Reliability of modern fountain pens

[bitflogger]

No rubber to dry out or materials that don't deteriorate with time are obvious advantages. Beyond that I just see it as some pens are better than others. My experience comes from boomer age long into pens, and owning some from 1920s through modern.

For my own most reliable I think of my 1950s or 60s through more recent Parker and German pens.

 

Recently beloved Lamy 2000 got what seems to be a permanent leak where plastic and metal come together on bottom side and that's a real bummer for me.

[Bo Bo Olson]

29 minutes ago, bitflogger said:

Recently beloved Lamy 2000 got what seems to be a permanent leak where plastic and metal come together on bottom side and that's a real bummer for me.

Send it to Lamy near Heidelberg, it will be repaired ...for free. It may take them a bit of time to get around to it, but only Cross and Lamy has free repair of their pens, no matter when made and you don't have to have any paper work.

There may be a Lamy in the states.....that might be different.

 

[bitflogger]

3 hours ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

Send it to Lamy near Heidelberg, it will be repaired ...for free. It may take them a bit of time to get around to it, but only Cross and Lamy has free repair of their pens, no matter when made and you don't have to have any paper work.

There may be a Lamy in the states.....that might be different.

 

Thank you.

I thought that sort of service died with Parker leaving Janesville. Sadly, my wife's aunts and mom who lived near German pen places have all passed away. We're in US but my wife remembers a bus stop near Pelikan.

The idea of repairing what's probably a 40-50 year old pen is appealing.

Thanks again.

[Bo Bo Olson]

I was an Army Brat in Germany in '66 when the 2000 came out....and by then a ball point barbarian...for some two years....who could afford cartridges when there was beer to be drunk.

 

I just did not understand the rough outside of the Lamy 2000, and it was rather plain, compared to the King of Pens, the Snorkel.

 

How was I to know there was a MB that was similar in shape and similarly rough. Back when MB had the 146-9 expensive, the 2xx cheaper or the 'cheap' 3xx............which I had no idea at all of either the 2xx or 3xx. And I though it weird that ugly cigar shaped gold plated trim pen, cost more than a rolled gold trim Snorkel.

 

We Americans, didn't buy much local jokal stuff. ***

And living in the Little American Ghetto didn't help.

 

In a 500 student '7th-12th grade school, one girl in 8th grade had a Pelikan, and one Col's son had a 146..........very few of us actually had Adult pens like a Snorkel or a the Prince of pens the P-51.

 

BMW was the 1600, later 2000. A small tiny motored car that did something strange....cornered. That car didn't know what a stoplight was....the rubber band got tired at stoplights

....One forgets how big and powerful a Rambler with a slant six really was.

Benz was something a wise enlisted man bought, used.....and in diesel so he could push the used 200,000 mile car out to 500,000.

One must realize Ramblers were bigger and more powerful than Mercedes.  The slant six had torque, and six main bearings, even gave good mileage. Gramps had just bought a new one, so that's why I keep bringing it up.

(Most Benz's were 4 cylinder as far as I can recall....in we Americans had cheap gas coupons.....and  The Germans had to pay twice to three times as much in their gas was super expensive as all hell and very heavily taxed, so small motors were mandatory to most. The Americans were on the whole still driving  basic 8 cylinder land cruisers.

 

Only when the dollar fell did BMW, Mercedes, MB or Pelikan become something.........in they cost more than US products, so became status items. 

 

 

***I will admit to being a typical arrogant American then. If that Piston stuff was any good, we'd make it in the States.

I just didn't know cartridges was keeping the American fountain pen industry alive.......and rubber sac pens were discouraged because  they cost big winning cartridge money.

And as stated back in the day.....none of us thought much about German products, outside the beer and the girls.

 

Beer we could get if we saved our dimes(silver) (one dime was a small 1/4 of a liter glass).... legal at 16.....but the German girls were being chased by 'rich' draft era GI's making a whole $90.00 a month. 360 DM..... near as much as many German regular workers made.

 

 

 

 

 

[inkstainedruth]

13 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

I do that too, especially if there are ones that are still ‘sealed’. The reasoning is: any item that is unsealed and left on the rack has a higher probability of having been inspected by some other customer and found to be unsatisfactory. 

Yes, but in the case of clothing it COULD be the case of the item tried on turns out to be the wrong size or something, or the customer is trying one for size but doesn't like how he/she looks in that particular color.  

Of course that's assuming that changing rooms to try stuff on are actually open at the moment....  In the past year or so, I've only bought a cardigan sweater (which I could try on right by the rack and then look at myself in a mirror) and a four-pack of warm socks (because at least socks are made to stretch to fit a range of sizes).  Ironically, the possibility of poor health procedures and lack of worry about passing diseases along from items returned -- instead of being able to try things on in the store -- is a concept which seems to escape the stores....

When I've bought pens in actual stores (which isn't very often), I'm often trying out tester pens to see which nib works better for me.  

And around here?  There aren't really many places to even buy pens in person (the place where I bought my first Parker Vector, a place that actually had a pen counter, moved to new digs a few years ago and then there was a bad electrical fire in the basement of the building.  At the moment, the store is closed because the building is still sort of condemned and nobody is allowed into ANY of the businesses (for those familiar with downtown Pittsburgh, I'm talking about Weldins, which used to have their own building on Wood Street, but then sold it and moved into a much smaller space on the ground floor of the Gulf Tower -- and where parking was MUCH worse even before the fire in the building...; even before that, I only went in there when I had to be on the T (say, coming back from my allergist's office) and then instead of getting off at Wood Street to catch the bus home, I'd stay on and then walk over from the Steel Plaza Station.  

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[mke]

16 hours ago, DvdRiet said:

Anyone who is annoyed by scratchy nibs needs to get a loupe. A simple misalignment is so easily caught and so easily fixed!!

It would be nice if you and/or others could show photos of misalignment of tines for the users who don't know. "A picture is worth a thousand words".

[A Smug Dill]

3 minutes ago, mke said:

"A picture is worth a thousand words".

 

A thousand words still won't magically fix tine misalignment for someone who hasn't the experience, skill, or desire to resolve the problem by their own hand. A photo of a dislocated shoulder won't put the joint back into the socket for the person suffering it.

[mke]

22 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

won't magically fix

That is clear but, at least, users would be educated what misalignment is and what it is not.

A kind of "informed patient" - to use your health example.

[A Smug Dill]

3 minutes ago, mke said:

That is clear but, at least, users would be educated what misalignment is and what it is not.

 

I'm not sure how a photo of a nib with misaligned tines would show what misalignment is not.

 

All the same, since you asked, here's one I posted months ago:

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/gallery/image/6296-close-up-of-flawed-nib-on-my-leonardo-musis-oplontis/

 

[DvdRiet]

I'm talking about minor misalignments here, obviously. To continue with the health analogy, you also wouldn't go to the doctor for a paper cut or if you fell and scraped your knee, when a plaster/bandaid and maybe some disinfectant spray will fix it. From my experience (admittedly limited, as I am not a professional repairer, simply someone who has been getting old pens writing smoothly again for about a year now), a pen that writes okay but feels a bit scratchy is caused 9 times out of 10 by a slight misalignment of the tines. The kind of misalignment that can be fixed by gently putting some mild pressure a few times on whichever tine is not completely level to nudge it back into place. (Key words: gently, mild and nudge!) A loupe will show you exactly which tine is too far up or down so that you can concentrate your nudging efforts on that one tine. You can tilt the nib so that only the misaligned tine is touching the paper and gently push against it 3 or 4 times, then check it with the loupe again, and repeat until the tips of the tines are perfectly even.

 

My phone is too ancient to do anything within a lightyear of macro, but I'll have a dig through my photos to see if I have anything useful. In the meantime, the resource blogs on the Jetpens website were extremely helpful for me when I was first learning about fountain pens last year. This article in particular about troubleshooting nibs was great for me as a beginner: Guide to Fountain Pen Nibs: Troubleshooting Tips and Tricks | JetPens. It also helps to examine the nibs of your smoothest writers to get a good feel for what it should look like (and then be shocked by the magnification of the misalignment of even a slightly scratchy one! whoa! 😉).

 

One tip when using a loupe: you will need to inspect the nib from a bit of an angle, not looking straight at the front or the top/bottom, to get the clearest view of the alignment. It does take a little getting used to, but it's best to look at it from a lot of different angles if you're unsure.

 

Also, the photo Dill shared is of a nib that has uneven tipping material. That is indeed a quality control issue and should never have been sent out that way, but it is something that is much easier to identify as a more serious issue if you can inspect it with a loupe.

[A Smug Dill]

1 hour ago, DvdRiet said:

 

Also, the photo Dill shared is of a nib that has uneven tipping material.

 

As well as slight tine misalignment.

 

How good would that photo be sans commentary? And is it really going to convince prospective customers that inspection of a nib with a loupe (brought by themselves to tbe shop, if necessary) is the way to go for detecting problems in stocked pens, so they know which ones to reject, but dip testing is neither necessary nor effective in identifying such flaws in a nib?

[DvdRiet]

10 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

And is it really going to convince prospective customers that inspection of a nib with a loupe (brought by themselves to tbe shop, if necessary) is the way to go for detecting problems in stocked pens, so they know which ones to reject, but dip testing is neither necessary nor effective in identifying such flaws in a nib?

 

I can't say I disagree with you there. Given the current circumstances, all of my own pen purchases have been online and I suppose it is a matter of how much effort one wants to go to in returning a pen that just randomly happens to have a slight misalignment. As I mentioned in an earlier post, none of the new pens that I ordered had misalignment issues except in two very minor instances. One was a TWSBI stub that I had already waited 5 months for because of factory issues sourcing the materials for the rose gold. It took me all of 2 minutes to realign the tines. The other was with some Monteverde Monzas that I ordered that were of such awful quality all the way around that I ended up throwing them out - a complete waste of money! I left a review on the retailer's website saying what incredibly awful pens they were. However, the misalignments there were also nearly negligible. My complaint was with the overall useless quality of the pens in general.

 

So, to be clear, I have had almost no issues with misalignments, or anything else for that matter, on new pens. I have not bought thousands of new pens, so as far as research or proof, my experience is purely anecdotal, of course. But I suspect that the number of issues can be expected to be higher with certain brands, so knowing which brands those are would seem to me to be more useful.

 

However, as a USER of fountain pens, my own pens can also become somewhat misaligned over time, especially when the nibs are softer, so a loupe is quite useful for that as well. And personally, I don't see why one couldn't just carry a loupe into a shop to inspect a nib before buying a pen, if the alignment and any eventual discrepancies in the tipping materials etc. is of that much importance to you and you are that concerned about getting a bad pen. A small folding jeweler's loupe like the one I have fits easily in a pocket to take along with you.

 

While I would certainly agree that consumers should not be accepting of manufacturers that regularly send out nibs that have not been properly quality controlled - and maybe we should be naming and shaming them - I still stand by my statement that anyone who is annoyed with scratchy nibs should get themselves a loupe. 

 

 

 

 

[DvdRiet]

And to the point about whether or not a photo without commentary would be helpful (I apparently need to work on my reading comprehension, sorry...), yes, a random photo with only a slight misalignment is not going to be helpful to the 'untrained' eye, especially if it is difficult to show exactly what the problem is. 

 

The photos in the Jet Pens link I shared are a very good example, in my opinion, of what a normal misalignment looks like. But even that is slightly exaggerated to make the misalignment clearly visible. I did, however, find it very helpful in understanding what to look for when a pen is scratchy. And there are plenty more out there on blogs, etc., that are very helpful.

 

As with anything really, it does take a bit more research and experience to see the more complicated issues. And in that respect, perhaps it would actually be helpful to share more images of the types of things that can be wrong with a nib...

[Bo Bo Olson]

I don't have any photos, but 9 or 10 times, pressing with the thumb nail from the breathing hole to the tipping, press the up tine down fully under the down tine, 2-3 times....usually gets the tines aligned.

 

Very occasionally, one might have to lift the down tine above the up tine, while lifting from underneath.

 

There is more than likely something on this tine adjustment with pictures in Richard Binder's 'all you don't know about fountain pens' site.

 

I think a 15 X loup is too strong, a 12 X might be best, but a 10 X works very well.

 

Use 10X loupe or 40 X Chinese one that is actually only 10 X....but of much lesser quality, which is why it is give or take $4.00 instead of $35 for a good sharper coated glass Belomo. A good tripplet is an once in a life time buy.

 

I suspect a plastic? Chinese glass will be bought many times. One is ok for emergency use, until one has saved up the $35 for a Belemo.

 

There is a noticeable difference between good coated glass and the Chinese ones.

 

I think both of our Chinese  40X (10X actually) ones were given to us.....I know the second one was. My wife calls for my 10X glass loup on a stick, instead of going to where we have both those Chinese lighted loups some couple steps away................all the time.

Then again she may be lonely.....it moves like a husband, it grumbles like a husband...yep, is my husband.

 

[mtcn77]

6 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

A thousand words still won't magically fix tine misalignment for someone who hasn't the experience, skill, or desire to resolve the problem by their own hand. A photo of a dislocated shoulder won't put the joint back into the socket for the person suffering it.

It might. You never know... Current therapies involve passive stretching of the dislocated joint. We don't want to induce more damage so that it won't remit otherwise dislocation might become habitual.

[DvdRiet]

2 hours ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

I think a 15 X loup is too strong, a 12 X might be best, but a 10 X works very well.

 

I use this 12x pocket loupe - a German one, coincidentally - and it is ideal. Small enough to carry with me, but I usually have it sitting in my desk tray.