Lamy Woes

[mtcn77]

There was a discussion about converters noting their different quality standards. The plastics might be less prone to surface tension, or there might be springs and beads for the same purpose. I still imagine popping a watch mainspring into the converter that coils up and down alongside the piston.

[TitoThePencilPimp]

On 11/11/2022 at 4:29 PM, Mercian said:

⬆️ What @inkstainedruth said!

 

I live in damp-&-humid, rainy old England, at an altitude of only 140m, and so have never had any dry-out problems with my 3 Safaris & 1 Vista.

 

Given that the Safari, Al-star etc have open slots that serve as ‘ink windows’, I suspect that they may be more susceptible to evaporative dry-out than other pens - if, that is, you live in a high/dry climate.

Although I will confess that I thought that OR had a cool maritime climate, so would not expect evaporative dry-out to be a problem there - unlike in, say, NM.

That said, if you often leave your inked pens untouched for, say, a couple of weeks, I would imagine that evaporative dry-out of the feed/nib might occur.

 

I will say that, even here, I do often experience the ‘surface tension’ issue when using my Z24/Z28 converters.

The internal diameter of the converter is narrow enough for the surface tension of the ink to be enough to overcome the gravitational force that is trying to attract it to the bottom of the converter, where the feed nipple is.

The result is that ink often ‘sticks’ at the top of the converter, meaning that it stops flowing in to the feed, & so the nib gets ‘starved’ of ink. My first Lamy was my Vista - & its barrel’s transparency enabled me to identify the problem, so I was ‘forewarned’ about it when buying my Safaris.

 

If your Lamys are not Vistas, you will need to unscrew their barrels to check if this - the surface-tension issue - is what is causing your ink-flow woes.
 

When it happens I find that I have to flick the end of the converter with my finger with a fair amount of force in order to get the ink to flow down to the feed-nipple.
I don’t use my wrist to flick the whole pen - doing that will cause ink to flick out of the nib, either on to my table/desk/writing, or in to the pen’s cap. Each of those outcomes is messy.

 

I have experienced the same problem with Parker’s ‘deluxe’ twist-converters (that it ships with its ‘high-end’ pens).
And I have heard of people suffering this problem with Waterman’s converters too.

It doesn’t happen with Parker’s cheap ‘slide’-converters though, because those contain a ball-bearing ‘agitator’ that can slide around inside the converter & break the surface tension, which makes the ink flow down towards the feed.

The best Parker converters were their 1990s slide-converters. The agitator in those was a piece of stainless-steel tube, which therefore never blocked the feed-nipple. The ball-bearing agitators are cheaper for Parker to make than the tubing agitators were, but they do sometimes block the feed-nipple.

Parker’s cartridges do not suffer from this effect, because they have internal longitudinal strakes that break the surface tension, and make ink flow.
Iirc, Lamy cartridges don’t have such strakes. And it is, of course, not possible to make converters that have those strakes.

What inks are you using?

[DaveQuail]

14 hours ago, dipper said:

I have been pondering two questions.....

 

1 ) What design feature, relevant to ink flow, is fundamentally different in Lamy pens? Some quirk that is not present in other pen designs?

 

2) What can we suggest as an investigation method to allow @OregonJim to focus in on where the problem is being caused? At present we know only that each Lamy pen as a complete system is failing to deliver.

 

... and I have ideas ....

 

1) There is perhaps something unusual in the region where the top face of a Safari feed meets the underside of the nib. I see two ink channels, and possibly a shallow enclosed space or void that may fill with a shallow puddle of ink running to the single central nib slit?

Image above was captured from this video by Goulet Pens..

 

 

Suggested action:

 

Fill one of the problem Lamys with ink.

Slide off the nib, as video above.

With the pen feed pointing downwards, touch a paper kitchen towel onto the exposed ink fissures.

Result should be a rapidly spreading patch of wet ink, gushing into the towel.

 

If that does not happen then the problem is happining somewhere up in the ink cartridge / converter / feed rear end. The nib and feed "front end" are probably perfectly OK.

 

If you do get a satisfying rich wet flow into the towel then the problem must be happening in the flow linkage between the feed fissures and the nib slit (the region where I think there may be an unusual design).

.... remove cartridge / converter

Flush the section & feed

Gently degrease the upper face of the feed and the underside of the nib - perhaps using a soft toothbrush and non-abrasive toothpaste!

Flush the feed/grip section again, and rinse the nib, to remove all detergent traces.

Towel-dry the feed and nib.

 

Reassemble.

 

See if the pen now "magically" works well...🤞.

 

I tend to agree with dipper's course of action. Let us know what happens...

[Mercian]

17 hours ago, TitoThePencilPimp said:

What inks are you using?

I have had the surface-tension issue (ink ‘sticking to the piston’) happen to me with several inks, from different manufacturers.
E.g. in the Lamy Z24 converter I have experienced it with Noodler’s Black, Parker Quink Blue, Waterman ‘Serenity Blue’ & ‘Havana Brown’ (their old name for ‘Absolute Brown’), and possibly with Pelikan 4001 Violet and other inks too.

 

In the Parker ‘deluxe’ twist converter I have experienced this issue with Noodler's Black, Parker Quink Blue, Waterman ‘Serenity Blue’, Diamine ‘Chocolate Brown’, and possibly with the two R&K iron-gall inks as well.

 

Perhaps it happens to me because I live in an area that has ‘hard’ tap water (although it isn’t that hard)?

De-ionised water is not as easy to find here in rural Inglistan as I believe it is in USAia. I can easily buy a scented one to use in steam-irons, but I don’t want that stuff in my pens! 😁

[TitoThePencilPimp]

Try Pilot Iro Line.

[Mercian]

11 minutes ago, TitoThePencilPimp said:

Try Pilot Iro Line.

👍 Thanks for the advice 😊

[Azulado]

13 hours ago, Mercian said:

Try Pilot Iro Line.

I have 3 Lamy fountain pens and 6 nibs, they work well with any ink.

This case is very strange. Some nib may come out half scratchy, with the flow a bit thin because the tines are tight, but they never skip or have hard starts.

The converters may cause problems in the flow variation, but the ink never stops flowing. A Lamy always writes.

I would recommend that you watch the tine spacing. But I find it strange that the 7 nibs come very tight. I'll send you a photo for reference.
That kind of problem is caused in many chaos by the baby bottom. But Lamy does not usually have that problem. It is true that my broad nib occasionally failed when it was new, but it was nothing to worry about and now it writes very well.

[Sailor Kenshin]

By now, I'm guessing we all want to know why all your Lamy pens have a problem.  And we're all itching to fix it.

[A Smug Dill]

3 minutes ago, Sailor Kenshin said:

And we're all itching to fix it.

 

I'm not. Specifically, if they are Z50 nibs, then I have no interest whatsoever.

[Penguincollector]

@OregonJim, are you going to the Pelikan hub in Portland on Friday? If so, bring a Lamy- maybe as a group we can figure it out. 

[mtcn77]

5 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

I'm not. Specifically, if they are Z50 nibs, then I have no interest whatsoever.

Agreed. Also their converter pistons. Just get something decent like GvFC. Granted it won't fix every issue - a watch mainspring that can recoil up and down in contact with the piston head would eliminate the issue, but so can turning the pen upside down to trigger the coiled spring inside the GvFC converter.

[OregonJim]

On 11/12/2022 at 5:02 PM, dipper said:

Suggested action:

 

Fill one of the problem Lamys with ink.

Slide off the nib, as video above.

With the pen feed pointing downwards, touch a paper kitchen towel onto the exposed ink fissures.

Result should be a rapidly spreading patch of wet ink, gushing into the towel.

 

If that does not happen then the problem is happining somewhere up in the ink cartridge / converter / feed rear end. The nib and feed "front end" are probably perfectly OK.

 

If you do get a satisfying rich wet flow into the towel then the problem must be happening in the flow linkage between the feed fissures and the nib slit (the region where I think there may be an unusual design).

.... remove cartridge / converter

Flush the section & feed

Gently degrease the upper face of the feed and the underside of the nib - perhaps using a soft toothbrush and non-abrasive toothpaste!

Flush the feed/grip section again, and rinse the nib, to remove all detergent traces.

Towel-dry the feed and nib.

 

Reassemble.

 

See if the pen now "magically" works well...🤞.

 

 

Thank you for the suggestion.  I tried this last night with two of the pens (both with medium nibs).  The paper towel exercise resulted in a generous blob of ink

 

I used mineral spirits as the degreasing agent for one of them.  On the other, I used toothpaste.  Both were scrubbed with a toothbrush, both the feed surfaces and the underside of the nib.

 

Then both pens were flushed 5 times with distilled water.  I put a Lamy blue cartridge in one, and the other a converter filled with Diamine Aurora Borealis.

 

I waited 5 minutes with the pens pointing nib down (capped).

 

Then I tried writing on a pad of Rhodia paper.  It took a good 30 seconds of scribbling and gentle shaking before either would start.  Both began skipping within the first sentence (4 or 5 words), and continued to skip every other word or so.  I'm not a fast writer, but I tried varying my writing speed from fast to snail-slow.  They still skipped.

 

I capped them and set them aside for two hours.  Upon trying again, both required much scribbling and shaking to get them started again.

 

From my observations, these pens are performing just the same as before.  I'm contemplating a cathartic exercise with a five pound sledgehammer - seriously.

 

 

 

[Sailor Kenshin]

38 minutes ago, OregonJim said:

 

Thank you for the suggestion.  I tried this last night with two of the pens (both with medium nibs).  The paper towel exercise resulted in a generous blob of ink

 

I used mineral spirits as the degreasing agent for one of them.  On the other, I used toothpaste.  Both were scrubbed with a toothbrush, both the feed surfaces and the underside of the nib.

 

Then both pens were flushed 5 times with distilled water.  I put a Lamy blue cartridge in one, and the other a converter filled with Diamine Aurora Borealis.

 

I waited 5 minutes with the pens pointing nib down (capped).

 

Then I tried writing on a pad of Rhodia paper.  It took a good 30 seconds of scribbling and gentle shaking before either would start.  Both began skipping within the first sentence (4 or 5 words), and continued to skip every other word or so.  I'm not a fast writer, but I tried varying my writing speed from fast to snail-slow.  They still skipped.

 

I capped them and set them aside for two hours.  Upon trying again, both required much scribbling and shaking to get them started again.

 

From my observations, these pens are performing just the same as before.  I'm contemplating a cathartic exercise with a five pound sledgehammer - seriously.

 

 

 

 

Noooooooo!   😱 PIF them instead.

[Azulado]

48 minutes ago, OregonJim said:

From my observations, these pens are performing just the same as before.  I'm contemplating a cathartic exercise with a five pound sledgehammer - seriously.

Let's act rationally. Your case is very strange, hard starting and jumping are rare in a Lamy, but that it happens in 7 reaches the category of mystery.
You talk about jumping and hard starts. From the shape of the tip, Lamy nibs are not given to hard starting. In any case, get a magnifying glass and see if the ink goes all the way into the slit.
If you don't lift the tip of the paper, does it write without interruption? On the reverse side does it write well?
Lamy customer service is top notch.I am on a German fountain pen forum and people talk wonders about it. I'm convinced they would be very interested to hear about your case. Get in touch with them. They will solve your problem, I have no doubt. Send an e-mail directly to Lamy Germany.

[Mercian]

1 hour ago, OregonJim said:

I waited 5 minutes with the pens pointing nib down (capped).

 

Then I tried writing on a pad of Rhodia paper.  It took a good 30 seconds of scribbling and gentle shaking before either would start.  Both began skipping within the first sentence (4 or 5 words), and continued to skip every other word or so.  I'm not a fast writer, but I tried varying my writing speed from fast to snail-slow.  They still skipped.

 

I capped them and set them aside for two hours.  Upon trying again, both required much scribbling and shaking to get them started again.

 

I have a weird/stupid question for you:

 

when you are writing, at what angle to the page are you holding your pens?
By which I mean the ‘pitch’ of the pen (if you imagine it to be an aeroplane), as opposed to the ‘yaw’ or ‘roll’ angles.

We all know that over-‘rolling’ the nib can stop it writing, and excessive ‘yaw’ could too - but if you were doing either of those things I would expect you to have problems with all of your pens, not only your Lamys.

 

I ask because I personally have a ‘classic tripod’ grip - e.g. I find the shaped grip section of the Lamy Safari to be really comfortable - and I hold my pens at about 30-45 degrees ‘pitch’ angle to the paper.
But I have a friend who holds her pens between the tips of her thumb & three of her fingers (i.e. four points of contact in all), and she holds her pens almost completely vertically to the page. Which means that she is attempting to write with the very ‘front end’ or ‘nose’ of the nib on the paper, as opposed to with its underside being in contact with the paper.

She found my Lamy 2000 to be profoundly uncomfortable, whereas for me it is a haptic delight.

[OregonJim]

1 hour ago, Mercian said:

I have a weird/stupid question for you:

 

when you are writing, at what angle to the page are you holding your pens?
By which I mean the ‘pitch’ of the pen (if you imagine it to be an aeroplane), as opposed to the ‘yaw’ or ‘roll’ angles.

We all know that over-‘rolling’ the nib can stop it writing, and excessive ‘yaw’ could too - but if you were doing either of those things I would expect you to have problems with all of your pens, not only your Lamys.

 

I ask because I personally have a ‘classic tripod’ grip - e.g. I find the shaped grip section of the Lamy Safari to be really comfortable - and I hold my pens at about 30-45 degrees ‘pitch’ angle to the paper.
But I have a friend who holds her pens between the tips of her thumb & three of her fingers (i.e. four points of contact in all), and she holds her pens almost completely vertically to the page. Which means that she is attempting to write with the very ‘front end’ or ‘nose’ of the nib on the paper, as opposed to with its underside being in contact with the paper.

She found my Lamy 2000 to be profoundly uncomfortable, whereas for me it is a haptic delight.

 

I, too, have the classic tripod grip, right-handed.  I was taught in the '60s.  My pen angle is slightly less than 45 degrees.  Perhaps closer to 35 (eyeball estimate).  I have experimented with a more vertical angle (I sometimes draw with Koh-I-Noor technical pens which require a near-perpendicular-to-the-paper angle).  As I've said, none of the variations in how I write seem to affect the pens poor performance in any significant way.  The skipping gets even worse if I write with the nib upside down.  I've noticed that the skipping *usually* happens when the nib changes direction, but not always.  For example, it will skip at the top of the loop of a lowercase ell, but occasionally in the middle of the upward or downward stroke as well.

 

I'm finding it challenging to get a decent close-up picture of the nib.  Attached is my best effort so far:

 

 

(yes, I know the nib is not pushed in flush with the body - I've been experimenting with that, too)

 

[OregonJim]

8 hours ago, Penguincollector said:

@OregonJim, are you going to the Pelikan hub in Portland on Friday? If so, bring a Lamy- maybe as a group we can figure it out. 

 

Unfortunately, no.  I try to stay well clear of Portland.  It's tempting, but 200 miles round trip is not practical with today's gas prices... 

 

3 hours ago, Azulado said:

If you don't lift the tip of the paper, does it write without interruption? On the reverse side does it write well?

 

No to both questions.  EF, F, M, and B nibs all skip in the middle of a stroke, without lifting the pen off the paper.  When I *do* lift the pen, it's 50/50 whether it will write again immediately.  The broad nibs seem to be a little better in this regard - they will usually continue writing once they start, albeit with the annoying skipping problem still.  

[OregonJim]

6 hours ago, Sailor Kenshin said:

 

Noooooooo!   😱 PIF them instead.

 

PIF?  As in Pyrotechnically Induce Flames?  Or Proudly Incinerate Fearlessly?  Or, simply, Put In Fire?

 

Anyway, I think I've made some progress.  Having nothing to lose, I decided to tinker rather aggressively with one of the nibs.  Not having any brass shims, I procured a piece of acetate (from a box of 35mm negatives) and used it to 'stroke' between the tines.  Going from the breather hole to the tip, I pulled it through three times.

 

Now, that particular nib, on the feed of an Al-Star, wrote a full page without any skipping.  Further, I then put it away for an hour and a half - and it started right up again.

 

It's too soon to say anything conclusively, but the results look promising.  Still, I am wondering about the other six pens (eight, if you count the two spare nibs).  How can they all be behaving badly, when they came from several different sources, spaced out over a couple of decades?  It's not like I bought them all at once from a bad manufacturing run.  That part of the story still stumps me.  If this pen and nib combo behaves predictably for the rest of the week, I'll apply the same process to the other eight nibs and see what happens.  The cynic in me predicts that I will have mixed results, but we'll see...

 

[A Smug Dill]

34 minutes ago, OregonJim said:

 

PIF?  As in Pyrotechnically Induce Flames?  Or Proudly Incinerate Fearlessly?  Or, simply, Put In Fire?

 

"Pay It Forward" (and, oh, how I hate that expression) and give it away, all the while pretending that you're seeding a good deed that keeps on giving like a chain reaction, and that someday you'll end up benefitting from someone else's giveaway when karma comes full circle, thus you eventually get what you "paid" for upfront.

[jchch1950]

2 hours ago, OregonJim said:

 

 

Now, that particular nib, on the feed of an Al-Star, wrote a full page without any skipping.  Further, I then put it away for an hour and a half - and it started right up again.

 

It's too soon to say anything conclusively, but the results look promising.  Still, I am wondering about the other six pens (eight, if you count the two spare nibs).  How can they all be behaving badly, when they came from several different sources, spaced out over a couple of decades?  It's not like I bought them all at once from a bad manufacturing run.  That part of the story still stumps me.  If this pen and nib combo behaves predictably for the rest of the week, I'll apply the same process to the other eight nibs and see what happens.  The cynic in me predicts that I will have mixed results, but we'll see...

 

Maybe you can try with other Lamy nibs and post the result.