Wing Sung 601

[Ergative]

I've been curious to try (1) a vacumatic filling mechanism and (2) a hooded nib for quite a while now. This pen seemed like an inexpensive way to get the job done, and on the whole I think it's worth the £15ish I spent on it. I don't think it's worth more than that, though, although we'll see how it stands up to regular battering. I'll be taking it with me to work/travel because it has a large ink capacity and I don't care too much if it gets damaged. I'll report back in a few months or year to answer the ongoing question about any new pen: Is it a tank or a delicate flower? 

 

For now, here's the creature. It's a handsome beast, designed to resemble the Parker 51 in its profile and indeed its filling mechanism.

 

Here is a closeup of the nib. It is hooded.

 

The section unscrews easily and the nib can be swapped out with a variety of other CHinese replacements. I got a bent nib, fude-style, to try, but, although it fit the pen perfectly, the upturned nib scraped against the tip of the hood as I screwed the hood down. The plastic felt a little soft--not brittle, as if it could be cracked, but soft, as if it could be easily scratched--and so I don't think swapping nibs in and out is a great idea if they're going to pose an obstacle for the hood to go over them. You can make it work (I did), but repeated swaps will probably damage the tip of the hood.

 

Another thing that bothers me a little bit is the fit of the cap to the section. Every time I capped or uncapped the hood, it felt scratchy, as if the metal prongs inside the hood, which are supposed to fit on the clutch band, were scratching the plastic. At one point I rotated the cap, and it did leave scratch marks below the cap band:

 

 

However, these appeared after I accidentally over-pushed the cap down too far, and I was rotating it to pull it off. The scratches are all lateral, from the rotation, rather than vertical, indicating that they come from the capping motion, so possibly if I hadn't done that rotation my pen barrel would still be shiny. But still, the feel of scratchiness when I put the cap on is disagreeable.

 

Oddly, the scratchy feel is entirely absent when posting the pen. The pen posts beautifully.

 

FInally, unlike its Parker 51 model, this pen has an excellent ink window. I couldn't get a well-focused picture of it against the light, but I think this picture still gives a sense of the transparency of the ink window. I didn't give it a full fill, so the ink is down at the bottom of the barrel and the ink window is clear. This is what it looks like when the pen is empty. You can see that the ink window has window panes that go all the way around, and you can see light through it, so it's extremely functional. 

 

One thing I like about the ink window is that you can see the vac system at work. It's like the old Parker 51 Vacuumatic filler. The blind cap at the end unscrews and a little plunger post is revealed, although I forgot to take a picture of that. You put the nib in the ink and push down on the plunger, which depresses a piston in the barrel. The piston pushes air out of the barrel, causing bubbles to appear in the ink, and then when you release the plunger the piston moves up again. This causes the volume of the barrel to increase, so the air pressure inside decreases, which sucks up ink. You can see the ink appear in the ink window a half second after you release the plunger, which is quite fun. I only did one plunge-worth of ink, because I wasn't sure this ink would be a good match for the pen, but I wanted to give it a try. It lasted for about 5-6 sides of A4 paper, which is pretty good. To get a full fill, you'll probably need half a dozen plunges. This seems to me like a very respectable ink capacity, but I didn't measure it more scientifically than those impressions.

 

But, Ergative, you're probably asking yourself, how does it write?

 

It writes quite well, actually. Here's a writing sample with my thoughts from when I first inked it up, with Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Black. Before I did this sample, I did some very fast lines and squiggles on a different page, and there was absolutely no skipping. During the actual writing, there's absolutely no hard starting either. Here's what it looks like, with some more fine-grained impressions.

 

Here are close-ups of the line variation:

 

I was curious to know how reliable it would be, so I left it, nib up, in my pen cup, for two days, and then went to see if it would write again. It did not. I had to do a lot of dipping in water, possibly I even had to fiddle with the piston plunger at the back to get the ink flowing again. If you want it to write again after disuse, don't leave it nib up!

 

I have not taken any more mylar to the tines, and I think that what I did during the get-it-to-write-again fiddling didn't actually do anything permanent, because it doesn't write any differently now than it did before. I don't think it dried out. The spitting-on-a-paper-towel didn't dislodge any dry ink. I think the ink just flowed back from the feed into the ink collector or barrel, and I had to wait for it to flow forward again.

 

Since 23 June it's been lying on its side on my desk, and it starts up perfectly every time.

 

So, in conclusion, here are the takeaways:

 

• The pen has a fun filling system, and is very comfortable to hold. It posts well and writes reliably when it has been stored sideways.
• The nib is a nail and has substantial feedback, although that might be ameliorated with a wetter/more lubricated ink. Even with dry Pelikan 4001 it still writes reliably, but you can feel the ride.
• The body of the pen is a little bit soft, and vulnerable to cap scratches--although if you don't rotate the cap or over-squash it onto the pen maybe that won't happen. The cap still feels a bit skrawkish going on, though.
• I think it's worth £15, especially if it proves to be a workhorse tank that benefits from a wetter ink.

[ZeroDukE]

The scratch marks could easily be removed with a cloth and some cream/paste used to polish silver.  Thou I think the problem making those marks should be solved first.

[IThinkIHaveAProblem]

good review

thanks

 

I love my 601s (I have 6 now, 2 demos, 2 regular coloured ones, and 2 flighters)

only my flighters feel "scratchy" when capping, and It seems as though that is getting better with time

I very strongly suspect your scratches behind the clutch ring only happened because as you said, you over capped it, and then twisted the cap. None of mine have any such damage, and the capping mech and clutch ring are direct copies from the Parker "51" 

 

Glad you like it. IMO, 15L(ish) is a very good pen for the money. (that's why I have 6...) 

 

[NumberSix]

Excellent overview!

 

I have owned several, and generally I quite liked them. The nib experience tended to be a bit variable from pen to pen, but mostly they worked well. One of them was especially nice for one of the Noodler's "Bad" Blues (either Heron or Kingfisher, I forget). The ink flowed well in the nib, and it was fine enough to control the ink's outrageous behavior. 

 

I also like the solid feel of the pen in the hand. When capped, it has a little bit of weight - but not too much. Just right for this kind of workhorse pen.

[Paganini]

I have quite a few 601s (six inked, currently). As you say, the sections can be a bit fragile. I've cracked a few of them by over-tightening during the alignment step of tuning them. The hoods from Hero 616 pens are identical, as far as I can tell, and since 616s are a lot less expensive than 601s they make good spare-parts donor pens. 

 

However, if you really like the 601s (I do!) it might be worth upgrading to a steel hood. They were out of stock for a while, but seem to have resurfaced at the usual suspects on AliExpress, eBay, and Etsy. They can usually be had for $15 - $20. This roughly doubles the cost of the pen, but provides a substantial upgrade in durability.

[Sailor Kenshin]

Pelikan is a dry ink.  I have a 601 filled with Monteverde Moonstone for, oh, months now.  It has no hard starts.  

 

I have a few of these pens, including two with conical nibs.  A dry ink will give you hard starts if that's what you want.  😜

[IThinkIHaveAProblem]

58 minutes ago, Sailor Kenshin said:

I have a few of these pens, including two with conical nibs.  A dry ink will give you hard starts if that's what you want.  😜

agreed, my 601s have only ever hard started on salix, scabiosa or registrar's that had been the pen for at least a week

 

none of my other inks have hard started in them, and even when I DO use those inks, I don't get hard starts regularly, usually only after the pen has sat unused for a day or so, and usually near the very end of the fill when it's time to clean the pen anyways

[Ergative]

17 hours ago, Paganini said:

I have quite a few 601s (six inked, currently). As you say, the sections can be a bit fragile. I've cracked a few of them by over-tightening during the alignment step of tuning them. The hoods from Hero 616 pens are identical, as far as I can tell, and since 616s are a lot less expensive than 601s they make good spare-parts donor pens. 

 

However, if you really like the 601s (I do!) it might be worth upgrading to a steel hood. They were out of stock for a while, but seem to have resurfaced at the usual suspects on AliExpress, eBay, and Etsy. They can usually be had for $15 - $20. This roughly doubles the cost of the pen, but provides a substantial upgrade in durability.

 

I did think about getting one of those, but I like the all-black-with-silver-cap look. We'll see how it holds up. I don't care too much about scratches--especially if they can be buffed away as zeroduke suggested upthread--but I really like the idea of a beater workhorse for £15. Once my budget goes up to £30, I start expecting a lot more out of my pens than, so far, this one has given me. But we'll see. It's still fairly young.

[Ergative]

I have received my Bobby Bent Nibs in the mail, and swapped it in. I'm happy to report that the section can screw in over the top of the nib without any scratching, so it's quite feasible to swap these guys in and out. There are at least two nib types that come in the package of four--a just-barely-Waverly style nib, which I did not use, and then three visually-identical bent nibs, one of which I chose at random. Conceivably there are subtle differences between the three bent nibs, but if so I couldn't see them. It is very tricky to make sure the nibs are positioned properly to align with the hood!  Here is what the one I chose looks like:

 

And here is how it writes:

 

Here is a closeup of the line variation at the different writing angles:

 

 

So, in summary:

 

1. With bent nib replacement, writing is smoother and line variation is cooler.

2. Different people, with different pen-holding angles, will get very different results from the bent nib, but all of them write well.

3. The bent nib, like the stock nib, is a nail.

4. I will report back when I've tried a different, shadier ink.

 

 

[OCArt]

I also like Bobby's bent nibs, especially the one you chose. I pull the old nib out from the front of the assembled pen with pliers and then just push, by hand, the new nib in from the front. Not too hard to align the nib to the hood before pushing it in more than a couple of mm.

9 hours ago, Ergative said:

[snipped].... It is very tricky to make sure the nibs are positioned properly to align with the hood!  ....[snipped]

 

[IThinkIHaveAProblem]

9 hours ago, Ergative said:

 It is very tricky to make sure the nibs are positioned properly to align with the hood! 

 

 

 

13 minutes ago, OCArt said:

I also like Bobby's bent nibs, especially the one you chose. I pull the old nib out from the front of the assembled pen with pliers and then just push, by hand, the new nib in from the front. Not too hard to align the nib to the hood before pushing it in more than a couple of mm.

 

 

http://www.richardspens.com/ref/pendoctor/18.htm

Those are the most concise and clear directions on how to align a nib and hood on a "51" type pen.