Getting An Aurora Hastil Back In Service

[tjt7a]

---------- Verbose introduction; hang on to your britches! ----------

 

I recently bought a used Aurora Hastil (red body, yellow gold nib) on ebay for a very reasonable price. This is my first gold nib fountain pen and first retro pen. The entire pen has a wonderful feel to it!

 

The body seems to be made of a golden metal with a red plastic coating that has a remarkably luxurious feel. The cap clicks to the rest of the body with a reassuring CLICK, and glides onto the rear of the body when posted. The Aurora designers included soft plastic standoffs to prevents scratching when the cap is posted. Overall, the pen is incredibly light and thin, but has a very clean look to it. Once I figure out how to post photos, I will do that.

The clip is wonderful as well. It is obviously designed to sit in a shirt pocket, because the clip nearly rests on the cap, indicating that it is intended to clip to a thin fabric. Pants are out of the question, so I think a dress shirt pocket would make sense.

 

As an aside; for those of you who have tried wearing fountain pens in your dress shirt pocket, several bad things may happen (and have for me):

1. If the pen is heavy (think TWSBI), your shirt pocket sags, and your shirt looks terrible.

2. The clip does not have the necessary contact surface area with the shirt fabric, and you simply bending over results in a few curse words as the pen slides out and *SMACK*s into the ground.

 

So, I placed the pen in my dress shirt pocket, and did a hand stand. Done. No sliding, and the pen seems happy to be there with me, fighting gravity.

 

The section, feed, and nib look remarkably well made. The section is stamped with a serial number, the feed doesn't have lines left from the molding manufacturing process, and the nib looks very simplistic but nice. On the side it is stamped with '14 kt'.

 

-------- end of verbose introduction; on to business! ----------

 

When I unscrewed the pen for the first time, I saw what I had expected, but hoped wouldn't be the case. The pen was still inked; if you can call it that.. The ink cartridge did have ink in it at one point in its history, but the ink had dried, leaving a crusty residue in the cartridge. This of course is not a big deal, what is.. is the feed.

 

I immediately started cleaning out the feed with a bulb syringe (as per Stephen's tutorials). I filled the bulb syringe with room temperature water, and streamed it through the feed from the section side. As expected, a constant flow of dark black ink was expelled from the tip of the pen. I did this with probably 5 or so syringes until I got a clear stream. I dried the nib off and let it set for the next day.

The next day, I pushed through another bulb syringe, and sure enough... more dark color. This time a deep violet color. I have repeated this process for 3 days now, and I'm somewhat irritated at this slow process.

 

I took studiohead's recommendation and suspended the section/nib/feed under water. I got the following really cool results:

 

 

Does anyone know how to take an Aurora Hastil apart? I would like to give the feed a good scrubbing.

 

Does anyone know of a faster way of cleaning the feed?

Edited July 21, 2013 by tjt7a

[studiohead]

Ultrasonic cleaner and Ammonia soaking. The main problem right now is the flushing you are doing will not liquify the dried up ink in the feed. The way to do it is to soak the nib overnight or over a few days then flush using the bulb syringe. A faster way is to use an ultrasonic cleaner to try to do the similar by using micro cavitation bubbles to explode and remove objects stuck to the feed. But just soak it overnight first.

[tjt7a]

Thanks studiohead! I suspended the section/nib/feed underwater, with a piece of floss, and ink started flowing out!

 

Tom

[toymachine]

anyone figure out a good way to remove the hastil's nib from the section?

[praxim]

No, my Hastil has never needed that. What problem do you face that makes you want to remove it?

[toymachine]

I just took apart my hastil - the previous owner had bent the nib by using it like a flex pen.

 

If you pull the nib straight out, the nib will slide off. It's similar to a Lamy. Be careful doing this - it required multiple hours of soaking and then a lot of force. I wouldn't do this unless you need to. I had to do it to fix my nib, but otherwise it might be a risky thing to do.

 

I'm not away that any other pieces come apart. For example, I'm pretty sure the nib can't be removed from the section.