Budget 2000. The Jinhao 80 Lamy 2000 Clone

[socialmoth]

17 hours ago, USG said:

Which do you think looks better?  Aion nib or standard Lamy nib.

 

 

Not gonna lie, the Aion nib's a perfect fit.

I wonder if Lamy sells them separately...

[Lithium466]

1 hour ago, socialmoth said:

 

Not gonna lie, the Aion nib's a perfect fit.

I wonder if Lamy sells them separately...

They do yes, model Z53.

[Sailor Kenshin]

I'm trying to buy the avocado but running into trouble….what has FPN done to me?  😛

[USG]

11 hours ago, Sailor Kenshin said:

I wish I had a clue.  
 

The converter draws and releases both ink and water while in the pen.  But a filled converter?  Stingy, uneven line.  Same ink, too.

 

It writes so beautifully with the cartridge that they are now mated for life.

 

(This is making me want a green one, too).
 

 

You know, the description seems to suggest a surface tension problem, that the ink is getting caught in the converter and not making it all the way to the feed...  I'd be curious to see what would happen if you toothpicked an ultra- tiny bit of dish liquid into the converter while it has some  ink in it.

[Dip n Scratch]

I assume that is why some converters have a tiny coil spring inside. To break the surface tension.

[Sailor Kenshin]

My Avocado J-80 arrived.  Drew and released water, AND a quantity of blue ink, whereas the brown one did not.  I'm guessing the green got factory-tested and the brown didn't.

 

The green one's now writing just fine with a converter full of Monteverde Olivine ink.

 

As long as the brown one writes with the Parker cartridge, I'm not complaining.  Minor squabble is that both sections are a teeny bit slippery but in a ten dollar pen with a fine, fine line?  Iz okayz.

[Lithium466]

I received the 3 Jinhao 80 I ordered, and so far I'm pleased with them. Started quickly and wrote as well as I was expecting sub $5 pens to write out of the box.

 

They are very light pens, but pleasant in (my) hands as I regularly suffer from wrist pain. They take Lamy nibs like champs, but as the golden nibs I received (one EF and one F) are really nice and smooth, I'm not inclined to switch these yet.
The silver F nib is just passable, guess I didn't win the nib lottery on this one, but writes ok without skipping. I switched it with an unused Lamy Z55 I had (since receiving a Z58) and that makes for a pleasant mix, if not ridiculous when you think of the price of the two items.

 

On the other hand, I was very pleasantly impressed by the blue cartridges I got with the pens, I'm not sure if they are Jinhao branded (ordered from the Jinhao "official store" on Aliexpress), and from very quick browsing look like they have a removable plug for easy cleaning/refilling so I bought 5... wow, what flow in the J 80! Boring/standard Royal blue, but nice and pleasant ink (in MY J80) so far.

 

That said, if the included converters could stop rattling, that would be good! I'll have to get some quieter converters.

 

[Drone]

On 8/9/2022 at 10:14 AM, Karmachanic said:

What's our favorite nib removal technique?

 

* Nib Swap Tips - Jinhao 80

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpIQEEUNLG4

[Drone]

On 9/27/2022 at 1:22 PM, apastuszak said:

More color varieties available on Amazon now:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Brushed-Fountain-Converter-Iridium-Writing/dp/B0BCXWKCKB

 

They now have:

1. Black and Silver

2. Black and Black

3. Black and Gold

4. Green and Gold

5. Blue and Gold

6. Brown and Gold

7. Ivory and Gold

8. Wine and Gold

 

Pens are $10.99 each with free Prime Shipping.

 

A little more pricey than eBay. But you also get it in 2 days instead of 3-4 weeks.

 

Update 24-Nov-2022:

 

I just purchased the black-gold F-nib version. It's still $10.99 with "free" Prime shipping. Arrives in SE Florida in two days (if I'm lucky).

 

Non-affiliate link:

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BCXCQ18J

 

Some changes:

 

The Black & Silver plus Black & Black now only come as a two piece set for $14.99, all single pens are still $10.99. New colors: Gray & Silver. Vivid Green & Gold. Vivid Red & Gold. Now eleven color variations total.

[lascosas]

Amazon has the set of two J 80s (black with black & chrome clips) on sale for $11.99 as part of their Black Friday sale:

https://www.amazon.com/Brushed-Fountain-Converter-Iridium-Writing/dp/B0B4B3TJJC/ref=sr_1_37?crid=2Y7UOW1JO8DZC&keywords=fountain%2Bpen&psr=EY17&qid=1669388013&s=black-friday&sprefix=fountain%2Bpen%2Cblack-friday%2C346&sr=1-37&th=1

[apastuszak]

I now own 4 of these pens and have the same issue with all of them. If you don't use them, the feed dries out.

 

It's not uncommon for me to have an inked pen lying around for a week without using it.  All 4 of my Jinhao 80s are too dried out to write after a week.

 

I just primed the feed on one and saw a ball of ink come out of the filler hole, but the pen still won't write.

[A Smug Dill]

2 hours ago, apastuszak said:

I now own 4 of these pens and have the same issue with all of them. If you don't use them, the feed dries out.

 

It's not uncommon for me to have an inked pen lying around for a week without using it.  All 4 of my Jinhao 80s are too dried out to write after a week.

 

I was just packing my (still growing) collection of Jinhao 80 pens, for the first time all together into a folder of cheap Chinese pens, a few hours ago. That's when I remembered that two of them are inked from before; one, filled with Noodler's Ink Heart of Darkness, was most likely last used on 14/11/2022, and the other, filled with Jacques Herbin Noir Abyssal, was probably last checked on Saturday morning just past, when I quickly grabbed it and tossed into my knapsack as a backup pen on my way out to a book fair.

 

Neither of them hard-started, or skipped while writing, when I tested them this morning.

 

Of more concern to me is that one of the (newly arrived) dark red ones has fallen apart. Specifically, when I went to unscrew the section (having already filled the pen, but I wanted to prime the feed), the glue between the barrel's inner wall and the metal connector broke, and so the metal connector stayed attached to the capped grip section while the barrel came off. (Yes, it's easy enough to glue it back together, and I'm not going to bother raising a dispute on AliExpress to get any refund or compensation.)

 

[Mech-for-i]

Well got to show QA , consistency of workmanship still very much something that need to be improved upon , yesterday I pick up my 80 that I've left just ( nib up ) in the cup on my desk for 2 weeks , I totally forget it that I've already inked that one ..

 

It then proceed to just write , no skip and no hard start , and write still the same as it was 

 

It just happen , sometimes we just got a lemon 🍋 , usually salvageable by some tweaking but still annoying none the same

[Lithium466]

I just tried 2 different 80s that I hadn't used since Tuesday (Nov 29th) and they both worked immediately without some noticeable ink darkening. Admittedly that's only 3 days.

 

On that topic, the cap of the 80 doesn't seem prone to corrosion inside, as the exposed parts seemed to be fully plastic, unlike say the Jinhao 35 or 51, or one of these that have a metal screw holding the inner cap. I spent some time "rustproofing" the internal of some of my 35 and 51 that had started rusting away (very quickly I have to say).

[A Smug Dill]

I just tested a third ‘pair’ of Jinhao gold-plated steel ‘aeroplane’ (or Lamy Z50-style) EF and 03 nibs. Once again, the tipping on the 03 (nominally 0.3mm) nib is physically ground finer, but the nib is tuned to write wetter than the EF (nominally 0.38mm) nib out-of-the-box, and so the 03 nib puts down at least as broad, if not broader, a line on the page as the EF nib.

 

I have one 03 nib that I've tuned (but without any regrinding) myself, and that one now writes a finer line.

[USG]

10 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

.....the glue between the barrel's inner wall and the metal connector broke, and so the metal connector stayed attached to the capped grip section while the barrel came off.

 

I know we've discussed this before but why do you think the silver or gold connectors on the 80s are metal?

If they were metal, wouldn't those sections weigh more than the all plastic black sections?   <-- just asking because the ones I have feel like they weigh the same.

 

As far as hard starting from disuse, the Jinhao 80s don't seem to be any different than, for instance, my Omas Paragon, Waterman Patricians or Lamy Aion.  The Pens that I've found most reliable after non-use are the Pelikans and Auroras and curiously a Lamy CP1 which I hadn't used in a few months, (due to the influx of "Tribbles"), but I just took it out of it's pen case and it wrote write away, so there's that.  I also recall that my Pearl and Black Duofold (2nd edition) had that problem so I put a tiny piece of tape over the hole in the cap and that seemed to delay the process.

[A Smug Dill]

9 minutes ago, USG said:

If they were metal, wouldn't those sections weigh more than the all plastic black sections?   <-- just asking because the ones I have feel like they weigh the same.

 

Yes, we discussed this before… and I still think that the connector on the black-trim-on-black-body Jinhao 80 is made of metal.

 

[Mech-for-i]

9 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Yes, we discussed this before… and I still think that the connector on the black-trim-on-black-body Jinhao 80 is made of metal.

 

 

Actually whatever version of the 80 I think they all had metal construction on that part

[USG]

43 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Yes, we discussed this before… and I still think that the connector on the black-trim-on-black-body Jinhao 80 is made of metal.

 

 

31 minutes ago, Mech-for-i said:

 

Actually whatever version of the 80 I think they all had metal construction on that part

 

OK, I just tried Dill's experiment.  I made a very small cut into the top of the black section threaded area.  I took a look at it with my 30X loupe and it looks like there's a silver colored material under the black coating.  Haha, it looks like you guys are right.  It might be some kind of metal after all.

 

[A Smug Dill]

8 minutes ago, USG said:

I made a very small cut into the top of the black section threaded area.  I took a look at it with my 30X loupe

 

Bravo! Thanks for doing that, and sharing your observations.