OOPSY...

[ethernautrix]

As mentioned in another thread -- 

 -- the parcel my brother'd sent me from the States arrived after a little more than a month in transit yesterday. At around 11:20.

 

I put away the notebooks and checked out the two gel pens and gel-pen refills and finally came to the Kaweco M nib. I pulled out my Kaweco Special, took out its EF nib, and installed the M nib. Inked up the pen. Noodler's Black, duh.

 

Wow. What a wet nib! Much more like a B line, or maybe M lines have always been so fat. 

 

Set the pen aside, cos I had changed the ink in a Pilot 823 (PO), from Pilot Blue-Black to KWZi Niebieski galusowy #3, tra la la... la la la... picked up the Kaweco Special, and...

 

fumble-fingers dropped it straight down onto the floor. It was 14:42.

 

I couldn't help but laugh. Here, it'd taken this nib over a month to reach me (and I could have ordered one more cheaply from one of my favorite "local" (in Kraków) pen shops) and not even two-and-a-half hours later, I'd turned it into...hey, that looks like a PO nib!

 

 

Hahahahaha.

 

I wasn't crazy about the M nib and had been thinking of modifying it (by a professional), and I feel sooooo lucky that it was the Kaweco that I'd fumbled and not the Pilot 823. Or the Nakaya Piccolo (also on the table at the time).

 

I took the nib out of the Special and bent it back about halfway before sticking it into an AL Sport, for further testing. It still looks like a PO nib and writes with a tiny bit of scratching, nothing a little more tweaking couldn't fix. Probably.

 

So... what have y'all dropped lately?

 

 

[A Smug Dill]

1 hour ago, ethernautrix said:

hey, that looks like a PO nib!

 

More like a Naginata Concord nib, I'd say.

 

[SilverStoneMetallic]

I have yet to drop a pen in a way that would bend a nib. I'm 9 years over due for a catastrophic pen related event...

My time will come one day!

[MuddyWaters]

My partner has a lamy al-star with an EF Wing Sung nib in it that was bent in a similar way during an accident. The nib with a bit of tweaking is really nice to write with. I preferred it over Pilot's PO, since it was less fine and was a bit smoother.

[inkstainedruth]

Not recently, but a several months ago I was flushing out the grey Decimo, and accidentally knocked the nib assembly out of the votive glass I was draining it in onto paper towels).  And of course, it landed ON THE FLOOR.  I think I stopped breathing for a couple of seconds....   And that lovely rhodium plated 18K  F nib now looks a LOT like that Naginata Concord nib A Smug Dill posted the picture of.... 

And of course no pen shows running at the time....  So no nibmeister tables to got to and say "Help me, Obi-wan -- you're my only hope!" to....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[A Smug Dill]

2 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

And that lovely rhodium plated 18K  F nib now looks a LOT like that Naginata Concord nib A Smug Dill posted the picture of.... 

 

But does it write like one?  A new pen with a Naginata Concord nib commands a very high price these days, after Sailor resumed production of a limited selection of Naginata specialty nibs (more than halving the original range) and doubled the prices of such a couple of years ago.

 

2 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

And of course no pen shows running at the time....  So no nibmeister tables to got to and say "Help me, Obi-wan -- you're my only hope!" to....

 

Luckily for you, Pilot Capless (including the Décimo line) is the rare exception for which you could purchase standalone/replacement nib units without the whole damn pen… and only in the West. I got several of them from Pen Chalet some years ago; keep an eye out for site-wide discount campaigns, and hit it then!

[ethernautrix]

18 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

More like a Naginata Concord nib, I'd say.

If only it wrote like Naginata Concord nib!

Or even, as further testing last night revealed, like a PO nib. I'll have to fiddle with it some more to fix the ink flow problem.

When it writes, it's kindv amazing (considering), even if it writes only from the conventional nib orientation. But then it dries up, and no amount of coaxing releases more ink.

In the end, it's a fairly cheap accident, and I already knew that the M was too broad and wet for my purposes -- which was to have a slightly broader line with a hint of line variation (just a hint, just even imagined).

Why Kaweco? Why not Pilot, my favorite nib brand? Cos cost. Cos a couple of Kawecos, benchwarmers, just sitting around, uninked. (AL Sport, stonewashed blue denim, now back in the game with an F nib. Which writes a slightly broader line with maybe a suggestion of line variation. Yeah. Already had what I wanted. Ain't that typical? HA!) (But discovering again that, while I love the look of this AL Sport, it's a little uncomfortable to use.)

Also, mere curiosity.

[ethernautrix]

14 hours ago, SilverStoneMetallic said:

I have yet to drop a pen in a way that would bend a nib. I'm 9 years over due for a catastrophic pen related event...

My time will come one day!

 

Or not!

This isn't my first oopsy. Years ago, I dropped a fairly new Delta (what was it, it had the secret compartment in the cap, was it called Delta Secret?) on its nib. In public! That super F steel nib ruined! I was able to fix the nib, but it didn't write quite the same, so the memory of how it wrote ruined the pen for me.


("In public" meant that I had to react in a manner I wouldn't have if I'd been at home. You know... calm, cool, not a spectacle.)

(When I dropped the Kaweco, I also was fairly calm. I swooped the pen off the floor, saying, "Of course I did. Of course I dropped it... on the nib. Yep. Okay. Okay. Oh hey, it looks like a PO nib!" I guess I'm not a spectacle at home, either. Good to know. Haha.)

[ethernautrix]

14 hours ago, MuddyWaters said:

The nib with a bit of tweaking is really nice to write with. I preferred it over Pilot's PO, since it was less fine and was a bit smoother.

Oo, interesting that the WS nib is finer and smoother.

Just goes to show that dropping a pen on its nib isn't the end of the nib. Hooray!

[ethernautrix]

9 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

And that lovely rhodium plated 18K  F nib now looks a LOT like that Naginata Concord nib

Maybe you can get it to write like one!

As ASD mentioned, at least you could buy a replacement nib unit, if you were game for that option.

If Pilot sold loose PO nibs, I might have an embarrassing number of them.

[cactus235]

15 hours ago, SilverStoneMetallic said:

I have yet to drop a pen in a way that would bend a nib. I'm 9 years over due for a catastrophic pen related event...

My time will come one day!

Same here - I've dropped pens before (albeit increasingly rarely), but never on the nib.
 

I really hope my good luck continues.

[GardenWeasel]

M. Masuyama has repaired the same nib on my Sailor 1911L 3 times, from me having accidentally dropped it, and it always landing such to damage the nib. After the 3rd repair, I’ve taken it out of rotation permanently. I’d be too embarrassed to have a need to send it a 4th time. ☺️ Yet no other pen I own has suffered so much.

[inkstainedruth]

18 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

But does it write like one?  

Not as far as I know.  I was afraid to ink the pen up for fear of damaging the nib further. 

As for your comment about being able to get a replacement nib unit, I don't NEED an $80 US nib unit.  I just need the nib.  And Pilot won't sell me that.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[halffriedchicken]

Ouch! Your new pen and new nib that you were waiting for... is now a new project. The saga did not end with the package being delivered but now the time of transformation has begun to make it to write more like your Pilot PO nib.

[ethernautrix]

11 hours ago, halffriedchicken said:

Ouch! Your new pen and new nib that you were waiting for... is now a new project.

 

Only the nib was new. I'd had the Special since almost a year ago (last end of August) and the AL Sport since the last Pen Show Poland (so, April 2019). They're in fairly new condition, these pens, cos I haven't used them much.

 

Currently keeping the AL Sport inked with its F nib (good nib!), trying to figure out what it is about the pen that...confounds me. Maybe cos it's metal? So, the weight?

 

 

11 hours ago, halffriedchicken said:

The saga did not end

 

The saga never ends. I mean, ultimately it does, as far as we're able to know, but I'm agreeable to the saga's continuing. 

 

Meanwhile, I've cleaned the bent M nib, along with a couple of Pilot Parallels that I'd been intending to soak and flush for months now, and will deal with that M/PO later.

[ethernautrix]

19 hours ago, GardenWeasel said:

After the 3rd repair, I’ve taken it out of rotation permanently. I’d be too embarrassed to have a need to send it a 4th time. 

 

Had Mike started to give you the side eye?

 

It has felt, sometimes, as if the pen had flung itself from my hand, and I've just accepted, Okay, you wanted out; I will respect your decision!

 

The Nakaya Piccolo that fell out of the pen slip to the cobblestones of Kraków (pen slip is spot on, cos that is what the pen did, pen slipped out), flew out of the pen slip from my bike's rack bag (cos I'd neglected to zip it shut) on a turn in Zamość, and, finally, made a break for it, pen slip, clasp, and all, from the lanyard such a short time after I'd fitted it with a Platinum UEF nib and thought I'd finally had my The One (tentatively removing the Pilot 912 with my favorite nib from rotation, maybe for the first time ever), lost forever somewhere in Wrocław -- that pen, which I called Kurouac (cos kuro-tamenuri and often on the road), really didn't like me. Hahaha.

 

Or something.

 

 

But, yeah, first time, shame on you; second time, shame on me; third time, out of rotation!