Gadget To Adapt A "51" For A Cartridge Converter

[mitto]

I would want all the VINTAGE pens as they were made. With their ouwn parts and their own filling systems. If I want a C/C pen I would buy a C/C pen and if want a piston filled pen I would buy a piston filled pen. Lots of them are there.

 

 

Custom conversion of a geneuine aerometric 51 into a C/C pen is beyond me. I wouldnt accept this idea of adultrating the 51.

[pajaro]

I would want all the VINTAGE pens as they were made. With their ouwn parts and their own filling systems. If I want a C/C pen I would buy a C/C pen and if want a piston filled pen I would buy a piston filled pen. Lots of them are there.

 

 

Custom conversion of a geneuine aerometric 51 into a C/C pen is beyond me. I wouldnt accept this idea of adultrating the 51.

 

Exactly. Why mess up a perfectly good aerometric 51 just to "upgrade" it to a newer, cheaper design that has issues like flow and surface tension?

[aucheukyan]

 

Exactly. Why mess up a perfectly good aerometric 51 just to "upgrade" it to a newer, cheaper design that has issues like flow and surface tension?

 

Basis for your assumption?

[mitto]

Basis for your assumption?

 

What assumption? We are talking of facts.

[aucheukyan]

What assumption? We are talking of facts.

Assumption on flow issue and surface tension thanks. Because conversions are rare a few. The official release of the cc 51 by parker which was, we all know what happened in a big way(that is not a conversion btw) and it does not have the same collector as conversions would.

Edited September 11, 2016 by aucheukyan

[Jobesmirage]

I dont think there is a real reason for this conversion for the 51 Aero, which is a pretty good mechanism... although I can see someone doing this for a VAC if they lack the tools and skills for repairing the VAC. I can also see this being used for Parker 61s because there are a couple of issues with the Teflon/capillary converters. Would I be able to use this for the 61?

[parban]

I couldnt really understand the basis of the controversy. Some new gadget is available, which may or may not be convenient to an individual -- it would vary from person to person. Those who find it convenient would use it and others not --its that simple. Personally I congratulate the person who invented it. And I dont think that whether I fill a pen by sac or C/C would in anyway destroys the 'originality' of a pen. If it works perfectly, I would be satisfied with that.

Edited September 11, 2016 by parban

[mitto]

And I dont think that whether I fill a pen by sac or C/C would in anyway destroys the 'originality' of a pen. If it works perfectly, I would be satisfied with that.

 

So it would still remain an 'original aerometric 51' even if it fills with a converter/cartridge?

[parban]

Originality in look and writing pleasure are enough for me at least.

[mitto]

Originality in look and writing pleasure are enough for me at least.

 

I don't think the writing pleasure would be the same. As for looks, the 21 super looks the same. But it is not a 51.

 

But yes, as you said every one is free to do whatever he wants to do with his own pen.

[ek-hornbeck]

1. There ought to be a law

mitto, on 10 Sept 2016 - 11:30, said:

Custom conversion of a geneuine aerometric 51 into a C/C pen is beyond me. I wouldnt accept this idea of adultrating the 51.

So, wait… are you saying you are for doing this mod, or against it?

Also, would you not agree that adultrating is something best left to the MPAA? In any event, as I am over 18, I think we're good here.

mitto, on 10 Sept 2016 - 11:30, said:

I would want all the VINTAGE pens as they were made. With their ouwn parts and their own filling systems.

Perhaps we should investigate appropriate legislation.

2. Why bother?

I have explained the central issue twice, now. The key question here is not, “Can I use a cartridge converter in a Parker ‘51’?” Everyone knows that cartridge converters have problems—especially standard “international” converters, which hold a tiny 0.4ml of ink and have capillary issues that keep the ink stuck in the rear of the converter, refusing to flow to the feed. They are awful.

The key issue here is: how to use permanent ink in a Parker “51”?

Nobody on this thread who has wondered aloud, “Why would you do that?” with respect to modifying a “51” to use a cartridge converter has addressed this problem—though I've been very clear that this is the fundamental goal. If you refuse to close with this issue, then you are implicitly saying that you are fine with the fact that anything you write with your lovely “51” is: ephemera. Not of lasting value.

Because here is my stance: fountain pens are great. I love writing with them. But the written word is what matters. I have letters in my desk in my office that were written by three generations of my family, going back to my great grandfather. These documents are important to me—they connect me to people I love, who are no longer present in my life. They bring these people closer to me than photographs do. Given their contents, I think they will one day be important to my children—perhaps with a few more that I will have written, as well. The written word is what matters.

But these old letters were written using fountain pens, with ink based on aniline dyes. So they are fragile: if they accidentally get wet, they will be lost to me and my family; if they are exposed to sunlight, they will fade to nothing. Thus, I have to keep them sealed and saved away. And I worry about them. Fortunately, I've never had a bad thing happen to them, but I have had issues with other documents I've written. For example, I once left a few pages of mathematics and associated research notes that I'd done sitting on my desk, in a pool of sunlight. I needed them a year later. Nope: they'd bleached out to nothing. That got my attention.

When I write something down with a pen, I want it to be permanent. I don't want to think it is vulnerable to a coffee ring, a spilled water bottle, the condensation of a glass of iced tea, a patch of sunlight.

And you cannot do this with a Parker “51” today. You just can't—unless you can figure out a way to clean it thoroughly, on a routine basis. Perhaps what people are trying to tell me is that this simply cannot be done—that the “51” is an inadequate pen, compared to superior, modern alternatives like the TWSBI 580. But I like the “51.” I like it better than the TWSBI (which is a fine pen). The “51” is beautiful. It was made for the kind of writing I do with pens. It's nice to have beautiful, elegant things surrounding you in your day-to-day life—not just as empty ornamentation, but actually as an organic, integral part of your life.

So it would be nice to figure out a way to do this. I get the sense that I am literally offending some people with this desire—that it is, somehow, inappropriate. I remain unregenerate.

In any event, let's be clear. This is the issue. How can one use permanent inks—ferrotannic, cellulose-active, or nano-pigment—in a “51”?The rest is just one possible means to that end.

3. Engineering, design and perfection

aucheukyan, on 10 Sept 2016 - 11:08, said:

“Normal people… believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.” —Scott Adams

Adams is hilarious and insightful. My first thought, when I read this, was, “Yep, I'm busted.” However, there's more to great engineering than adding features. To give a non-fountain-pen example, there's a formal spec for a famous and beautiful programming language that begins by quoting de Saint-Exupéry: “Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.” That spec was written by a bunch of scientists and engineers, so it tells you something that they used this quotation as their pole star.

I think this perspective was best summed up by Alan Perlis, who was awarded the first Turing Award ever given. He once said, “Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.” By Perlis' taxonomy, engineers who jack up the complexity of a design by blindly adding features are in the “fool” camp. But removing complexity—that is great engineering, and great design.

To apply this in the fountain-pen context, consider Fountainbel's bulkfiller design for Conid pens. He didn't invent the core design, but he did add the key elements that make it work. I think it is superior to any other filling mechanism in existence. It holds more ink—a lot more ink—than other designs. It completely solves the “travelling on an airplane” leakage problem. It doesn't require sacs or diaphragms that age out: the parts are titanium, not rubber. It's easy to disassemble and clean. It's just better. And not only is it better, it's not even complicated! It's simple and robust—compare to a snorkel or all the fussy hackery of a true aerometric filler, with the little air hole at the base of the breathing tube and so on. There's a lot of frantic, fussy mechanism in those post-war designs. But Fountainbel's bulkfiller—there's nothing to it! Removing complexity: that's genius.

By the way, I think his work makes a nice contrast with the depressing state of affairs in the rest of the fountain-pen world, today. Companies like Pelikan seem, to me, to have completely abandoned trying come up with ideas to make better pens, retreating, instead, to the opium dream of playing the “limited editions” game, whereby they dress up the one design they've been making for many decades in a series of ornate veneers: old wine in new bottles. Montblanc is on the same glide path. They make two or three great pens, but they haven't innovated in a long, long time. Instead of focussing their creative energies on design, their innovation has been in marketing and branding—troweling a layer of hype on top of their product that is repulsive to me. (Well, repulsive, but also impressive.)

And these companies actually make good products—Souveräns and Meisterstücks are great pens. But the decline of Parker is beyond depressing. The company that gave the “51” to the world? I consider their current offering, their so-called “5th wave” pen, with its blatantly dishonest design elements, and I think, “So it's come to this?” I have to avert my eyes.

So bravo for Fountainbel. It's nice to see that fountain pens haven't become a moribund area of design; that 1960 wasn't the last time someone had a fresh idea for how to make fountain pens; that there is still room for new ideas if one would just give it some thought.

4. To hack or not to hack

In any event, your comment about adding features has raised an interesting general issue, one that several other people in this thread have also raised. It's something that comes up over and over amongst people who like old fountain pens. It comes up in the issue of whether or not one is willing to take a mint, uninked vintage pen and put it into service. It comes up in the issue of how much one is willing to modify a pen to suit one's preferences. It comes up anytime someone hires a “nibmeister” to grind a nib to his preferences.

Clearly, there's a spectrum, here. People sort themselves out onto this spectrum, and it's not necessary for us all to come to the same conclusion. My attitudes, personally, are these:

• I don't buy pens to look at them. I understand why someone would enjoy collecting fountain pens the way others collect stamps, but I am not such a person. The pleasure I get from a pen doesn't come, for me, until I am writing with it. If I like a pen, but it doesn't suit me me as a writing instrument, I am perfectly willing to alter it to make it do so.

• I'm ruthless about hacking things that are still in production. You can always get a replacement: the factory is still cranking them out to meet demand.

• However, my willingness to alter things that are out of production is more restrained. It's roughly proportional to the number of these things that currently exist. Consider the example of the Parker “51:” there are probably millions of these pens out there, so you can dip into a pretty big sea of pens and components, both used and NOS. Reducing the world's supply of original parts by one is not a big deal.

  I'm much less willing to make modifications to something which is rare; I'd rather preserve the limited pool of such artifacts.

• When it comes to altering things that are no longer in production, my first priority is reversibility: can I alter that thing to suit my wishes in a fashion that can be undone later—can it be completely restored to its original state?

  I feel a certain responsibility towards things that have really stood the test of time, e.g., that have lasted multiple human lifetimes. I get the pleasure of having this thing for the length of my life, so I should do my best to see that this lovely, useful thing isn't degraded by its time in my hands, but, rather, can be passed on to someone else to appreciate and enjoy when my life is over.

  For example, swapping the barrel of a pen for one of Ariel Kullock's custom replicas is a completely reversible thing to do. Contrariwise, a modification that would call for me to ream out the barrel of a Parker 61 to accommodate different internals is something which I would not want to do. Somewhere in the middle is permanently altering parts that wear out, anyway, such as rubber sacs and diaphragms.

These are not guidelines I apply exclusively to fountain pens. I apply them to other things I use in my life that are simultaneously old, beautiful and useful, such as antique furniture, Symbolics keyboards, houses, and physical books. A thing that is just old and beautiful, without being useful, is not a problem: it belongs in a museum. These issues arise with things that are old and beautiful, and also useful: things you want to use in your life.

That all said… you are free to do as you like with your own things. You can put them in a safety-deposit box and look at them reverently once a year; or, if you prefer, spend a relaxing afternoon with your friends dropping them (your pens, that is, not your friends) into a wood chipper so you can all enjoy discussing the different sounds it makes when it chews up Mandarin yellow celluloid versus more modern precious resin. You paid for the right to do this when you bought those pens. (The precious resin, I find, makes a harsh, brittle noise—you just can't match those old Duofolds for a really smooth purr.)

5. Today's revolutionaries are tomorrow's reactionaries

I know that sometimes these discussions make the members of the FPN community appear as if they were a bunch of grumpy old men who spend their lives sitting around, clacking their dentures against their palates and muttering imprecations under their breath, as they argue about the irrelevant details of an obsolete technology.

Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. I've been given to understand that the primary community here on FPN centers on that all-important high-achiever early-20's to mid-30's demographic: movers and shakers who enjoy relaxing with their fountain pens in the evening to wind down after days out in the world BASE jumping, clubbing, heli-skiing deep powder and working the amateur muay-thai competition circuit.

To be honest, I was a bit intimidated when I joined FPN last week—I remember being told that the members here enjoy using fountain pens to schedule their NetJet bookings, arrange those important January hotel reservations in Davos, and, of course, manage their, ah, social agenda—if you are going to scribble down someone's phone number in a bar, you make a stylish impression if you do it with a Visconti Homo Sapiens.

We all have different perspectives on fountain pens. But whether you use your pen to write in your journal about your annual July trip to Pamplona, write up notes for your next TED talk, or just employ it to do some tax-loss harvesting on your portfolio, I'm sure we can all agree to discuss the relevant issues in a positive and friendly manner, here in the happy sodality that is FPN.

Right?

EKH

Edited September 12, 2016 by ek-hornbeck

[alfredop]

"Normal people... believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet." - Scott Adams

 

Honestly, I would want to see someone making a custom piston knob for the vacumatic barrel using the threads for the vacuum plunger for a piston filled p51.

But, is it the inner diameter of the vacumatic barrel constant?

Otherwise it would not be possible to use a piston.

Alfredo

[cellmatrix]

I like my 51's stock, just like the manufacturer made them. But if someone wants to customize a new converter for it - more power to you.

[Dr.Grace]

It's not true that you cannot use a water-resistant ink in a 51 aerometric. I use a Noodler's semi-water-resistant ink in one of my 51s, and it hasn't needed cleaning for a long time. I would not use Noodler's Black, but then I don't use it in any of my pens, because it has a tendency to clog up feeds, in general.

[aucheukyan]

There is a step down in the barrel near the end to accommodate the pump assembly below its screw threads, and then it is a straight barrel down(as far as ive seen) till another step where the collector is fitted into. Other than the former i dont see a problem, and yes it will be less ink capacity than the original as piston mechanism will take abit more space more than the original pump assembly.

 

But, is it the inner diameter of the vacumatic barrel constant?
Otherwise it would not be possible to use a piston.
Alfredo

[pajaro]

It's not true that you cannot use a water-resistant ink in a 51 aerometric. I use a Noodler's semi-water-resistant ink in one of my 51s, and it hasn't needed cleaning for a long time. I would not use Noodler's Black, but then I don't use it in any of my pens, because it has a tendency to clog up feeds, in general.

 

I have used Noodler's water resistant inks and Montblanc's permanent blue in a couple of 51s without issue. I believe, from experience, that too much is made of the collector making it hard to flush the pen. Then there is also the salad spinner solution.

 

I would not do anything not reversible to a pen as good out of the box as a Parker 51.

 

The user is of course free to fiddle with their pen to change it to an inferior filling system for the purpose of being able to flush it out with an ear syringe. It is their pen, and aerometric 51s are fairly common.

[mitto]

.....

 

The user is of course free to fiddle with their pen to change it to an inferior filling system for the purpose of being able to flush it out with an ear syringe. It is their pen, and aerometric 51s are fairly common.

 

+1

[ek-hornbeck]

I have used Noodler's water resistant inks and Montblanc's permanent blue in a couple of 51s without issue.  I believe, from experience, that too much is made of the collector making it hard to flush the pen.

I don't think anyone says that the collector makes it hard to flush the “51.” The collector makes the pen more prone to clogging, given ink with heavy dye or pigment loads. What makes it hard to flush the pen is the filling system, compared to a piston-filler (which can usually be disassembled easily), or a cartridge-converter (which can be flushed with a bulb syringe). (And, yes, cartridge converters have plenty of other issues, as has been noted. These downsides are certainly part of the equation.)

As for clogging issues, I don't have personal experience with a “51,” so you should calibrate the following remarks accordingly. Here is what I do know about “difficult” inks and big-collector Parker pens, such as the “51,” 61, and 65:

• I used a Noodler's permanent ink in a Parker 61 back around the turn of the century. Now, this is a pen I flushed on a monthly basis, with an eyedropper bulb. Beyond monthly flushing, every 6-12 months I'd plug the capillary cell into the end of a length of soft tubing and lay the pen on its side in my shower. The other end of the tubing would go into a two-gallon jug of water set about 6 feet off the ground. I'd let the siphon slowly push water through the pen overnight.

  Despite all this, the pen eventually started to be difficult, to the point of unusability. So I sent it to Richard Binder around 2009/2010 to service it and have the nib tuned. When Richard sent it back, it came with a note saying that, when he'd disassembled the pen, the feed and collector had been about 90% clogged with deposits from the Noodler's ink. Richard's note went on explicitly and specifically to disrecommend using Noodler's ink in a Parker 61.

  I didn't see the interior of the pen—I didn't lay eyes on it directly, myself. But I am pretty confident in Richard and his report. It's not a particularly controversial claim to make, in fact—when I browse around the net, I've seen plenty of discussion centered on people having problems with the heavy dye loads that make Noodler's inks so attractive.

  Now, you might say: yes, but the issue here clearly is the 61's fussy capillary-cell reservoir, which a “51” does not have. No. The cap cell functioned fine. It would pull up a full load of ink (north of a milliliter, in fact). The flow problems were downstream of the reservoir. Note that Binder's report specifically mentioned the feed and collector, not the cap cell.

  (By the way, I didn't use ammonia or dishwashing soap when I flushed the pen, or use pen-cleaning solution such as Koh-i-noor cleaner. So perhaps that would have been sufficient to keep my 61 unclogged.)

• Essentially everyone (Sailor, Platinum, Montblanc, De Atramentis, R&K) who makes nano-pigment ink prints a warning on the instructions they ship with the ink. The warning is always words to the effect that, if you choose to use nano-pigment ink, you have to be much more vigilant cleaning out your pen. These instructions usually recommend weekly flushing of a pen that is used with such an ink. For example, here's what Montblanc says in the instructions they ship with their nano-pigment Permanent Blue these days:

  Important note: It is particularly important to clean the fountain pen regularly if permanent ink is used, as the high solids content of the ink can lead to deposits forming in the feed system.

  This kind of text is pretty typical. Note, also, that these manufacturers are mostly talking about modern pens, whose collectors have much less surface area than the Parker “51,” 61 or 65.

So I take all of these up-front, explicit warnings about these inks seriously.

Furthermore, it's clear that the “51” is simply harder to clean than other pens, such as, to give a few examples, a Montblanc, Pelikan, or TWSBI piston-filler. TWSBIs are designed to be easily disassembled for cleaning; they even include the necessary wrench in the box with every pen they sell. The “51” has many charms, but being easy to clean or disassemble is not among them.

That all said, if you are managing to use a “51” with a nano-pigment or a Noodler's permanent ink, without doing very much in the way of prophylactic maintenance, then that's great. You're getting all of the pleasure for none of the hassle. Carry on doing as you're doing—as you've pointed out, it's your pen, and aerometric 51's are fairly common.

EKH

[BoBoJones]

There is also the salad spinner, using centrifugal force to speed the ink solution out of the pen.

[welch]

 

2. Why bother?

I have explained the central issue twice, now. The key question here is not, “Can I use a cartridge converter in a Parker ‘51’?” Everyone knows that cartridge converters have problems—especially standard “international” converters, which hold a tiny 0.4ml of ink and have capillary issues that keep the ink stuck in the rear of the converter, refusing to flow to the feed. They are awful.

 

The key issue here is: how to use permanent ink in a Parker “51”?

 

Nobody on this thread who has wondered aloud, “Why would you do that?” with respect to modifying a “51” to use a cartridge converter has addressed this problem—though I've been very clear that this is the fundamental goal. If you refuse to close with this issue, then you are implicitly saying that you are fine with the fact that anything you write with your lovely “51” is: ephemera. Not of lasting value.

 

Because here is my stance: fountain pens are great. I love writing with them. But the written word is what matters. I have letters in my desk in my office that were written by three generations of my family, going back to my great grandfather. These documents are important to me—they connect me to people I love, who are no longer present in my life. They bring these people closer to me than photographs do. Given their contents, I think they will one day be important to my children—perhaps with a few more that I will have written, as well. The written word is what matters.

 

But these old letters were written using fountain pens, with ink based on aniline dyes. So they are fragile: if they accidentally get wet, they will be lost to me and my family; if they are exposed to sunlight, they will fade to nothing. Thus, I have to keep them sealed and saved away. And I worry about them. Fortunately, I've never had a bad thing happen to them, but I have had issues with other documents I've written. For example, I once left a few pages of mathematics and associated research notes that I'd done sitting on my desk, in a pool of sunlight. I needed them a year later. Nope: they'd bleached out to nothing. That got my attention.

 

When I write something down with a pen, I want it to be permanent. I don't want to think it is vulnerable to a coffee ring, a spilled water bottle, the condensation of a glass of iced tea, a patch of sunlight.

 

And you cannot do this with a Parker “51” today. You just can't—unless you can figure out a way to clean it thoroughly, on a routine basis. Perhaps what people are trying to tell me is that this simply cannot be done—that the “51” is an inadequate pen, compared to superior, modern alternatives like the TWSBI 580. But I like the “51.” I like it better than the TWSBI (which is a fine pen). The “51” is beautiful. It was made for the kind of writing I do with pens. It's nice to have beautiful, elegant things surrounding you in your day-to-day life—not just as empty ornamentation, but actually as an organic, integral part of your life.

 

So it would be nice to figure out a way to do this. I get the sense that I am literally offending some people with this desire—that it is, somehow, inappropriate. I remain unregenerate.

In any event, let's be clear. This is the issue. How can one use permanent inks—ferrotannic, cellulose-active, or nano-pigment—in a “51”? The rest is just one possible means to that end.

 

 

1. A Parker 51 can write with various types of semi-permanent ink. The 51 was designed at a time -- during decades -- when users refilled every day or two, but used the same ink month after month. In the US, that mostly meant Parker Quink or Sheaffer Skrip, in black, blue-black, or blue. There were other inks, such as Carters and Sanfords, but Quink and Skrip seem to have been the big sellers, based on what I saw in the school supply sections of drug stores or five&tens. People rarely switched from one exotic color to another. Find an ink you like and stick with it. However..

 

2. Current paper is likely to yellow and crumble before current ink fades. Stored properly, written documents will last a long time. I pulled out a three-ring binder with essays I wrote in 1962 using Skrip blue or Quink blue. The writing is perfect, but the paper is frail. Later, I pulled out a letter from the Washington, DC Public School System telling me to prepare for kindergarten. Probably in 1953 or 1954. An administrator signed in a brilliant blue ink on ditto paper. Great ink, no deterioration, but thin paper.

 

3. Ordinary paper in the 1950s and 1960s was better than what is sold today. An ordinary ink -- Diamine Sapphire Blue is a favorite -- should last a long time if writing is stored properly. What is "properly"? Put your documents into a manila folder, put the folder in a file cabinet. For longer-term storage, put files into storage boxes. Paper? Try to find archival ratings for paper and use, if you can, paper projected to last however long you need it.

 

4. The Parker 61 cartridge / converter was released about 1969 after Parker gave up on the brilliant, but flawed, capillary filling system. The 61 is shaped as an elegant replacement to the 51. Should be easier to find a c/c P-61, especially in the UK, than to modify an aerometric P-51.