Noodler´s Ahab - Ease My Flex Mod

[Febeleh]

Thanks TeaHive, I guess I was under the incorrect impression that it would add more flex. But it certainly makes it easier, I still will go deeper to see if I can reach dip nib level ease.

[Sinistral1]

While no expert, I doubt that you will get dip pen flexibility. But, if you give it a go, be sure to let us know what happens!

 

My several Ahab nibs have had various degrees of flexibility, too. Gives each pen it's own personality.

Edited October 19, 2014 by Sinistral1

[Brooks MT]

Febeleh, what do you mean by "more flex", that is, what are you missing that you expected to get? (btw, your handwriting looks like it has lots of width variation, by my standards)

====================================

Flex has 2 components, for me:

 

A) line width variation (thin and thick),

 

easy to get the nib tines to spread (fingers don't get tired while writing).

 

EMF mod, "ease my flex", deals with B.

 

Regarding A:

To get more width variation, you have to play with inks and pen pressure on the paper. To whit: thick lines require the ink to be viscous enough to not break the capillary web as the tines spread. Thick ink won't run as freely, so writing speed must be slowed. This will allow the ink channel & fins time to keep up with the extra flow required. You may need to adjust ink properties to get the thicks you want. There are many threads on this subject over on the ink subforum.

 

Pen pressure plays a big factor in getting thin lines. Even if you are writing with a light enough pressure to keep the tines from spreading, the pressure you exert will still influence how much ink wicks into the paper. I find that I get the thinnest "thins" when I "float" the nib over the paper; this takes practice because you must train your fingers to push hard to spread tines on the downstroke, but *really* let off the pressure on the upstroke. If I write slowly, I can get my fingers to do this, but if writing fast, no way.

 

You can reduce thins by thinning the tipping on your nib. This is a skill you can only learn by practice, so expect to screw up a nib or two while learning. You might practice on cheap nibs, saving your Noodler nib tip thinning until you get comfortable with the process. It's not hard, just requires practice grinding off tiny bits of metal evenly from both tines to reduce their width; loupe is required to check your progress. The Japanese nibmeisters will complete the thinning in a matter of seconds....I take several minutes, hoho. Creeper tips are already thinner than Ahab tips (at least on my pens). I do most of my tip thinning on Ahab nibs.

 

Paper plays a huge role in line variation. Cheap papers never will give you the best chance to get maximum line variation. Think of writing on newspaper - all lines are wide because the ink quickly wicks into the fibers. Expensive papers have conditioners built into the paper to slow wicking, thus are a better bet for getting the thinnest of thins. When the tines spread, under pressure, then the expensive papers allow thick lines too.

 

Hope this helps.

Edited October 19, 2014 by Brooks MT

[Febeleh]

Febeleh, what do you mean by "more flex", that is, what are you missing that you expected to get? (btw, your handwriting looks like it has lots of width variation, by my standards)

====================================

Flex has 2 components, for me:

 

A) line width variation (thin and thick),

easy to get the nib tines to spread (fingers don't get tired while writing).

 

 

EMF mod, "ease my flex", deals with B.

 

I think my problem was more in the B category. But that was earlier, I have since removed some more material and it is a real dream to write with. Great mod.

[cellardoor04]

http://i61.tinypic.com/w8wzdd.jpg

 

Second try! It flexes much easier than my previous attempt and the nib behaves much better. I still have to adjust the feed for keeping up with the ink flow, though!

[CloaknDagr]

Thanks for posting this and especially for the nice, clear close-up pictures. This modification is well within my ability but I really hate to mess up a pen by experimenting. With the information in your post I know it works and I know how it works so that takes much of the guess-work out of the equation for me.

 

I have an Ahab and as a pen I really like it. As a FLEX pen not so much. The fill works great and holds a lot of ink. It writes beautifully with Pilot Iroshizuku Kon-Peki and Shin-Kai. For the price it's a good pen if you're not looking for a lot of flex. It will flex but it takes a lot of force to get it to flex well. One of the major pluses for me regarding fountain pens is that I don't have to press on the paper like I'm making multiple carbon copies. To get the Ahab to flex kind of defeats that particular plus.

 

I own an antique Waterman 52 1/2 v with a gold flex nib and it is amazingly fun to write with. However, it was my great-grandmother's pen* and as such I don't really want to use it as an everyday carry pen**. The heirloom pens never leave my desk. I got the Ahab because I like the Waterman flex so much and figured I could play with a flex nib that I could take with me when away from my desk. If something happens to a $20 pen it's not nearly the heartbreak that losing or destroying a family heirloom would be.

 

So while I do like the Ahab I'm not ecstatic about it's flex nib. This modification should remedy that nicely.

 

I'm going to do this mod ASAP. Thanks a whole bunch for posting this, I really appreciate it. This will increase my enjoyment of my Ahab exponentially.

 

*(I have posted on FPN previously regarding a Parker Vacumatic owned by a different great-grandmother so don't confuse grandma's on me The Waterman was my maternal grandfather's mom's pen, the Parker was my maternal grandmother's mom's pen. The two great-grandmas would be in-laws to each other and I knew them both very well as a child and young adult. It's very significant to me to use their pens, that I saw them both use when I was a far, far younger writer than I am today.)

 

**(I use the heirloom pens and almost daily. I like to write at least a sentence with them to keep the ink from drying out. I also use them for journal writing and note taking. I have used them to write up everything I know about the pens and other heirlooms in my possession. I keep those writings with the heirloom they refer to. This way someday my kids or grand-kids will get the whole story (written in my hand) about things like my great-grandma's Waterbury clock made circa 1875. A clock which has ticked through the minutes, hours, days and years of four generations of my family. I have a large supply of high-rag paper that I write these things on with an archive quality ink. Sometimes a word processing computer program is wonderful, sometimes nothing beats handwriting on fine paper with an ancient pen and good ink.)

[Febeleh]

Lovely post CloaknDagr.

[Drone]

...This modification is well within my ability but I really hate to mess up a pen by experimenting...

 

Now that (finally) you can buy affordable spare flex nibs and ebonite feeds for the Ahab and Konrad pens, you don't have to worry about messing up your pen for good. If modifying a nib and/or feed fails, just start over anew. We had to beg and wait for literally years to get these spare nibs and feeds from Nathan Tardif; but now they are available.

[mitaccio]

I am so glad I did this mod to my Konrad Acrylic marbled marianas. Flexes so much easier. No wider lines, just easier to flex. Just got an Olde Salem today from Goulet, plan to mod it before inking it up for the first time.

[Drone]

I quickly snagged one of the Noodler's Konrad "Coral Sea" Acrylic flex pens from Goulet Pens before they go out of stock again.

The pen arrived today. The acrylic is beautiful in-person. Photos don't do it justice.

I promptly did three things things to pen:

1. Reground the nib for extra flex (EMF-Mod).

2. Cut, tuned and heat-set the Ebonite feed so the ink flow can keep up with the nib when flexing.

3. Filled the pen with Noodler's Turquoise Eel Ink. The turquoise ink matches the color of the acrylic nicely

Have Fun... David

 

[TeaHive]

Beautiful!! I might have to snag one of the Coral Seas before they disappear.. I've been wanting one forever!

 

I can't remember if I saw this in the thread already, but did anyone grind their flex nib to an extra fine as well as adding flex? I'm thinking I might try soon, just using some fine-grit sandpaper and elbow grease, rather than a dremel. (I'll eventually get around to going through this entire thread again to look, but for now I was just taking a quick break to check FPN. )

[akafridi3]

Anyone tried this flex with their Noodler's Neponset?

[Agge]

Anyone tried this flex with their Noodler's Neponset?

 

 

Not yet but I plan to when I have at least 2

[Stu L]

I know this is a thread that's for the ahab really, but I tried it on something else - works great! (not that you'd be able to tell from my hand!)

 

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q202/nightshade1814/IMG_20150108_210138_884_zps6dqgarmg.jpg

 

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q202/nightshade1814/IMG_20150108_210448_718_zpschd8wyou.jpg

[Sinistral1]

Glad to see your EMF mod worked out!

[CloaknDagr]

I can see why Noodlers designates this as a "Tinkerer's" pen. It took a MASSIVE amount of tinkering to get it to work right and it still is quite anemic in the flex department.

 

Weeks of off-again/on-again messing with this Ahab of mine had me frustrated nearly to the point of penicide ...

 

I ground the nib sides oh-so-carefully with my Dremel tool, I measured the cuts with a micrometer and got them exact.

 

I cleaned it, buffed it and polished it.

 

I gave it a nice acid bath to take all the polishing compound and residue off of it (polishing compounds contain wax, wax repels ink and defeats capillary action). Then just to be sure I soaked it in acetone, dried it and cleaned it with CPU molecular cleaner (the stuff we use to clean up a CPU in a computer so that the heat sink will mate properly on a molecular scale with the thermal paste and the die of the CPU).

 

I cleaned it up with a dry buffing wheel and clear water.

 

I reset the feed at least 3 times. I enlarged the ink "gills" and the ink channels on the feed because it would run dry while writing. Then I reset the feed AGAIN several times.

 

I adjusted the tines nearly microscopically so they looked perfect at 25x magnification.

 

It would write but it didn't want to start, not a "little doesn't want to start", it didn't want to start until I forced ink through the nib with the plunger. Then it would write until I set the pen down for a few hours. Then it wouldn't start again.

 

Finally I spread the tines just a tiny bit and then polished the contours of the nib end perfectly with dry 2000 grit impregnated plastic polishing material and flushed the whole assembled system again.

 

Now it starts as it should and it's an ink hose. It goes through a fill-up of ink in just a couple/few pages, it uses a LOT of ink so I put the cheapest ink I have in it. It flexes but it's not anything to write home about, it doesn't hold a candle to Great-Grandma's Waterman 52 1/2v, which could easily be described as a "wet noodle" so expecting it to perform like that Waterman is asking a bit much ... but I really, really have to write carefully to get any flex out of it that is prominent in the script. The Waterman just does that naturally without any special effort on my part at all. The tines will spread like (insert sexist metaphor here) and it will leave a huge, wet, long, wide line without running out of ink. Even so the script is still completely unimpressive.

 

All in all I'm underwhelmed with this Ahab model pen. Someone less bullheaded than me would have given up on it before it ever started writing properly. It was too hard and too aggravating to get working well to describe the process as anything resembling "fun". There were too many points where I was wishing I'd never bought the pen but didn't want to give up simply because giving up is for weenies. Until that "eureka" moment when I finally got it to just write like a pen should I was never sure I would succeed.

 

I like Noodlers inks and have several but I really doubt I'll ever buy a Noodlers pen again. I like Noodlers inks so much that if they didn't come in such gawd-awful homely bottles I'd probably have a lot more- Some day I'll find a source for cheap, decent looking bottles and that will be remedied. But I can see no reason why I'd ever put myself through trying to get a pen like this to work again, that's not something that is likely to be remedied. My experience may be atypical and I don't care if it is. There will always be the risk of having to go through all this rigamarole again and I'm not willing to chance it.

[Drone]

I can see why Noodlers designates this as a "Tinkerer's" pen. It took a MASSIVE amount of tinkering to get it to work right and it still is quite anemic in the flex department.

 

Well, first of all, comparing the Ahab's steel #6 nib with a vintage flexible gold nib is a bit of a stretch in my opinion - even with the EMF modification.

 

Second, I read through your post. and maybe missed it. but did you heat-set the Ebonite feed to the nib? I consider that to be a crucial step. See the links below on heat-setting the feed. I find the open flame method to be more effective, but not without risk.

 

The first time I went through adjusting an Ahab, it took some time. Mostly because there was more feed hacking involved than usual with this pen. Add to that the time required to do the EMF mod and you end up spending a lot more time this pen. But it does go faster and easier as you do more of them.

 

I enjoy working on pens and do it only when there is nothing else pressing. If a pen is giving me trouble, I set it aside for awhile and revisit the issue anew later. I enjoy the challenge.

 

Various Heat-Setting Video Links:

 

* Nathan Tardiff's Ebonite Feed Adjustment Video (Open Flame, starts at around 16:30)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1kWIUkVXPM

 

* Brian Goulet's Heat Setting Video (Hot Water)

 

http://blog.gouletpens.com/2014/03/heat-setting-noodlers-ebonite-feed.html

 

* FPR's (Kevin) Ebonite Heat Setting Video (Hot Water)

 

[Brooks MT]

CloaknDager

Your buffing wheel is contaminated with a hydrophobic substance. Every time you buffed, you destroyed the result of your previous cleaning. I've seen this before.

 

Your complex cleaning solutions are probably also contaminated or worn out. Simply using dishwashing liquid +tap water+ a few drops of ammonia, plus scrubbing with a toothbrush or test tube brush (all the while wearing clean rubber gloves), is sufficient. Follow by a rinse of dionized water. Then repeat, you must clean feed and nib twice, before reinserting parts into pen. The first cleaning will loosen hard stuck gunk, but not necessarily remove it. Also inspect the section (part of pen that holds the feed and nib). If you get grease in there, guess what happens each time you insert the newly cleaned feed and nib. A glob of silicon grease, used to lube the piston ring, may have fallen into the section. If the feed slides in too far, it can also get greased when it touches the piston. Si grease is hard to remove, see other threads for ideas.

 

Hard starting: things to check - 1. cleanliness, as covered above. 2. "baby-bottom" condition of the nib, bad, must be corrected. 3. slit is wider at the tip than at the airhole, bad; capillary action will not allow ink to reach tip. 4. Slit is entirely closed at the tip, bad; ink can't get past the squeeze. This one is tricky to diagnose w/o a loupe: if you press down lightly, the nib spreads, letting ink flow, but if you press down too hard, you get #3. 5. Don't handle parts with your fingers at anytime after cleaning, otherwise skin oils re-contaminate.

 

Store pen in an airtight container with a piece of water-wet papertowel. The caps on Noodler pens are not airtight, so, over time, the nib will dry out. I store my pens in a sealable sandwich container. Container is stood on end, with nibs up. This allows me to immediately start writing after weeks of storage, even in the dry air of Montana. Over time, however, the ink in the feed will dry somewhat, makeing it viscous. At this point, I have to clean the feed, or at least swish it through some water to relieve the dried ink, or thick ink blockage.

 

If pen is writing too wet now, use wax to close off some of the gills in the feed. Don't use Si grease as it's hard to remove if you change your mind.

 

Goulet pen says that 90% of all feed troubles with Noodler pens come from dirty feed and nib. My personal experience agrees with theirs.

 

Hope this helps.

[CloaknDagr]

 

Well, first of all, comparing the Ahab's steel #6 nib with a vintage flexible gold nib is a bit of a stretch in my opinion - even with the EMF modification. (Yes, I already said it wasn't a fair comparison. Thank you for reinforcing that. My point was simply that I had a very good, very flexible pen to use as an example of what a really good flexing nib is supposed to do. While the Ahab is not in the same league as the Waterman I referenced and I'm aware of that, it still doesn't "flex" very well comparison or no.)

 

Second, I read through your post. and maybe missed it. but did you heat-set the Ebonite feed to the nib? (Yes, I heat set the nib several times using the hot water method. Every time in my post where I said I set or reset the feed I'm talking about doing that, I just didn't use the word "heat" but heat it I most certainly did.) I consider that to be a crucial step. See the links below on heat-setting the feed. I find the open flame method to be more effective, but not without risk.

 

The first time I went through adjusting an Ahab, it took some time. Mostly because there was more feed hacking involved than usual with this pen. (Yes, a lot more hacking on that feed is required. I can see no reason why a flex nib pen is sold with a feed that won't keep up with the ink demand of a flex nib. Digging on that ebonite feed is exposing yourself to all kinds of problems including a broken feed, uncontrollable excessive ink flow, etc. ) Add to that the time required to do the EMF mod and you end up spending a lot more time this pen. But it does go faster and easier as you do more of them.

 

I enjoy working on pens and do it only when there is nothing else pressing. If a pen is giving me trouble, I set it aside for awhile and revisit the issue anew later. I enjoy the challenge. (I enjoy adjusting a pen to be all that it can be. I don't really care for the level of experimentation and downright aggravation required to get this pen to even write well, let alone the anemic flex it does even with the EMF mod. Without the mod it's really just a pen with a large ink capacity and little else going for it. It certainly isn't much of a flex pen the way it comes out of the box.)

Thanks for the input, I've replied in-line to your post in red text.

Edited January 9, 2015 by CloaknDagr

[CloaknDagr]

CloaknDager

Your buffing wheel is contaminated with a hydrophobic substance. Every time you buffed, you destroyed the result of your previous cleaning. I've seen this before.

 

Your complex cleaning solutions are probably also contaminated or worn out. Simply using dishwashing liquid +tap water+ a few drops of ammonia, plus scrubbing with a toothbrush or test tube brush (all the while wearing clean rubber gloves), is sufficient. Follow by a rinse of dionized water. Then repeat, you must clean feed and nib twice, before reinserting parts into pen. The first cleaning will loosen hard stuck gunk, but not necessarily remove it. Also inspect the section (part of pen that holds the feed and nib). If you get grease in there, guess what happens each time you insert the newly cleaned feed and nib. A glob of silicon grease, used to lube the piston ring, may have fallen into the section. If the feed slides in too far, it can also get greased when it touches the piston. Si grease is hard to remove, see other threads for ideas.

 

Hard starting: things to check - 1. cleanliness, as covered above. 2. "baby-bottom" condition of the nib, bad, must be corrected. 3. slit is wider at the tip than at the airhole, bad; capillary action will not allow ink to reach tip. 4. Slit is entirely closed at the tip, bad; ink can't get past the squeeze. This one is tricky to diagnose w/o a loupe: if you press down lightly, the nib spreads, letting ink flow, but if you press down too hard, you get #3. 5. Don't handle parts with your fingers at anytime after cleaning, otherwise skin oils re-contaminate.

 

Store pen in an airtight container with a piece of water-wet papertowel. The caps on Noodler pens are not airtight, so, over time, the nib will dry out. I store my pens in a sealable sandwich container. Container is stood on end, with nibs up. This allows me to immediately start writing after weeks of storage, even in the dry air of Montana. Over time, however, the ink in the feed will dry somewhat, makeing it viscous. At this point, I have to clean the feed, or at least swish it through some water to relieve the dried ink, or thick ink blockage.

 

If pen is writing too wet now, use wax to close off some of the gills in the feed. Don't use Si grease as it's hard to remove if you change your mind.

 

Goulet pen says that 90% of all feed troubles with Noodler pens come from dirty feed and nib. My personal experience agrees with theirs.

 

Hope this helps.

Hi Brooks, Thanks for taking the time to try to help out.

 

I cleaned the pen properly before I even started using it, I'm aware of the problems that stem from not cleaning a pen before it's initial inking. I always clean a new pen. Just to be clear, the pen didn't write all that well brand new after a good cleaning according to Brian Goulet's specifications.

 

No, I didn't let hydrophobic contaminants interfere with the whole process, I did mention that I was aware of the effects of those contaminants and I also mentioned the process I used to remove them thoroughly. None of my chemicals and materials are "old and worn out", they are just fine. After I did all the things I detailed I also finished up with clear water, a drop of Dawn dish soap because it's a good emulsifier, several flushes followed with clean distilled water (I always have a gallon or more of that on hand for various purposes) for several flushes. There is no doubt in my mind that I was getting that nib down to nothing but it's own metal with no contaminants remotely being an issue.

 

Just as a little background information - I'm an MCSE and have made my living for over 30 years in the computer industry. In that time I've probably built a couple hundred custom computers and I NEVER use an off-the-shelf machine for my own personal system. That's relevant because one of the trickiest, touchiest, most demanding things about building a computer is getting the absolute maximum heat transfer from the CPU die to the CPU cooling system. This is accomplished all the way down to a molecular level with very specialized materials and procedures. Getting that die and the copper heat sink or heat plate on a pump absolutely clean is essential before thermal paste is applied. Because I build my own computer up to it's maximum potential including some pretty hairy overclocks I go to the additional step of putting a mirror polish on both the die and the heat plate. Smooth conducts heat better than rough. If there were then any of those polishing compound residual contaminants left on either surface the thermal transfer paste would be inverse proportionately rendered less effective. The more contaminants the less effective the thermal paste because something is sandwiched between the paste and the surfaces it must have intimate contact with to work at maximum efficiency.

 

So I have no doubt at all the nib was as clean as it could be by pretty much anyone outside of a laboratory that specializes in that kind of thing. My work bench is very close to that class of laboratory but not quite the last mile because frankly I've never had a need for more. I'm also a ham radio operator so between computers, radios and a whole bunch of other electronic doo-dads, gizmos and gee-gaws I'm fairly well versed on this kind of thing.

 

One very good test to see if you've got metal clean is to simply wet it with distilled water. If the water beads, it's not clean. If the water flattens out with no beading it's pretty dang clean. I ALWAYS note the state of beading or not when I pull a nib out of an ink bottle too. With a clean nib most inks will lay a nice, flat layer of color over the nib. Almost all NEW pens will bead ink on the nib if they're not cleaned first. I used to just pump ink in and out of the pen a few times with a new pen, the theory being to flush and dilute any contaminants in the pen mechanism. But I gave that up a long time ago because it just doesn't do the job a good cleaning does.

 

The only cleaning I did on the feed was with water. I don't know that some of these chemicals, particularly acetone and alcohol, won't dissolve the ebonite feed so I only use water and Dawn dish soap followed by just water.

 

Sorry, I see I'm getting a little long winded here ... For brevity's sake I'll just say that I did check all the things you mentioned during the process of getting this pen to write.

 

I have a loupe, some really big honkin' magnifying glasses, and two microscopes (one electronic and one the old school kind). I can see the details on the nib very well. What finally got it working is spreading the tines maybe a thousandth of an inch and then re-working the shape of the nib end to exact symmetry across the ink-laying surface.

 

Like I said, it writes now and it writes just fine. For my part I'm not seeing a line that's too wet, it's just a lot of ink and the feed can keep up with it as it should. I can make it write a very wide, heavy line if I want to but it still doesn't flex comfortably or well without an overly demanding supreme degree of concentration. It WILL flex and it will flex quite a bit but it doesn't do that without approaching the calligraphers bailiwick rather than just a penmanship perspective.

 

The way it stands right now it's OK but it was way too much fiddling around to get it to the point of being OK. I haven't given up on flex nibs and I would really like to find something that compares favorably to Great-Grandma's Waterman. It doesn't have to be as good as the Waterman but it needs to be considerably better than this Ahab. I won't take the heirloom pen off my desk so I continue in my quest to find something that writes with a flex nib that I can throw in my pen case and put in my brief case when I'm away from my desk. This Ahab ain't it.