Worst Fountain Pen Mistake?

[Tom Aquinas]

That was early on when I tried to remove a section from the pen to replace the sac. I was heating it up over a candle flame and came a little too close to the fire. Next thing I know there was a ball of fire in my hand. Pretty amazing how flammable celluloid is. I guess I knew about it but somehow forgot.

 

 

I did similar but not with fire rather a pair of tweezers to a 1930's almost mint mass produced 14ct nibbed pen.The nib was immaculate , it was still in a box which stated the pen was for correspondence school students. I cleaned the pen and having replace a number of sacs on old pens, one a 1915 Swan, I decided to save $45 and not have the pen serviced by a professional. Age shall weary them, and a small section of the raised lip which accepts the sac snapped off, just sufficient to make it unusable. It is still on the desk in my stidy to remind me that the Gods of the Greek Pantheon punish hubris.

Edited June 27, 2012 by Tom Aquinas

[Fabienne]

These tales

sound like sad sad

haiku.

[revdem]

Carelessly throwing what I thought to be a junk pen away. It had my great grandfather's initials on it, but came to me as a collection of pieces. I was a novice collector, and did not think it could be re-assembled. Saw it about a month later in a pen book. Parker, Senior Duofold. Simply needed a new nib. Hate it when I do that.....

[sirach]

Stypen up... What more is there to say?

[Fulcrum]

I received my Twsbi Micarta by way of mail a few weeks back.

I found the nib to be very dry in writing (had to write slowly or it skipped).

I got frustrated and switched the nib out for the Noodler's Ahab Flex, which I had seen someone else do.

This made the pen extremely wet but it worked.

But the pen was so wet it bled ink onto the Micarta grip section staining it several times.

I switched the nibs back but broke the right tine (~1mm) of the original in the process.

Filed it down with nail filers until it became a italic stub.

Still needs some fine tuning and it looks rough but it works.

Perhaps I should have been more patient with the original.

 

W.

[abhi4121]

Mistakenly leaving a Mont Blanc Mozart in the unlocked front pocket of my check-in baggage. Never seen it since....

Edited June 29, 2012 by abhi4121

[dgturner]

I purchased a Pelikan M400, not vintage, but one of the first of the M400 series (as opposed to a vintage 400N) with a flexible fine nib. The pen had a crack in the barrel, that two shops said they would rather not take my money because of the high possibility of failure.

 

 

Not the mistake -- I was able to repair the pen successfully.

 

I used it daily for about a month when I was at Target and made an entry in my day planner after loading items into my truck (with the tailgate open). I apparently left the M400 on the tailgate. I saw the pen body on the ground as I pulled out of the spot...

 

I had managed to shear the nib off the pen, with the threads still inside.

 

On a happy note I was able to get the old nib unit out and it is quite happy with a OM binderized nib now.

[Lisya72]

Giving up on FPs when I was 19 due to a bad experience with a disposable FP.

 

My grandfather was a packrat. He kept pieces of wire, extra screws, motors and parts to equipment he sold thirty years earlier, because you never throw away anything that still works. I would put money on him having a classic FP squirreled away in one of his boxes somewhere. Probably an old Parker. And no one would have recognized the value of it when he died. If there was one there, it would have gotten tossed.

[NedC]

Grabbing a bottle of regular Pelikan India ink instead of the Fount India ink to fill a very nice Sheaffer Snorkel. I didn't really look, the bottles were identical except for the label... I don't know where that pen has gone or the other blue Snorkel with a bad sac I also had. I wonder if I could restore them if ever I find them or they made their way into a landfill?

[olivier78860]

Some things that happened to me :

 

Bought a used S.T. Dupont Montparnasse. The previous owner had probably tried to write with it like with a ballpoint, and the nib was bent upper. Tried to bend it backwards, but forgot it wasn't a titanium nib. Now the pen is in the Dupont workshop, and the bill will probably be consistent.

 

Tried to clean a 1910s Swan by removing the nib unit. It was the nth I was doing. Oh, the horrendous sound of a feed cracking. But I could find a replacement for it.

 

What else. Oh yeah. My first flexible nib is now a real paintbrush. One's got to learnt sometimes. Heh?

[GnosticMoron]

I'm new to the FP game (hi, first post), and this thread has affected me like a horror movie.

 

But I'm glad to see that a few of the soul crushing tales have been met with "ah, but that's fixable" answers.

 

Syd

[elderberry]

Removing the nib unit of a Danitrio Mikado - one of my most beloved pens - for cleaning and a tiny protrusion at the end of the feed just breaking off when submerging the nib into a water bowl. Okay, this was probably as much a fault in the material as in the user, but I was shaken nonetheless. That was several months ago. Luckily enough, Kevin (winedoc) was helpful as always and sent me a new feed and the pen found its way to a nib person right away. Since the Mikado had obviously run out of luck, the nib person became ill and after he recovered he had probably forgotten about the details of the order he sent the pen back to me with a freshly adjusted and polished nib but still the damaged feed in it.

I'm having the unlucky fellow for repair a second time now and hope it will be back and working very soon.

Edited August 11, 2012 by elderberry

[Markk]

Buying multiple cheap pens rather than saving the money for one decent pen.

 

I see it differently. My cheap pens are the ones I'm not afraid to lend to someone and they're also my travel pens when I'm out camping/trekking/travelling to other countries. For example, I wouldn't dare bring my Duofold Mosaic Blue for a week's trip to Galway, Ireland during the races.

[minimax447]

Waterman C/F. Had two and each has cracked its section almost as soon as it received ink.