Kaweco Nibs And German Quality Control

[fabri00]

  On 6/13/2016 at 6:45 AM, mehandiratta said:

I agree with you as far as nibs department is concerned....Japanese are best...

But if you are looking at beautiful Japanese pens... then take a look at Nakayas and Namikis .... they are stunner....

 

Yes I find Italian pens more beautiful... but again pathetic nibs...

Sorry....im italian and I dont want to give the impression to be nationalist at all, but in your post I think you try to compare 2 different worlds.

 

Japan, for every product mean perfection in terms of performance, quality controll, durability, and any others.

I visit Japan since more than 25 years, and I know well what Im saying.

 

Italy mean creativity, innovation in design and materials, and sometime problems in quality controll.

 

This for motorbikes, car, food, pens, and whatever else we want.

 

I have in my collection many japanese pens, from cheap ones up to Nakaya, all bought in Japan during my business trips. Great pens, great materials, great nibs, but, for me, boaring pens.

 

I prefer to have an italian motorbike, an italian car, and to carry italian pens.

 

Lastly, about quality controll, I also hai some issues with some Omas (my favourit pens since 30 years), but all my Aurora and Delta have been great writers out of the box, like Japanese ones (but very much superior in terms of design).

[Bluey]

  On 9/4/2016 at 7:50 PM, fabri00 said:

Sorry....im italian and I dont want to give the impression to be nationalist at all, but in your post I think you try to compare 2 different worlds.

 

Japan, for every product mean perfection in terms of performance, quality controll, durability, and any others.

I visit Japan since more than 25 years, and I know well what Im saying.

 

Italy mean creativity, innovation in design and materials, and sometime problems in quality controll.

 

This for motorbikes, car, food, pens, and whatever else we want.

 

I have in my collection many japanese pens, from cheap ones up to Nakaya, all bought in Japan during my business trips. Great pens, great materials, great nibs, but, for me, boaring pens.

 

I prefer to have an italian motorbike, an italian car, and to carry italian pens.

 

Lastly, about quality controll, I also hai some issues with some Omas (my favourit pens since 30 years), but all my Aurora and Delta have been great writers out of the box, like Japanese ones (but very much superior in terms of design).

I think I would mostly agree.

I like Japanese pens for the most part because they have arguably the best nibs in terms of good quality performance, but their pens are very boring and unoriginal in looks. I'm mentioned about this before. For about 80% of modern Japanese pens they are either black and gold/silver cigar (like this) or black and gold/silver torpedo (like this). The rest are either coloured variations of the above or an occasional rare deviation which neither looks like a cigar or a torpedo and is actually not black!

 

The Italian pens on the other hand have an appalling track record in terms of quality control, perhaps because quality control testing is always done during when they are on their siestas, but they have some rather beautiful and colourful pens, sometimes even imaginative. Sometimes writing with them has some interests aspects too (the Deltas for example are some of the most pleasing pens to write with even if the gold on the fusion nibs have been known to "fall off")

 

Sadly, if you want an Italian pen that isn't boring looking you have to pay about £300+. For a Japanese pen, you can get a boring looking pen but which writes much better(but in a boring way) than most Italian pens for about £10

Edited September 4, 2016 by Bluey

[fabri00]

I agree about the issue in the fusion nib, but beside from that, i never read or heard about any other problem for Delta nibs.

[mehandiratta]

  On 9/4/2016 at 7:50 PM, fabri00 said:

Sorry....im italian and I dont want to give the impression to be nationalist at all, but in your post I think you try to compare 2 different worlds.

 

Japan, for every product mean perfection in terms of performance, quality controll, durability, and any others.

I visit Japan since more than 25 years, and I know well what Im saying.

 

Italy mean creativity, innovation in design and materials, and sometime problems in quality controll.

 

This for motorbikes, car, food, pens, and whatever else we want.

 

I have in my collection many japanese pens, from cheap ones up to Nakaya, all bought in Japan during my business trips. Great pens, great materials, great nibs, but, for me, boaring pens.

 

I prefer to have an italian motorbike, an italian car, and to carry italian pens.

 

Lastly, about quality controll, I also hai some issues with some Omas (my favourit pens since 30 years), but all my Aurora and Delta have been great writers out of the box, like Japanese ones (but very much superior in terms of design).

 

I agree with you Design is USP of Italians...

And my post was not to hurt anyone's sentiments... Apologies

[fabri00]

Thanks, but really no need to apologize !. Dont worry.

[eliweisz]

Regarding Kaweco:

In 2015/16, I bought three pens and four nibs (incl. 1.1 stub unit for my Classic Sport). Three nibs (stub and two Ms) were excellent writers right out of the box. One (F) gave me some headache with hard starts, skipping, etc. It was tuned by a good friend of mine who spent an hour of his precious time on this little beast and turned it into one of my all-time favourites. So, 3:1, i.e. 75 per sent success rate. Is it luck?

[Rudolf]

I had issues with many pens and brands. Accept for one Italian brand, guess:

AURORA!

[Rudolf]

I was very sceptical about Italian brands. But some things the Italians do very well:

Tripods (Manfrotti), Food, Clothes, fountain pens (Aurora).

[Rudolf]

o yes: notebooks (Ciak)

[gistar]

I have a number of Kawecos, from the Sports to the King and nibs from F to Stubs and have only had difficulties with a BB nib which is a bit particular to some inks. I think that Kaweco nibs are tuned to work well with the usual paper that is available (non coated, a bit rough) and not with the coated or too smooth papers many of us use. Japanese nibs perform well with the nice Japanese papers but are somewhat scratchy with most every day papers. Aurora seems to follow their separate way.

[NicolausPiscator]

  On 6/9/2016 at 11:19 PM, yixiel said:

[...]

I apologize to the readers that have German pens that write like a dream. And I tell them to cherish those pens even more now after they've read my opinions. I am sure there are many such pens out there.

 

 

 

 

Hello yixiel, no reason to apologize! I have made similar experiences with Lamy and Kaweco, in regard to Pelikan, not alle the Pelikan nibs in my collection are very good. But Lamy EF writes horribly scratchy. Kaweco nibs (produced by Bock) are always very-very-very different: I have Kaweco nibs writing extremely good but other which have the problem of which you spoke. I master them myself at home with micro mesh. And I ask myself why can't they be just good or normal nibs?

 

However, I completely agree with you that Japanese EF nibs are excellent! The soft and the rigid ones!

[Honeybadgers]

My kaweco F and BB both write superbly. juicy, smooth, and reliable.

[fabri00]

  On 7/8/2017 at 4:11 PM, Rudolf said:

I was very sceptical about Italian brands. But some things the Italians do very well:

Tripods (Manfrotti), Food, Clothes, fountain pens (Aurora).

 

Sport Cars (Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini) ?

Regular Cars (FCA) ?

Motorbikes ?

Bikes ?

Arts in general ?

[Rudolf]

cars and motorbikes could be a bit questionable in my opinion, QC?

[Bluey]

  On 7/9/2017 at 1:53 PM, Rudolf said:

cars and motorbikes could be a bit questionable in my opinion, QC?

Many Italian cars and bikes are much like Viscontis. It's unwise to be further than a few miles from the nearest service station.

Edited July 9, 2017 by Bluey

[Honeybadgers]

  On 7/9/2017 at 1:53 PM, Rudolf said:

cars and motorbikes could be a bit questionable in my opinion, QC?

 

Somebody's never owned an italian vehicle.

 

There's a reason I stuck with Aprilia, they were the only italians who knew how to properly build their "soulful, charismatic" bikes. (bleep) ducati are built specifically to rip the customer off with servicing. Pointless ***king desmodromic valves were made redundant in the 1980's, but Ducati keeps on making 'em because they have the handy side effect of requiring more regular maintenance that is annoying to do and thus tends to be done at the dealer by 99% of owners.

 

Meanwhile, my Rotax 990 powered Apes all thump along more than 30k miles between adjustments.

 

I do love my visconti, but it's honestly not very well made when held against my lamy 2000.

Edited July 10, 2017 by Honeybadgers

[Durham K]

I have never had a poor nib on any of the Rotring pens I own. Who made these?

K

[Honeybadgers]

I think Rotring themselves made them. Rotring are definitely a big enough company to be able to.

 

I concur that the nib on my Core is amazing. Just a shame the rest of the pen is silly.

[farmkiti]

I have lots of Kawecos, some fine and some stubs, and thought that they wrote pretty well...except for that (not so) little skipping problem...now I understand why it is happening! It's always seemed to me that Kaweco's feeds had trouble keeping up with the (normal) demands of their nibs. So I experienced skipping and had to press really hard sometimes, to keep my pen writing. Now I understand this issue better. It's probably not due to the feeds, it's due to the way they finish their nibs. Makes sense.

 

I've never had a Lamy I could love. That said, I must clarify I've only tried their cheaper models. But I've never gotten any nib on a Lamy that wrote even decently right out of the box. I know some people love their Lamy pens; that's just been my unlucky experience with them. I kind of like some of their unique designs and colors and felt bad when I just quit buying them. I just gave up.

 

I have experienced all of these issues in my experience with fountain pens (about three years now?). I've learned to do some very minor nib alignment adjustments and some basic nib smoothing. I never had a lot of success with those, though, so I chalked it up to "stainless steel nibs suck!" and moved on to gold nibs. Then I got a couple of really boring Pelikan 14K nibs. In fact, I have some stainless steel Pelikan nibs that write much better than some 14K Pelikan nibs. Maybe all of these factors are what led me to have MANY of my nibs reground into stubs. They seemed to work best for me. Plus, I just really love shading. Enough said.

 

Lately, though, I've (re)discovered that some "regular" (non-stub) nibs actually do have character and can write exceedingly well, with smoothness and a sweet feedback. And that each nib has its own character, except for those that seem to have no character at all (BORING Grandma's boy). Now I understand better why I have had so many problems with nibs. I guess I've picked up a little info over the few years I've been playing with fountain pens, plus all the thoughts expressed here have helped me "gell" my thoughts on the matter. Thanks to all who commented here.

[Rudolf]

I completely agree with you Yixiel. Most Kaweco nibs have baby's bottom. This is absolutely unacceptable. Kaweco has good customer service. If you complain about the problem they will send you a new nib. But than still the problem hasn't been solved. My new Kaweco fine nib had again the baby's bottom.