditional blind cap in the 3K and the integrated blind cap and clip in the 8K.
Incripstions: Normal inscription on a 3K and 8K, and the unusual inscription on the light green 8K.
Some 8 K pens
Yes, they are push-knob fillers. The blind button
is not facetted.
Yes, ink-windows are transparent. Note the unoriginal nib on the pen below. It reads "Hoower", and should have been placed on a Hoover Pen, a sub brand of the Miller Pen Company - or maybe more correctly one the many brands of Johannes Iversen, the founder of the Miller Pen Company (see "Miller Pen Company and Other Danish Brands").
Colours
I don't know exactly in how many colours the 3 and 8 K were produced. On this page you can see black and mottled pens. The mottled colours I have knowledge of are:
Black and grey, black and green (pens to the left), red and black and brown, black and gold (the pen below is the only one I have seen in these colours. It bears all the correct inscriptions and is definitely a Penol 3 K pen). Also, note the slight differences in size between the caps.
Generally colours are strong and vivid, but especially the black and red has a slight tendency towards ambering and fading.