Mont Blanc Noblesse Oblige Ballpoint (?) Problem

[Aysedasi]

I wonder if someone can help me with this?  Because old friends and colleagues know I love pens and occasionally tinker with them, I was asked if I could take a look at this.  The owner dropped the pen years ago and broke off the nib end.  She glued it back on as well as she could.  But couldn't get a refill to fit it.  She thought she had just glued up the nib opening but I quickly realised that something was lodged inside.  It was pretty easy to get out and it turned out to be just the nib part of a refill.  So I bought her a couple of refills, but they just don't seem to fit properly.  I can feel the refill 'bouncing' on the spring down inside the barrel but when it stops (meeting full resistance) the point does not protrude out of the opening.  There doesn't appear to be anything else lodged in the barrel.  I can screw the cap on with the refill inserted but the screw mechanism does nothing.  Have I bought the wrong refill?  Is this in fact a rollerball?  I can find nothing on a trawl of the internet to specifically indicate which refill I need, so I assumed that the standard MB ball pen refill would be correct.  

 

I am quite comfortable with the knowledge that it will be pointed out that I am completely stupid and have bought the wrong refill, so please don't worry about offending me with answers to what is probably a very dumb question!

 

Thanks

 

 

[Aysedasi]

No-one?  

[dennis_f]

This is a long shot answer... really just conjecture on my part, but here you go:

Is it possible that the spring inside the pen is not a Montblanc spring, and thus, either too wide or too narrow to allow the MB refill to slide through it and through the opening?

 

I ask / suggest this because I have, at times, swapped different manufacturer's springs between different pens, and have found that sometimes the result is that when an off-brand spring is being used, the on-brand refill will not emerge from the pen's opening.

 

If you have a Montblanc ballpoint handy, you might try taking the spring from that pen and inserting it in the Oblige, and then seeing if the refill operates properly.

 

This is just wild speculation on my part, but it may be worth a try.

D.

 

 

[Aysedasi]

Thanks Dennis.  The issue is getting the spring out.  It has resisted all of my efforts so far.  I don't own an MB ballpoint, unfortunately and the refills from the few ballpoints that I do have are very different.  

[dennis_f]

 

The fact that the current spring is jammed in the pen makes me think that it is the wrong spring, and thus the cause of the problem.  I say this because, when I swap springs as I described in my previous post, getting the incorrect spring out of the pen can be a problem*.

 

I'm not sure how far you want to go with this, but if you're willing to give it another go (if you haven't done so already), I find that the best way to remove a jammed spring is to take the correct ballpoint refill, and insert it into the pen opening from the outside of the pen (ie: don't put the refill into the body in the correct "loading the pen fashion", but insert the narrow (business end) of the refill into the opening of the pen), and jiggle it around a bit so that it might make contact with the spring and push it loose. 

 

I hope it gets sorted out; it would be a shame to lose the pen over something like this.

 

 

* to clarify: I've only done this a couple of times, and usually out of laziness when I've swapped a refill between two pens of different brands to see if refills are compatible across pens.  In fact, not too long ago I put a Montblanc refill into a Visconti (which accepts parker style refills) using the Montblanc spring instead of the Visconti, and I had this very problem. 

 

 

[Rowbo]

I'm not an expert on this by any means, but it might be worth reading this:

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/315232-ballpoint-refill-differences/

 

HTH

[austollie]

Do you have the old refill to compare?  MB changed the length of its refills some decades ago.  If it is the case that the Noblesse takes the older style refill, then you can buy or make an adapter.  See below for linkage to an article on this, that I posted some time ago.

 

 

[Aysedasi]

On 9/27/2022 at 9:22 PM, austollie said:

Do you have the old refill to compare?  MB changed the length of its refills some decades ago.  If it is the case that the Noblesse takes the older style refill, then you can buy or make an adapter.  See below for linkage to an article on this, that I posted some time ago.

 

 

 

Thanks for the suggestions guys.  I do wonder if the refill length is the issue.  It goes in fine and seems to sit right as far as the spring is concerned, but the nib point is a few millimeters inside the opening.  Looking at the mechanism inside the cap, the refill looks to fall short of where it needs to be to be able to activate.  However if the refill was longer, I still don't see how it would push through nib opening.  So it may be the spring..... 

[Rowbo]

Will the thin end of the refill actually go into the ferrule on the end of the barrel from the outside?

[Aysedasi]

On 9/29/2022 at 7:26 PM, Rowbo said:

Will the thin end of the refill actually go into the ferrule on the end of the barrel from the outside?

 

Yes, the thin part at the end goes in fully.  

[Aysedasi]

I'm actually passing the pen back to the owner today.  It's annoying that I couldn't sort it out, but that's life.  She clearly hadn't used it for years, so I doubt that she'll be hugely disappointed.