Pelikan 140 Ob - Dry As A Bone

November 19, 2013

Hello,

Today I went to the postal office to pick up my very first Pelikan. I was extremely excited about it, and the prospect of having a nice springy OB nib...until I got home and filled it with ink. Before filling, I noticed that the slit between the nib tines was completely shut at the tip (no light came through), but decided to fill it anyway and see how it writes. The thing is...it's a very smooth nib, but if I apply no pressure to the nib (as I usually do when writing normally), only a very feint line will come out of the tip. The ink may have something to do with this (Pelikan Blue-Black, and yes, I know it is a rather dry ink), but I haven't experienced this level of dryness with any of my pens (and I have quite a few already).

If I start applying some pressure, I get a whole new experience. It puts down a pretty large amount of ink (though not extreme).

So, anyone else encountered this? I was expecting a really wet nib (with no pressure), just gliding on the surface of the paper. Should I be worried, should I adapt my writing style, or even more, send it back to the seller?...

Thanks!

November 19, 2013

In my experience, Pelikan's tend to run wet and my 140 puts down a nice line with no pressure applied. If I were in your situation, I would probably reach for my brass shim and see if I couldn't open up just a little space between the tines to improve flow. Shouldn't take much. Good luck with it and enjoy the pen. It's a great one to start with.

November 19, 2013

Did you flush the pen?

Who know what sort of ink was dried in the channel of your feed. Run some water through it...perhaps a bit of 1-10 ammonia.

It is not a dry nib. It is made for a dry ink.

Don't try to push the nib wider than 3X a light down stroke. It's not designed to do more. Please, read my signature.

Just looked at my 140 OF, tight slit, no light, writes great.

My 140 OB, was my first semi-flex.

Been pushing the 140 and the Geha 790 ever since.

The nib widths run 1/2 a width truer than modern. So it's a writing nib, not a signature nib, width would be more like a OM-B, than the modern fat & blobby OB.

November 19, 2013

I bought the pen freshly restored, so there shouldn't be any dried ink blocking the channels. I though about the brass shim, but I can't find any in my country (and I don't want to order just a shim from international sites). Is there anything else I could use to spread the tines just a little bit more?

November 19, 2013

Before to tinker around with the nib check the following.

Do you hold the pen rotated exactly to fit the slant of the nib?

Did you wrote with an vintage oblique before?

The vintage oblique nibs need an exact writing orientation to write properly.

If you do not hold it correctly it will probably be dry or skip, or does not write at all and/or feel scratchy.

These nibs are normally excellent writers, and do not need to tinker around when the tines are aligned properly.

The tines should be very close to each other at the tipping (closed, there should be no noticeable gap).

If don't know exactly what you do you might make it worser than it is.

If you already have experiences with vintage oblique nibs and you are sure that this is not the problem:

Did you screw out the nib unit already and cleaned it thoroughly?

Can you post pictures from the slit, the feed alignment and the tine alignment?

November 19, 2013

I have wrote with vintage nibs before (I own mostly vintage pens) and do know how to properly hold an Oblique nib. It's just that my other nibs (Parker "51", Esterbrook), even though they are hard as nails, run pretty wet without any pressure (and I mean no actual pressure, my hand only supports the fountain pen). With the Pelikan OB, I have to push just a little bit in order to get a wet flow (and it gets pleasantly wet with not a considerable amount of pressure, but being used to no pressure at all, it's a bit weird).

The tines can't be misaligned, because I don't get any feel of scratchiness...just dryness (I'll put some Waterman Florida Blue when I get home, in order to test the real flow of the nib).

November 20, 2013

I noticed that the slit between the nib tines was completely shut at the tip (no light came through)
-snip-
So, anyone else encountered this? I was expecting a really wet nib (with no pressure), just gliding on the surface of the paper. Should I be worried, should I adapt my writing style, or even more, send it back to the seller?...

A half decent nib should narrow considerably from the breather hole to the tip, otherwise there would be no capillary flow action. It's up to you, whether you want to fix it yourself (it won't be easy nor cheap to have it done properly), or just let the seller or next guy to be bothered with it. All the best.