Experiments With Flex

[MarioR81]

I assume you also modified the feed. Is that correct? My kakunofeed doesn't keep up much if I go too fast. It ain't that cheap where I live and I could be wrong but I have the feeling the flow a little different after I modified the nib. It feels like it is writing more wet. I'm concerned to really ruin the feed if I attempt to modify it. Sticking with what I got.

Thanks for the pics. I'll save them in a folder here for further reference when I modify another pilot nib. You are spot on about the nib curvature. My Swan nib has a curvature similar to the Zebra G nib pointing forward and also on the sides which makes the flex easier.

I also modified a cheap clone of Lamy and got same results as you. No flex at all. I even got a little further than you did and zero variation.

Have you tried to modify a modern gold nib?

[duckbillclinton]

4 hours ago, MarioR81 said:

I assume you also modified the feed. Is that correct? If I modify further my kakuno the feed won't keep up. It already can't if I go too fast. It ain't that cheap where I live and I could be wrong but I have the feeling the flow a little different after I modified the nib. It feels like it is writing more wet.

Thanks for the pics. I'll save them in a folder here for further reference when I modify another pilot nib. You are spot on about the nib curvature. My Swan nib has a curvature similar to the Zebra G nib pointing forward and also on the sides which makes the flex easier.

I also modified a cheap clone of Lamy and got same results as you. No flex at all. I even got a little further than you did and zero variation.

Have you tried to modify a modern gold nib?

Yes, all the feeds have been heavily modded.  For the genuine Pilot feed, the design comes with 2 cut channels (grooves), the center cut long channel is for ink flow via capillary action, there's a very short side cut channel for air to breath in (when paper fiber sucks ink down from the nib's tip, air will breath in to balance out air pressure, or else a vacuum would form to prevent ink flowing down).  Use a 0.1mm to 0.2mm thick blade to widen the center channel will increase ink flow tremendously, at the same time, more air is required to breath in, since air is FAR thinner than ink, use only 0.1mm thick blade to widen the side channel, and it will be sufficient.

 

Regarding modern gold nib flex mod, yes, I have done it before, it's a no brainer job.  Done twice with  cheap Chinese made 12k and 14k nibs from Hero and Wingsung.  Both brands' old gold nib pens are cheap on eBay (they are made in the 90s), the nibs are only in size 5 (26mm in length). 

 

* Due to the fact that K gold is much softer than steel, all you ever need, is just extending the center slit cut a bit deeper with a jeweler's saw (with the thinnest wire, size 8/0, same as 0.32mm in thickness), don't even need electric tools, and NO nib thinning is needed. 

 

On Wingsung's 14k nib mod, the nib is quite thin in its original form, for better looks, I combine and shape the shallow extended center cut with the original breath hole to form a long long long key hole, and resulted with a good quality super flex mod (almost wet noodle).  The shallow extended center slit cut is about 2.5mm in length connecting from the original breath hole.  It was later given to one of my young fountain pen pal as high school graduation gift, so no pictures were taken.  The mod was done in very good quality, and can sustain daily use and abuse.

 

On the Hero 12k nib mod though, it's a disaster.  The nib in its original form is thicker than Wingsung's 14k, so a shallow extended center slit cut wouldn't quite do the job, in fact, the proper way to mod this nib should have been just making the center slit cut just a bit deeper (won't be as deep as steel nib mods, around 3mm to 4mm in length connecting to the original breath hole will be sufficient).  Instead, with the influence of all those fancy looking crossflex mod from the web, I decided to make a cross cut a bit above the original breath hole.  The result?  A super wet noodle.  Sounds good, right?  WRONG!  I got excited too early, and I use this mod daily with very heavy usage. 5 weeks later, I noticed the nib started to write out wider lines, and the lines got even wider a week later, and the nib plastically bended a little bit (folding up).  With careful investigation, it was found that the cross cut has made the nib structurally unstable, the 2 ends of the cross cut start to tear open, and hence the resulted wider strokes, also the cross cut has made the nib folding up more easily, causing tremendous stress on both the far sides of the nib, to the point that plastic deformation took place.  Please note that this mod was done with K gold, the material is much softer and can withstand far more stress than steel, still, it failed, it was torn open on the 2 ends of the cross cut, and the nib bended up plastically.  My later steel nib crossflex mod experiments confirmed this finding, I made 5 successful cross flex steel nib mods, with daily extensive abuse, the longest surviving sample last only 3 weeks.  Besides structural instability, cross flex mod also cause way too much ink film instability (I will cover this topic specifically in my future ink film article), fast writing will almost always result railroading.  At the end, I sold this damaged 12k nib to my jeweler friend as salvage precious metal for just 3.5 US dollars, yes, you read it right, gold nibs don't worth a damn as salvage precious metals.

 

In short, modern gold nib flex modding requires only extended center slit cut to make the tines open up wide (you can use a jeweler's saw for the task).  Scallop cuts/ grinding on the sides can make the nib feel a lot softer (you can use a regular steel file for the job), this is optional.  Electric tools are not a requirement.  No thinning is needed for gold nib modding.  (* FYI, my very successful wet noodle Pilot steel nib mod didn't have any thinning done, and it worked just fine).

 

[Detman101]

8 hours ago, duckbillclinton said:

For the very last one and a half paragraph, I changed to another modded pen, the tip is thicker.  The other paragraphs with occasional thick down strokes were due to the fact that I was in deep thoughts during the writing, the subject I am studying is tough, and I was kind of going unconsciously pressing hard.  My mod's ink flow is fine.

Wow...this looks like something they show archeologists finding in an archive of some revolutionary scientist that solved the riddle of perpetual motion or anti-gravity...amazing penmanship and composition!!!

[MarioR81]

thanks duckbillclinton, much appreciated.

[duckbillclinton]

On 12/25/2021 at 9:20 AM, Detman101 said:

Wow...this looks like something they show archeologists finding in an archive of some revolutionary scientist that solved the riddle of perpetual motion or anti-gravity...amazing penmanship and composition!!!

Thank you for your kind words! 😅 I believe my handwriting is just about average among our forum members, it's just a matter of time before someone's saying, "That's nothing, hold my beer...". 🤣🤣🤣

[MarioR81]

6 hours ago, duckbillclinton said:

Thank you for your kind words! 😅 I believe my handwriting is just about average among our forum members, it's just a matter of time before someone's saying, "That's nothing, hold my beer...". 🤣🤣🤣

 

"hold my inkwell..." 

[Detman101]

13 hours ago, duckbillclinton said:

Thank you for your kind words! 😅 I believe my handwriting is just about average among our forum members, it's just a matter of time before someone's saying, "That's nothing, hold my beer...". 🤣🤣🤣

 

7 hours ago, MarioR81 said:

 

"hold my inkwell..." 

Hahahhaha...here we go!!! 🤣

[duckbillclinton]

@MarioR81

 

Just curious, how much does Kakuno cost in Brazil, your region?  (Assuming your user profile's country flag is correct.)

[MarioR81]

On 12/27/2021 at 10:29 AM, duckbillclinton said:

@MarioR81

 

Just curious, how much does Kakuno cost in Brazil, your region?  (Assuming your user profile's country flag is correct.)

I could find the kakuno for the approximate price in US, around 12-13 USD. But to give you an idea..

A pilot Metropolitan is about 47 USD

Lamy Safari about 50 USD

Lamy 2000 about 461 USD

 

There is also the option for aliexpress where the platinum preppy and Kakuno is also cheap, about 10USD for the preppy and the Pilot 78+ is about 22 USD. The Metro still cost about 35 USD though. If I'm out for pilot nib, I probably can find a plumix or penmanship for something around 10 USD.

 

One has to keep an eye opened. I managed to find my Swan for about 75 USD and my Parker 51 for almost 60 USD both in excellent condition.

 

 

[duckbillclinton]

On 12/10/2021 at 2:15 AM, Detman101 said:

Can a standard EF Flex Nib be reground into a LH Oblique flex?
I believe that is what I ultimately need since my normal hand position rolls my pens to the left and destroys any flex nib I own.
I think if the leftmost tine were shorter to account for my rotation, I wouldn't blow through flex nibs so quickly...if at all.
Thank you to J.Mottishaw(RET.) for his post-active suggestion...

 

Yes, it has been done before.  I have done a right hand oblique grind with flex mod, size EEF, and it writes nicely.  For lefty, I can do it too.  Reasons for grinding to EEF is that oblique grinding will effectively increase contact width on writing surface, and I don't want my down strokes to be too wide.  You can tell from my study notes, I do fountain pen writing for daily tasks, not for artworks, so very fine nib size is required.

[Detman101]

4 hours ago, duckbillclinton said:

Yes, it has been done before.  I have done a right hand oblique grind with flex mod, size EEF, and it writes nicely.  For lefty, I can do it too.  Reasons for grinding to EEF is that oblique grinding will effectively increase contact width on writing surface, and I don't want my down strokes to be too wide.  You can tell from my study notes, I do fountain pen writing for daily tasks, not for artworks, so very fine nib size is required.

Awesome, thank you for that info.
I will have my SODF flex nib ground down to XF Oblique at the FP Event next weekend at Berts.

[duckbillclinton]

Humor for flex, flex for humor.  Hooded nib is well known for Little to NO flex at all during writing (due to its design), the most you can achieve is probably F to M or XF to F.  I wonder if it can be done to achieve XF to B or BB.  Worth a try, LOL.

 

As I am holding a Parker 51 and Jinhao 85 now... I am kinda regret what I just wrote above... Still, let's give it a shot... LOL

Edited January 4, 2022 by duckbillclinton
Just realized mission impossible has been proposed. doh!

[duckbillclinton]

On 12/28/2021 at 10:23 PM, MarioR81 said:

I could find the kakuno for the approximate price in US, around 12-13 USD. But to give you an idea..

A pilot Metropolitan is about 47 USD

Lamy Safari about 50 USD

Lamy 2000 about 461 USD

 

There is also the option for aliexpress where the platinum preppy and Kakuno is also cheap, about 10USD for the preppy and the Pilot 78+ is about 22 USD. The Metro still cost about 35 USD though. If I'm out for pilot nib, I probably can find a plumix or penmanship for something around 10 USD.

 

One has to keep an eye opened. I managed to find my Swan for about 75 USD and my Parker 51 for almost 60 USD both in excellent condition.

 

 

That's a bit expensive.  For cheap entry level fountain pens, my current residential region probably can get Pilot Penmanship for 7 to 8 bucks (USD) and Kakuno for 11 to 12 bucks, it's just a bit lower than your area. However, for Pilot Metropolitan and Lamy, the price difference is substantial (try at least 1/3 cheaper).  I wonder if it has something to do with tax...  Anyways, it's good to know.😁

[mizgeorge]

10 minutes ago, duckbillclinton said:

Humor for flex, flex for humor.  Hooded nib is well known for Little to NO flex at all during writing (due to its design), the most you can achieve is probably F to M or XF to F.  I wonder if it can be done to achieve XF to B or BB.  Worth a try, LOL.

Tell that to an original flex Aurora 88, or for that matter any number of MB butterfly-nibbed pens from fifty or sixty years ago. 

[duckbillclinton]

32 minutes ago, mizgeorge said:

Tell that to an original flex Aurora 88, or for that matter any number of MB butterfly-nibbed pens from fifty or sixty years ago. 

Will see 😉

[duckbillclinton]

@mizgeorge

 

WIP 😉🤣

 

 

[txomsy]

Nice.

 

[Bo Bo Olson]

On 12/24/2021 at 4:11 PM, duckbillclinton said:

Some of my vintage flex nib collections, 2 Waterman's with ideal nibs (model 52 half V with size M full flex, very sad performance, and the other is size F with ok superflex, seriously, where are all the vintage Waterman wet noodle hypes coming from???),

 

It is and has been said, at least a hand full of years ago and more, that not all Waterman 52 nibs are superflex.....much less Wet Noodles.

 

I have two 52's with Wet Noodles. One is a two stage 7X one. The first stage is ho hum is that all there is??, the second stage is Ah Ha.

The other is a 6X Wet Noodle, and a smooth single stage.

I however got them from Mauricio, who deals with superflex pens, and he rated them as Wet Noodles.

So I suggest Mauricio for superflex and wet noodles.

 

He does say to get superflex nibs to give their best requires lots of fiddling work of setting the feed's debth and the nib to the feed in the pen to get best use.

 

My third Wet Noodle is a Soennecken nib in a no name pen. It is the best of the three.

I really lucked the hell out when I shoved the nib and feed back into the pen, with out the slightest idea of what I was doing. I was so noobie....that I just knew it was a 'flexi' nib. After I got my first 52 Wet Noodle did I find out I already had had a Wet Noodle in that Soennecken nib. .

 

A long time ago, superflex was sort of new terminology; and 'flexi' was the biggest word in the fountain pen vocabulary....any nib that bent or spread it's tines even a little bit was considered 'flexi'.  ...by nail users.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

""""Tell that to an original flex Aurora 88,""""

I never got one, but for some 5 or six years about a decade ago, it was on my list to get of semi-flex nibs.

 

I did try an Aurora Verdi (there are very many Verdi styles)  at my B&M's sale 8-9 years ago. It was semi-flex, a bit narrow for my liking ( I knew Aurora was the narrowest nib in Europe) and a tad to toothy...and some E 250 over my E-500 limit.............so I got the MB Virginia Woolf instead.

 

 

 

[Karmachanic]

My flexiest nib is on a late 40s Soennecken S26, 14k B.   A delightful small pen. 104mm uncapped, 135mm, posted with a 11.8mm barrel.  0.25mm(EF) to 1.30mm(BBB) line spread.  Greater than the 912.

 

Bought it and didn't use it for two years because I thought it too small.  Then one day I inked it up.  Oh yeah!  It's been inked ever since.

 

[Bo Bo Olson]

Back in the day, Soennecken was a level too high for my wallet. Now ,I don't need to start buying more pens in a new collection, when it's time to thin the crop back into the wild. There are folks with need of my semi&maxi's.

 

If I'd gotten my grail pen a Soennecken 111 Extra in herringbone or even 222....or 333 by the time my money burnt a hole through my pockets....leaving a line of crumbs that fed the flock of Pelikans that followed me home, I might have finally gotten into Soenneckens.

 

Andreas Lambrou said the Soennecken 111-222-333-444 were the best pens made in the '50's ...better than MB. (= Best pens of all time.)

Soennecken died because they didn't get into making ball points soon enough like MB&Pelikan.

 

However, Osima was as high as I could go, back then when I bought more pens than I needed. The Osima was more expensive than vintage Pelikan 140/400/400nn's. Then Running 20% higher. I never outside my black, white and gray marbled 540 ever get any Osmia pens in color in they were 20-30% more expensive than the plain black and gold or the BCHR ones I lucked into. 

Black and Gold pens are by far the most common of that era's (post war)

( I've seen them at decade low prices lately... the pens will have to be -re-corked in the cork is old or Plastic Gasket 1.) has crumbled. One could go Plastic Gasket 2.0....but properly prepared by boiling in oil and beeswax cork is the smoothest gasket.)

 

I ended up with more vintage MB's than I ever expected...some 5 and a new one. Three of them were live auction house buys back before computers and telephones let the idiot collectors in......all I had to do was beat a dealer who had to make a profit. Ah for the good old days. When I was more than likely the only idiot collector in the hall.