Serious Problems With Large Eyedropper Fountain Pens ?

[Patrick L]

...That's what I read on the internet today : "Excess and irregular flow problems are sometimes associated with large eyedropper pens"

[Toolan]

Excess and irregular flow problems are sometimes associated with all sorts of pens.

Could you post the source of your information ?

 

Toolan

[Patrick L]

Excess and irregular flow problems are sometimes associated with all sorts of pens.

Could you post the source of your information ?

 

Toolan

For Sale: a Wality clear-barrel eyedropper pen retrofitted with a Sheaffer No-nonsense feed. The Sheaffer feed provides superior flow control to the original Wality feeds and nearly eliminates the excess and irregular flow problems sometimes associated with the large eyedroppers. You can nearly write to the end of the ink supply without significant flow problems, which is not true of the original Wality feeds. Nib is an original Wality medium.

[Monophoto]

That's called a 'sales pitch'.

[USMCMom]

I have Wality Airmail pens (purchased from FPN members) and I've not had any problem with them at all.

[Northwoods]

The one problem I have with eyedroppers is basic physics. If the pen isn't full, the heat from my hand warms the pen, the air bubble in the barrel expands and the ink starts getting forced from the feed and blobs. It's more a problem with droppers because the air bubble is larger and you don't have the insulating effect of barrel and cart/converter/sac.

[Ernst Bitterman]

Well, there's the end-of-load issues that most eyedroppers suffer as hand heat expands the large volume of air in the barrel (a bigger problem in cooler climates, I suspect), which tends to overload the feed. The Sheaffer feed is rather better at handling overloads than the relatively old-style Wality original, so the sales pitch is not being dramatically inaccurate.

 

edit-- man, I hate when someone else is almost finished typing the thing I'm just starting to type. I need to type faster, I guess.

Edited September 4, 2010 by Ernst Bitterman

[rwilsonedn]

+1 to what Ernst said (as usual.) The Wality 69L, in particular, has a very large capacity and a very simple feed, and has given lots of people problems with irregular flow and ink discharge when it is less than about half full. Switching out the feed for a Sheaffer's NoNonsense feed, which happens to be an exact fit, makes the problem vanish. There is also a company in the US that retrofits the big Wality piston-filler (which has the same problem) with a very effective cure. The result is a very reliable and attractive piston-filler with huge capacity for very little money.

More recent Wality and Airmail designs seem to be much better. I notice the sleek, hooded Airmail pens that Hari sold recently actually have a breather tube, which appears to be designed to equalize air pressure once the pen is less than half full. It works. My example wrote reliably until there was only about half a ml of ink left in the barrel, and then it gave fair warning before misbehaving.

In general the problem is at its worst in vintage eyedropper and piston-filler pens, where the feeds were quite simple.

ron

 

edited to correct pen number

Edited September 4, 2010 by rwilsonedn

[UCSF2012]

You guys should invent cooling systems in fountain pens. Attach a fan to the end.

 

My waterman Kultur eyedroppers are doing great with ink flow, and they're all at half tank.

[Patrick L]

Thanks for all your great replies. That was cool.

[Strang]

I have Wality Airmail pens (purchased from FPN members) and I've not had any problem with them at all.

 

+1 - I have not had any problems with my Wality Airmail 69TL. In fact it's one of the more problem-free EDs I have owned.

[Brian C]

Would a thicker walled pen with a smaller ink supply solve this issue somewhat?

[Ernst Bitterman]

My waterman Kultur eyedroppers are doing great with ink flow, and they're all at half tank.

 

If you've got one with the transparent section, you'll be able to see the vast amount of buffering vanes hidden between ink and world. Lack of flow issues is unsurprising, but good news all the same.

 

I have not had any problems with my Wality Airmail 69TL. In fact it's one of the more problem-free EDs I have owned.

 

While this is very surprising. I'm very impressed with the difference the retrofit feed in the Schrieber/Wality piston fillers makes over the unamended Wality.

[fuchsiaprincess]

I have four Varuna Gajendra EDs, and have never had a problem with them. In fact, all my EDs write with better flow than my CC pens.

[holgalee]

My two Walitys wrote perfectly down to the last drop: no burping of ink at all.

 

So I wonder with all things beind equal, what kind of feeds will work well for eyedropper pens. Must there be a lot of grooves/channels, must they be small or large, ebonite or plastic, etc...

 

 

~fan of eyedropper pens~

[Johnny Appleseed]

The problem with large EDs is pretty well established. As mentioned, when the barrel has lots of air in it, changes in heat, from your hand or other sources, can cause the air to expand and push out a drop or two of ink. Even back in the early 1900s when eyedropper pens were the norm, it was a known problem, and there were tips about how to deal with it.

 

One solution is to keep the pen more than 1/2 full - Early Waterman instructions said "when flow becomes excessive, it is time to refill." When you do need to use an ED pen that is low on ink, hold in your hand it tip up for a couple of minutes to warm the pen and discharge excess air.

 

The problem is related to feed design, as well as nib-feed set and alignment. The problem with Wality pens is 2-fold - the feeds are pretty simple, and the quality-control of the nib-feed set is not always the best.

 

For feed design, a complex feed with many deep fins will hold the excess ink flow and feed it out slowly as you write, so the blotting problems can be avoided. Here is a picture of the difference between a Wality feed and a Sheaffer no-nonsense feed. Note that the Sheaffer feed is practically all fins, while the Wality feed just has a few slots. It is these fins that make the difference - far more so than the feed material.

 

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a150/laridae/Wality-Sheaffer-feeds.jpg

 

Feed setting and alignment can also make a big difference - if the feed or section is slightly out-of-round, there can be small gaps between nib/feed and section wall that cause excess flow. Also, if the feed is not aligned correctly with the nib and properly heat set, you can also get flow problems. A properly set feed will give much better results. And a heavily finned modern feed that is not properly fit and set can give you flooding and excess flow issues (or starving/skipping issues if set too dry).

 

I have Wality Airmail pens (purchased from FPN members) and I've not had any problem with them at all.

+1 - I have not had any problems with my Wality Airmail 69TL. In fact it's one of the more problem-free EDs I have owned.

 

Wality feeds seem to be very inconsistant, some better adjusted then others. Some people have not problems, while others leak from the get-go, even when full. As mentioned above, if you got a Wality from Swisher pens, it probably was one of the Wality pens that were retrofitted with a more modern feed. Also, if you get you pen from someone on FPN, chances are that the feed-set issues will have been adjusted already.

 

Frankly if you really can write-out a Wality with an original feed, all the way to the last drop, I would be surprised - consider yourself lucky. It was certainly not my experience, and I have used several different models of Wality.

 

Barrel thickness might have some effect, but I doubt it would do much, unless the barrel was particularly insulating.

 

Disclaimer: I think the quote listed above is from a pen I sold some time ago. I stand by the comments.

 

More recent Wality and Airmail designs seem to be much better. I notice the sleek, hooded Airmail pens that Hari sold recently actually have a breather tube, which appears to be designed to equalize air pressure once the pen is less than half full. It works. My example wrote reliably until there was only about half a ml of ink left in the barrel, and then it gave fair warning before misbehaving.

 

Actually, I asked Hari about this with one of the other small Wality pens, and he said it was an inventory control issue, not a performance design. There is another pen that uses the same feed and has an aerometric-style filler, so rather than make 2 different feed design, they use the same feed-with-breather tube for both. I thought the same thing at first - that it would allow excess air to escape - but it did not perform any better in practise.

 

John

[hari317]

John's observations are correct. A Sheaffer NN feed will perform very well with the Wality pens that take a No 8(28mm) nib.

 

Wality pen parts are handmade. The sections and caps are compression molded on a hand press. The transparent barrels are hand turned on a lathe. Non transparent barrels are also compression molded.

 

The most common QA issue with some of the Wality pens is the "out of tolerance" ID of the section and also ovality/"out of round" section bore. This can happen due to operator error while molding. When the nib and feed is inserted into a section with this problem, there will be an annular gap between the nib-feed and section bore walls. This gap acts as an extra air path, thus leading to blobbing/overflow even at sufficient ink levels. I am usually successful in weeding out the defective pens(annular gap) in my predespatch checkup.

 

Regarding the breather tube in the feeders in the Wality 74 and Wality 67, these two models use the same roughly similar feeders and nibs (MB type wing nibs, small 00 type nib on the 74), same as some squeeze filler filled pens where this tube has a role to play. Moreover, IMHO, a plain breather tube will not be able to discharge the expanding air, it will have to use the ingenious "aerometric" side wall hole at the section end for that.

 

However in my experience, a well setup large Wality ED will perform without problems upto 1/3 ink levels, after which the pen will give ample indications starting with a minor overflow.

 

Best,

Hari

Edited September 7, 2010 by hari317

[Tracy]

Thanks so much for this information - it makes total sense. I had gotten a cheapie EP with a bottle of Noodlers Ink from Jet Pens, but only filled it partway. Ironic that my action to limit potential leakage by limiting available ink was probably what led to the ink leakage around the fins. I'm anxious to fill 'er up and try again now.

Cheers,

Tracy

[Parse Error]

The wierd thing is that my Platinum Preppy ED is really dry instead of being wet.

Counterintuitive... It's an ED and it writes good for a while, but then the ink flow goes down... until I let it stand for about 30 minutes, and then it's nice and wet again...

[USMCMom]

I have 2 Wality Airmails, both purchased from FPN members. One is in rotation now and is about 1/4 full. So far, no problems with either. Starts right up and has never had a leak problem even when it only has a little bit of ink left. I like my Airmails!