Should a well tuned nib work with many different inks? Also dry ones

[rb120134]

21 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

If I were the pen owner, I'd judge the magnitude of the problem on the basis of whether the pen will write properly and reliably; just as someone born with a deformity may not necessarily be handicapped by it, but could well be, and how big a problem and how much corrective action is required should be assessed on that basis, I think.

 

 

I've personally seen some, including one that is kinda like that on my Leonardo Momento Zero, which caused a slightly different problem. Anyway, I fixed mine by regrinding the tipping — which of course voids warranty on the pen. Knowing what I know now, having the experience I do now, if I were to do it all over again, I'd simply have returned the pen to the retailer as defective, and get it exchanged or refunded.

 

 

I'd answer that with a qualified yes. That misalignment is less of a problem than asymmetrically cut tipping that cause the thickness of the hemispheres to be imbalanced.

So the asymmetrically cut tipping causes more problems with the writing performance than the misaligned nib? 

[OMASsimo]

50 minutes ago, rb120134 said:

So the asymmetrically cut tipping causes more problems with the writing performance than the misaligned nib? 

No, I don’t thinks so. I have plenty of nibs with asymmetrically cut slits that are perfect writers. You find those very often in vintage pens. This is more a cosmetic issue than a functional one. One might get the impression that at least some current manufacturers pay more attention to such cosmetics than to function. Anyway, if the slit is out of line with the ink channel of the feed, this might cause flow issues and the nib perhaps should be reset. But what you describe does not sound like that this is really the reason for your problems. But of course, it can’t hurt to set the nib properly.

[rb120134]

1 hour ago, OMASsimo said:

No, I don’t thinks so. I have plenty of nibs with asymmetrically cut slits that are perfect writers. You find those very often in vintage pens. This is more a cosmetic issue than a functional one. One might get the impression that at least some current manufacturers pay more attention to such cosmetics than to function. Anyway, if the slit is out of line with the ink channel of the feed, this might cause flow issues and the nib perhaps should be reset. But what you describe does not sound like that this is really the reason for your problems. But of course, it can’t hurt to set the nib properly.

So what is the reason for my problems you think?

[OMASsimo]

As I mentioned before, the picture is not clear enough to tell very much. It’s hard enough to check a nib that I have in my hands and can inspect under the stereo microscope and with perfect lighting, it’s impossible to judge the nib from such pictures. 
 

Why do I think that the main problem is not the alignment of the slit on the feed? Because then more likely the nib would write dry in general rather than start skipping after awhile. But if the nib isn’t positioned correctly on the feed, this also could have other subtle side effects.

 

When a pen starts skipping, it means that the ink film on the tip touching the paper breaks down.  The two most common reasons for that are insufficient ink flow from the reservoir or baby bottom. The first can have various reasons, most often hydrophobic residues in the ink channel or poor converters. Very often, a thorough cleaning with a mild detergent helps in this case. 
 

The second issue is a manufacturing flaw and often requires some grinding of the tipping to fix. Here is a rough sketch of the problem:

 

 

On the left you see a schematic view of a nib without baby bottom. The blue ink is drawn into the slit by the capillary effect all the way to the surface that touches the paper. On the right is an exaggerated view of extreme bb. The edges of the tipping are rounded so much that the ink cannot easily touch the paper surface. If this effect is less pronounced or very mild, a pen might write initially but then starts skipping after awhile. It’s very hard to diagnose and usually I try all other measures first before I assume it’s bb. But I still remember my struggle with an OMAS Extra that behaved like yours and almost drove me crazy many years ago. That was before I started to do a lot of pen restorations. It took me over a year to figure out the true reason, especially because bb is very uncommon among those pens, but then the problem was fixed within an hour!

[rb120134]

On 5/8/2021 at 7:31 PM, OMASsimo said:

As I mentioned before, the picture is not clear enough to tell very much. It’s hard enough to check a nib that I have in my hands and can inspect under the stereo microscope and with perfect lighting, it’s impossible to judge the nib from such pictures. 
 

Why do I think that the main problem is not the alignment of the slit on the feed? Because then more likely the nib would write dry in general rather than start skipping after awhile. But if the nib isn’t positioned correctly on the feed, this also could have other subtle side effects.

 

When a pen starts skipping, it means that the ink film on the tip touching the paper breaks down.  The two most common reasons for that are insufficient ink flow from the reservoir or baby bottom. The first can have various reasons, most often hydrophobic residues in the ink channel or poor converters. Very often, a thorough cleaning with a mild detergent helps in this case. 
 

The second issue is a manufacturing flaw and often requires some grinding of the tipping to fix. Here is a rough sketch of the problem:

 

 

On the left you see a schematic view of a nib without baby bottom. The blue ink is drawn into the slit by the capillary effect all the way to the surface that touches the paper. On the right is an exaggerated view of extreme bb. The edges of the tipping are rounded so much that the ink cannot easily touch the paper surface. If this effect is less pronounced or very mild, a pen might write initially but then starts skipping after awhile. It’s very hard to diagnose and usually I try all other measures first before I assume it’s bb. But I still remember my struggle with an OMAS Extra that behaved like yours and almost drove me crazy many years ago. That was before I started to do a lot of pen restorations. It took me over a year to figure out the true reason, especially because bb is very uncommon among those pens, but then the problem was fixed within an hour!

I realigned the nib slit with the center of the feed, I carefully rotated the nib, maybe less then 1 mm. For some reason, the hard starts after some time unused seem to be gone. I left the pen 1,5 day capped with the nib upwards, it writes straight away, without hard starts and skipping. I am gonna leave the pen capped nib up for a couple of days to see, but right now it looks. still using the Cobalt blue GvFC ink. 

[OMASsimo]

44 minutes ago, rb120134 said:

I realigned the nib slit with the center of the feed, I carefully rotated the nib, maybe less then 1 mm. For some reason, the hard starts after some time unused seem to be gone. I left the pen 1,5 day capped with the nib upwards, it writes straight away, without hard starts and skipping. I am gonna leave the pen capped nib up for a couple of days to see, but right now it looks. still using the Cobalt blue GvFC ink. 

This is great news! I keep my fingers crossed that it also cured the skipping after writing for awhile. But what you report seems very promising.

[rb120134]

On 5/10/2021 at 11:20 PM, OMASsimo said:

This is great news! I keep my fingers crossed that it also cured the skipping after writing for awhile. But what you report seems very promising.

I have a question, if you store an inked pen, do you store the pen vertical(nib upwards) or horizontal? I always stored my GvFC fountain pen nib upwards also when inked. Could that affect how the pen writes after being unused for 2-3 weeks while it is inked with Cobalt Blue?

[A Smug Dill]

5 minutes ago, rb120134 said:

I have a question, if you store an inked pen, do you store the pen vertical(nib upwards) or horizontal?

 

It depends on the pen. Not so much the internal design of the pen, including but not limited to the filling mechanism, per se, but just where I store a certain class or group of pens. For example, most of my inked Platinum Preppy and Plaisir pens live in pen cups; and so they're stored with nib pointing up. My gold-nibbed pens live either in large-capacity pen display/storage boxes or 2-, 3-, 5- and 10-pen leather pen carry cases, so they get stored lying horizontal. Some cheap Chinese pens end up in boxes or pen folders of massive capacity, so those get stored lying horizontal as well; whereas some of my OK, ‘better’ steel-nibbed pens live in 10-pen rolls, which sometimes get stored lying sideways and sometimes stored upright.

 

14 minutes ago, rb120134 said:

I always stored my GvFC fountain pen nib upwards also when inked. Could that affect how the pen writes after being unused for 2-3 weeks while it is inked with Cobalt Blue?

 

If the pen's cap seals the nib and feed effectively to prevent ink evaporation when the pen is capped and unused, then it should not be a problem. On the other hand, if the cap seal effectiveness is poor, then storing the pen with nib facing up will be worst out of different ways to keep the pen when unused.