Mitsubishi Pencils acquires Lamy

[RJS]

3 hours ago, Glenn-SC said:

I have numerous Lamy Safaris, 2000s and others.  I have never had a “quality control” issue with any of them. 

Just going back to this comment... Your nibs have consistent line width, corresponding with the letter stamped on the nib? If so, you've been staggeringly lucky. It's not just me saying this, it's one of the first things pretty much everyone seems to have discovered about Lamy. Lamy even issued a statement some years back talking about their thresholds, basically saying they're aiming to be accurate to within one grade either way.
 😅

 

Edit: For the record, I currently own:

1 Safari

1 Nexx

2 Al-Stars

1 2000

1 Vista

 

I gave away my two cheapy Sarfari-esque pens to my nieces. Of the above pens the best nib was on the Nexx. I love that nib- it's absolutely one of my favourites. I bought most of the above pens after it, hoping for more of the same, all but one labelled F, and none came close. The Nexx nib does write like an M. I finally bought an M but that writes like a bold, sadly. One Al-Star writes like an EF. Feedback is also inconsistent- the supposedly identical nibs feel like they come from different manufacturers. (And yes, I did buy all of these pens from the most respected of sellers).

[Glenn-SC]

I have tried to respond to this thread several times and my response have been deleted. 
I guess you can say what you want to say and do what you want to do.  
I’m through.

[RJS]

7 hours ago, Glenn-SC said:

I have tried to respond to this thread several times and my response have been deleted. 
I guess you can say what you want to say and do what you want to do.  
I’m through.

The mods deleted your posts? Unless you were throwing personal insults about, I can't see why? I don't recall encountering moderation on these forums.

[Number99]

There have been several posts that seem to confuse the former Mitsubishi Conglomerate or Zaibatsu ( i.e. Current Mitsubishi Group ) with the MITSUBISHI PENCIL COMPANY,LIMITED ( i.e. Mitsubishi Uni ). Since no one has corrected it, the misunderstanding seems to be spreading and permeating, so it will be corrected.

 

As @Prof Drew mentioned, MITSUBISHI PENCIL COMPANY, LIMITED, or Mitsubishi Uni, is a completely different and unrelated company to Mitsubishi Group (1983-).

 

Mazaki Pencil Manufacturing (1887-) changed its name to MITSUBISHI PENCIL COMPANY, LIMITED (1952) after numerous name changes in the confusion after GHQ (General Headquarters, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers.) broke up the Mitsubishi conglomerate. 

The reason why this was possible is that Mazaki Pencil Manufacturing (MITSUBISHI PENCIL COMPANY, LIMITED) had trademarked the same logo as Mitsubishi Conglomerate about 10 years before Mitsubishi Conglomerate. (1903)

MITSUBISHI PENCIL COMPANY, LIMITED is the only company in Japan other than the Mitsubishi Group that is allowed to use the red three-diamond logo.

wikipedia.

 

Note that Mitsubish is simply a *common noun for the three diamonds mark in Japanese.

 

It is not a very large company.

 

Thank you, then please return to the subject.

 

*It means "common noun" as the name of a common crest. Sorry, I meant to draw "Japanese" to explain it, but I didn't know that English has no such language concept.

 

Edited June 12 by Number99
Correction of mistranslation.

[RJS]

24 minutes ago, Number99 said:

There have been several posts that seem to confuse the former Mitsubishi Conglomerate or Zaibatsu ( i.e. Mitsubishi Group ) with the MITSUBISHI PENCIL COMPANY,LIMITED ( i.e. Mitsubishi Uni ). Since no one has corrected it, the misunderstanding seems to be spreading and permeating, so it will be corrected.

 

As @Prof Drew mentioned, MITSUBISHI PENCIL COMPANY, LIMITED, or Mitsubishi Uni, is a completely different and unrelated company to Mitsubishi Group (1983-).

 

Mazaki Pencil Manufacturing (1887-) changed its name to MITSUBISHI PENCIL COMPANY, LIMITED (1952) after numerous name changes in the confusion after GHQ (General Headquarters, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers.) broke up the Mitsubishi conglomerate. 

The reason why this was possible is that Mazaki Pencil Manufacturing (MITSUBISHI PENCIL COMPANY, LIMITED) had trademarked the same logo as Mitsubishi Conglomerate about 10 years before Mitsubishi Conglomerate.

MITSUBISHI PENCIL COMPANY, LIMITED is the only company in Japan other than the Mitsubishi Group that is allowed to use the red three-diamond logo.

 

Note that Mitsubish is simply a common noun for the three diamonds mark in Japanese.

 

It is not a very large company.

 

Thank you, then please return to the subject.

 

 

It is a common misunderstanding, due to the name and logo. I remember reading about it years ago. I never heard anyone say Mitsubishi is a "common noun", though. It's the mashing together of two words, with an intentional misspelling, that colloquially rather than literally mean "three diamonds". Bonus fun fact: Samsung means "three stars". 🤓

[Number99]

1 hour ago, RJS said:

three stars

SAMSUNG is sometimes translated that way in Kanji into Japanese.

😁

[Number99]

The name of the crest is derived from the seed pod of the water chestnut, which is not actually a diamond. I think the English name "diamond" comes from the fact that Westerners called it "diamond" in English as a translation. Of course, the Japanese do not call them "diamonds”.

三菱(Mitsubish)

The "三" mitsu meaning is three.

The "菱" hishi sound is added and the bishi meaning is seed pod of the water chestnut.

I'm going to stop this topic as it is off the original main topic.

😅

The seed pod of the water chestnut. From Wikipedia.

 

 

Edited June 12 by Number99
Delete unnecessary sentences. Explanation of the meaning and reading of the kanji.

[RJS]

1 hour ago, Number99 said:

The name of the crest is derived from the seed pod of the water chestnut, which is not actually a diamond. I think the English name "diamond" comes from the fact that Westerners called it "diamond" in English as a translation. Of course, the Japanese do not call them "diamonds”.

三菱(Mitsubish)

The "三" mitsu meaning is three.

The "菱" hishi sound is added and the bishi meaning is seed pod of the water chestnut.

I'm going to stop this topic as it is off the original main topic.

😅

The seed pod of the water chestnut. From Wikipedia.

 

 

It's fun being off topic. 🙃 I presumed 三 would be 'san' like in Chinese, as the Japanese also use Chinese derived numbers (like half of Asia), as well as their own numbering system. I attempted to Google for an explanation but it's all rather confusing and leads down a rabbit hole. I know a little Chinese, as I lived there for a couple of years, but no Japanese.

[txomsy]

I think the myth of nib inconsistency had been debunked long ago. There is a thread around discussing it.

 

Basically, all makers define some tolerances and Lamy keeps within their defined tolerances, so their QC is all right. Their tolerances, by the way, are similar to those of almost any other major maker in the market, so it is not a problem of loose definitions.

 

Most usually, when there is a perceived problem, it just boils down to the complainer not understanding what they are actually buying or how physics/engineering works.

 

That said, I must say the quality of Lamy products in my experience has always been light years away from their homages and knockoffs. Some times the later may seem more consistent (not in my experience) but in the middle (not even long) run, they show their shortcomings relatively quickly. So much so that the apparent premium price of Lamy (or many other) goods often results actually a lot cheaper in practice.

 

Unless, of course one buys pens as disposable one-time-use items.

[arcfide]

I too am surprised by the comments about QC. For an automated, industrial scale production line, I think Lamy does exceptionally well, and I know that they have heavily invested in such things, well above and beyond many other pen companies. In particular, the quality to price ratio of the pen bodies is always quite good, even though some people might not like the tolerances. They're also one of the few companies that support keeping a pen up and running with spare parts if you contact their support (or at least, this is how it went with me). 

 

I've never found Lamy's products to be the most subtle or sophisticated, but in my experience, they are absolutely no slouch in the engineering and production department. 

[RJS]

2 hours ago, txomsy said:

 

I think the myth of nib inconsistency had been debunked long ago.

 

So I'm making it up? So's everyone on reddit?

 

I own a ton of fountain pens, and I don't own shares in the likes of Pilot/Sailor/Platinum, so when I praise the consistency of their nibs please believe it is genuine. It's not just nib width consistency, but also the rarity of issues like being scratchy or dry, and a consistent signature 'feel' or style to the nibs. 
 

When I dare comment on Lamy or Kaweco having less consistent nibs I get attacked for it. I don't understand the reaction here- we're not all fanboying on an Apple forum, defending our beloved company regardless of what they do. I really like some Lamy and Kaweco products, and think both have some iconic designs that I enjoy owning and using.
 

These forums are chock-a-block packed with people commenting that nibs aren't perfect out of the box, and there's no point pretending that all manufactures are absolutely equal. Cheap Chinese manufactured pens also get an a proper hammering from some people regularly on these boards, while personally I think they're very impressive for the price. Next, compare a €25 Chinese pen and a €25 western pen... it's usually not a comparison that favours western pens.

[RJS]

Google "Lamy quality control" for tons and tons of threads on here and elsewhere. Also, note the snarky responses that commonly pop up, saying it must be lies because they have 3 perfect Lamy pens, suggesting line widths vary due to user error, or casually dismissing the claims with "he must have bought a fake".

 

I'm not hating on Lamy at all- I wouldn't own a bunch of their pens and inks if I felt that way- I'm just baffled by the attitude some people seem to have to defend them from any and all criticism.

 

I love my Pilot pens for example, but I'm also happy to accept criticism of their lousy policies towards their customers outside of Japan/China, and can't defend the fact that some of their pens don't seal well and dry up fast.

[Mercian]

I have no reason to doubt the honesty of people who have reported that their experience of the nib-width tolerances on Lamy’s Z50 nibs is that those are unacceptably loose/inexact.
 

I do note that these reports often originate from people who are accustomed to using Japanese or Chinese nibs.

As the strokes  that are required in order to write Japanese/Chinese characters (logograms?) are typically much finer than are the strokes that are typically needed to write Latin/Greek/Slavic scripts - and the densities/number of strokes per-mm² much greater than those required for western scripts - I personally expect that the companies who make nibs for the Asian market simply have-to grind their nibs to width-tolerances that are far tighter than those that are required of companies that are making nibs for the European/American markets.
Otherwise the consumers in their main customer-base in Asia would rapidly form the opinion that their marked nib-grades couldn’t be trusted, and so the company would lose its market-share.

 

To illustrate what I mean, here is a photo that I copied from the Lamy website a few years ago:

 

I don’t know how many of their nibs would fall within the bands that could cover two different nib-grades, but here is a rough method of forming the base for an estimate:

 

The tolerance for the EF nibs is +/- 16.67% (or 1/6) the nominal width of those nibs.
But the band of within-tolerance overlap between EF and F nibs would be 0.40mm to 0.42mm. That is 0.03mm wide - which is 1/12 of the nominal width of the EF nib, or 3/46 of the nominal width of the F nib.
I would expect therefore that the number of nibs that comes out of the factory having been ‘mis-marked’ as being on the ‘wrong’ side of the divide between those grades to be something between those two fractions.

 

Given the sheer number of Z50 nibs that Lamy makes, 1/12 of the total number of EF nibs is probably a not-inconsiderable number in its own right.

One could of course perform similar calculations for the degrees of overlap in the other ‘watersheds’ between the other nib grades.

Going back to what I wrote before the photo (the fact that the widths of Asian nibs are narrower than those of ‘western’ companies such as Lamy) having tolerances of +/- 0.06mm would seem to me to be likely to cause the ‘overlaps’ between nib-grades to be larger fractions of Asian nibs’ nominal widths.
And therefore the number of ‘mis-marked’ nibs to be greater fractions of the total numbers that are manufactured.
i.e. tolerances this ‘loose’ could cause perhaps as many as (total guesses) one-in-ten, or even one-in-six nibs to come out of the factory with their grades ‘mis-marked’.
That kind of error-rate would, I think, be regarded as sufficiently unacceptable by consumers as to damage a manufacturer’s reputation/market share.

So, the tolerances to which Asian companies must manufacture their nibs must, it seems to me, be tighter than those required of ‘western’ companies.

 

Edit to add: (do I never shut up?)

I also suspect that if one were to run a ‘wet’ Asian ink (designed to work well with very narrow nibs) through a ‘wide’ ‘western’ nib fitted to a ‘wet ‘western’ feed (both engineered for ‘dryer’ European inks), the resulting line would spread more than the same ink would from an Asian pen with an Asian nib, thereby making these tolerances seem even more ‘loose’.

 

Slàinte,
M.

[arcfide]

People need to distinguish between failures of QC and design tolerances that are undesirable. Nothing I have seen in the complaints about Lamy have indicated any sort of QC systems failures. There are people who I think are unhappy with the tolerances that Lamy uses for their pens, but most of what I have heard has to do with the nib widths. But Lamy kindly provides precise tolerances on their main marketing materials around these nibs, something which most other manufacturers do not do! 

 

There are two companies that strike me as presenting a very engineering forward presence, Lamy and Platinum. Both tend to be more comfortable than most in presenting technical data around their products in their main marketing materials. I don't know off the top of my head if there is any official nib tolerances posted by Platinum. It's easy to see, however, that Lamy's stated nib width tolerances easily account for almost every complaint about Lamy's nibs that I have been able to find. The use of different inks and the like accounts for most of the rest. Then there is simply the question of nib tuning, and there we know that Lamy steel nibs aren't going to be as consistently tuned as other nibs. 

 

If we compare them to the Japanese makes, I think it's fair to say that we aren't comparing the same things. Japan's gold nibbed pens are almost all hand finished with very high amounts of relatively labor invested into them, and you can tell that there is significant inconsistency there as well, due to this hand finishing, even though they are some of the most consistent on the market. That consistency is the not the same thing as QC. Both companies have, as far as I can tell, been meeting their stated design specifications of their nibs. Failures in QC would mean out of spec product is making it into the world at a rate beyond what would be typically acceptable. 

 

If we look at Lamy's steel nibs against Japanese steel nibs, I think the messaging is somewhat the same. First, we can see that the relative number of nib widths in steel nibs on modern production Japanese pens is very small. You don't see EF, F, M, B, and 1.1, 1.5, 1.9mm stubs available at all, yet Lamy is able to provide all of these. In most cases, you see EF, F, and maybe M. Sailor's new B nib offering in the Tuzu is a huge exception, but even then, their B nib isn't that broad, and is closer to an M in my book. Among these, Sailor's steel nibs have regularly received criticism, with many people saying that they shouldn't even be considered as coming from the same company as the gold nibs (that is, you can't use one to reference the other). Pilot's steel nibs have been okay, but many people complain about inconsistent feedback or flow. Platinum is the exception here in that their steel nibs seem to be abnormally well produced to a relatively high level of consistency, but even here, I can see very large differences in these nibs (if you get enough steel nibbed Platinums you can see the variance in play quite easily). 

 

So, I'm not convinced that Lamy's consistency is really all that different to the steel nibbed offerings that the big 3 Japanese makers produce, though the Japanese makers probably have a slight edge in tighter tolerances of their nibs for the specific nib grades they provide as far as nib width goes, but maybe not so much consistency in their feed quality, in my experience. And even if they have tighter nib width tolerances, they have plenty of variance in their tine spacing and feedback, though I do think that Lamy has a wider tolerance on tine gap (which isn't surprising, nor a sign of bad QC). In my experience, nib tolerances are just as discernable in the Japanese pens. 

 

But pens are more than just nibs. The production quality and consistency in pen bodies and sections is extremely good for Lamy, IMO, and often way more robust than many Japanese offerings. All my Japanese C/C pens in the Lamy price range show threading wear to some degree, whereas essentially none of my Lamy pens come close to showing the same. The same goes for converters. The overall fit and finish of Lamy pens is easily the equal of the same pens from the big 3 Japanese makers, and significantly higher if you only take materials quality into account. 

 

If you look at the design of Lamy's piston fill pen vs. some of those from Japan, such as the 823, the 823 is a fundamentally more fragile design that is harder to fix. The Lamy Aion is very well constructed (but people complain about the loose clip tolerances), and it is at least as consistent as what you can get from Platinum or Sailor for those prices. Again, Platinum has some very well engineered pens in the Lamy price range with steel nibs, but there are definite limits. I just don't see Lamy as being abnormally uncompetitive in this space. 

 

So, in short, Lamy might have too loose of a tolerance for many people, but in my experience, they have excellent QC, which is a different thing. I have seen at least as much variance in many Japanese pens at the same class of pen as I have seen in the Lamy. Lamy nibs aren't my favorite feeling, but I just don't think their steel offering is abnormally inconsistent (tolerances) or suffering bad QC (out of spec pieces making it into distribution). 

[RJS]

Looser tolerances than Japanese brands vs bad QC... there's certainly a relationship, and overlapping nib tolerances doesn't imply Lamy are too bothered about precision. This is far from a Lamy exclusive problem, with disappointing nibs being common across the industry, especially in the sub $100 market.

[txomsy]

16 hours ago, RJS said:

So I'm making it up? So's everyone on reddit?

 

TL;DR: nobody is calling you a liar, or denying your -or theirs- experience. But in making a decision one cannot rely on anecdote or superstition.

 

Take a bell-shaped curve. Call it whatever. By definition, half of it is below the mean and half above.

 

Does it mean that half people is wrong, or making up anything? No, they are simply different. That some have a different experience does not make anyone a liar.

 

First, note that the bell curve rarely does really apply precisely to any problem, but it does generally apply as an approximation, and then note that none is lying, right or wrong, they are simply on different sides of the curve.

 

Next, consider that a disgruntled customer complains, but a satisfied one rarely boasts their satisfaction. So one side of the curve will be frequently heard and the other rarely. That multiplies visibility of one side and is what leads to unfounded evaluations based on anecdotal evidence (it looks like one side is heavier than the other when they aren't) and, coupled with Pavlov's observations, to superstition.

 

And do also consider that overlapping tolerances are a necessity. If there was no overlap, what would one call a nib in the in-between zone? Should it be discarded? So, every maker in the industry has overlapping tolerances, and by definition, those need not be corrected by any QC.

 

But still, if half the customers complain that does not necessarily mean they are right or wrong. And we are not talking of half the customers here.

 

You are conflating something that by definition is a non-issue with a totally unrelated concept:

 

If Lamy has sold in total so far (lets's take it low) a million pens, and we assume that the chances of getting a valid, within tolerance, but extreme nib width are beyond two standard deviations, that means that approximately, 4.6% of buyers (or 46000) will have gotten one. So, again assuming  1 million pens have been sold, and that we are asking for two standard deviations (both assumptions -I would say- very, very conservative), until we get to that imaginary 46000 limit (and note it would more likely be 10 or 100 times more), we cannot make valid conclusions about their nib making process.

 

I do not see 46000 complains in the Net. And Lamy claims they make 8 million pens per year. Do your own math.

 

Mine says we would need more than a million extreme cases over the last 25 years (and Lamy is older). Even if only 5% of customers getting an extreme, within tolerance, nib complain, we should have seen about 100000 messages already by now. OK, it is all a napkin calculation, but probably not too far off.

 

Maybe you have. Me, I confess I haven't. Actually all forums (and not just FPN) should be flooded by complains if that were so. And we are still moving within advertised tolerance limits.

 

Even if the nib making process had a failure (which may happen, and by logic -machine and human wear- must necessarily happen), you need some time (during which faulty nibs will still exit the production line) to realize and re-tune the process as part of normal QC. And even so, that is only a minimal (although it might be argued, very relevant) part of the whole QC process.

 

Even assuming a perfect QC were actually possible (which isn't or you wouldn't need any QC), you do not want nibs without tolerance. The production cost would be excessive and you wouldn't want to pay it, and even if you did, it would likely be cheaper to get another try.

 

Mixing tolerances, anecdotal evidence and overall QC is conflating totally disparate and unconnected things.

 

So, how can we know if Lamy has or not good QC?

 

If you only look at nib width, it's going to be difficult: you only hear from one side, so we'd need to run polls to hear from both (more below). A better metric is to look at overall quality, and even better yet to extend from a punctual observation (e.g. when bought), which would also be anecdotal, over time (how much it lasts in good condition and how well are issues addressed) (see below).

 

As for the first, nib widths and complains... you yourself give the results of the polls: for each one who complains publicly there is a large amount of satisfied people who witness to the contrary. So the only logical conclusion, as much as it goes against the anecdotal, unlucky, unsatisfied user's intuition, is that a larger amount of people are actually happy. There, you have yourself answered yourself. "Because there are many complains, am I making it out?", is akin to saying "Because there are many happy users, are they making it out?". So, if each complain elicits a large number of answers, then, maybe, and only maybe, the answer is "No one denies your experience, but many more have contradictory  than supporting experiences/facts and report good experiences". On the 50/50 bell curve, that would imply QC wins over non-QC and is actually pretty good.

 

As for the second: here I can only speak for myself, but from what I read forums it looks the same. Clones seem to only last so much, whereas Lamys (and many other brands) are more often than not held in large praise for their properties than clones, and you can still find pens (and from many other brands) that have lasted ever since the very first models whereas clones hardly last a few years. These observations of mine, too, could be anecdotal, but if one looks at the amount of "lasting" models from the different brands, and their age, one can also gather a broader view of their QC. With the advantage that one can not only estimate current, but also long-term success. BTW, many people report sending back pens to Lamy and being fixed. We all know sending a 5-10$ clone back to China is way more expensive than a new pen, so my guess is that more people sends back their pens to Lamy (and get them fixed) than to China (if any).

 

Again, Lamy (like many other brands, from everywhere in the World), seems to win over the cheap clones in QC terms, motivation, results,...

 

I understand it is very frustrating when one gets a bad experience. My house, twice, has been burglarized. Does it mean all humans actually are burglars? Me, personally, I would never dare claim so. Even knowing every human -me included- has the potential to be. YMMV.

[Merrick]

Lamy's nib tolerances may be wider than some in the hobby like but the engineering that goes into their pens is some of the most sophisticated and precise in the world. Doodlebud has done great videos on the engineering of the Lamy 2000 and the Dialog and the Safari. As much as I prefer the nibs on Platinum pens, you cannot tell me that the generic injection molded plastic on the 3776 is an engineering feat on par with Lamy's best pens. Heck, if you get a demonstrator Sailor King of Pen you can often see the glue used on the finial, whereas you'd never see something like that on a Lamy pen. And Lamy is far more design forward than any of the Japanese companies, with several models that look completely unique instead of yet another cigar shaped pen. 

 

Kaweco on the other hand are pumping out so many variations of the Sport with nib quality dead last in consideration that I would not include them in the conversation at all. I wanted to like modern Kaweco but they don't make it easy.

[RJS]

17 minutes ago, Merrick said:

Lamy's nib tolerances may be wider than some in the hobby like but the engineering that goes into their pens is some of the most sophisticated and precise in the world. Doodlebud has done great videos on the engineering of the Lamy 2000 and the Dialog and the Safari. As much as I prefer the nibs on Platinum pens, you cannot tell me that the generic injection molded plastic on the 3776 is an engineering feat on par with Lamy's best pens. Heck, if you get a demonstrator Sailor King of Pen you can often see the glue used on the finial, whereas you'd never see something like that on a Lamy pen. And Lamy is far more design forward than any of the Japanese companies, with several models that look completely unique instead of yet another cigar shaped pen. 

 

Kaweco on the other hand are pumping out so many variations of the Sport with nib quality dead last in consideration that I would not include them in the conversation at all. I wanted to like modern Kaweco but they don't make it easy.

Absolutely no knock on the materials or the craftsmanship of the bodies of Lamy's fancier models. My issues have primarily been with their nibs, and the lack of QC evident there. I did a search on these boards today, and the most recent criticism of a Lamy nib in someone's review was posted only ONE MINUTE before my search. I watched a video years and years ago about the manufacture of the 2000, and I admire the tremendous design.

 

I actually stumbled across an old post of mine, where I commented on a Lamy nib from a well known seller that arrived with a crease in it! I'd forgotten about that. 
 

You're right to mention the 3776- great nib, but the body and finish could be better. I especially dislike the feel of the mould line on the sections. Similarly I have heard stories of high end Sailor pens with poor glue work, and seen photos of finials glued on at a weird angle, though mine have not had any visible faults I've picked up on. Someone else mentioned the 823 being hard to clean and to disassemble, and it is, so I'm very careful about the inks that go in it. Amazing pen, though, and not a boring looking one to my eye. The design of many Pilot pens are clean but certainly uninspired, I do agree.

 

I entirely agree about Kaweco's nibs too, but I also got shot down by suggesting that in a different thread. My experience has been poor with their nibs and their awful Sport-converter. I love the feel of the aluminium Sport in hand, though! That's a brilliantly built pen body, and a tank of a pen that's been in my pocket very many times, aging gracefully.

[Merrick]

1 minute ago, RJS said:

Absolutely no knock on the materials or the craftsmanship of the bodies of Lamy's fancier models. My issues have primarily been with their nibs, and the lack of QC evident there. I did a search on these boards today, and the most recent criticism of a Lamy nib in someone's review was posted only ONE MINUTE before my search. I watched a video years and years ago about the manufacture of the 2000, and I admire the tremendous design.

 

I actually stumbled across an old post of mine, where I commented on a Lamy nib from a well known seller that arrived with a crease in it! I'd forgotten about that. 
 

You're right to mention the 3776- great nib, but the body and finish could be better. I especially dislike the feel of the mould line on the sections. Similarly I have heard stories of high end Sailor pens with poor glue work, and seen photos of finials glued on at a weird angle, though mine have not had any visible faults I've picked up on. Someone else mentioned the 823 being hard to clean and to disassemble, and it is, so I'm very careful about the inks that go in it. Amazing pen, though, and not a boring looking one in my eye. The design of many Pilot pens are clean but certainly uninspired, I do agree.

 

I entirely agree about Kaweco's nibs too, but I also got shot down by suggesting that in a different thread. My experience has been poor with their nibs and their awful Sport-converter. I love the feel of the aluminium Sport in hand, though! That's a brilliantly built pen body, and a tank of a pen that's been in my pocket very many times, aging gracefully.

 

I think criticisms of Lamy's line widths would be more full throated if they were the only western manufacturer with such wide tolerances, but I cannot think of a single western manufacturer with tolerances as tight as Japanese manufacturers, so it's really a difference in philosophy versus a situation with poor QC. Kaweco is, to my mind, a good example of a poor QC process because so many of their nibs out of the box require tuning. It's a complete lottery with their nibs whether you'll get something that writes wonderfully or terribly. I've found Lamy far more consistent in that I've not experienced a full on bad Lamy nib out of the box, although I know that they exist because no manufacturer anywhere has a 100% positive QC record (and I used to work in QC so I would know). 

 

Would I prefer that Lamy tighten their tolerances? Absolutely. But they do tell us what their tolerances are which is more than most companies do and they are in line with the amount of variance I've experienced from all other western manufacturers. Perhaps Lamy is called out more than most because German engineering has a reputation for being so precise (and the engineering that goes into the pen bodies does bear this out), so we expect tighter tolerances on their nib sizing than is realistic given that they're outright telling us what their tolerances are.

[RJS]

4 minutes ago, Merrick said:

 

I think criticisms of Lamy's line widths would be more full throated if they were the only western manufacturer with such wide tolerances, but I cannot think of a single western manufacturer with tolerances as tight as Japanese manufacturers, so it's really a difference in philosophy versus a situation with poor QC. Kaweco is, to my mind, a good example of a poor QC process because so many of their nibs out of the box require tuning. It's a complete lottery with their nibs whether you'll get something that writes wonderfully or terribly. I've found Lamy far more consistent in that I've not experienced a full on bad Lamy nib out of the box, although I know that they exist because no manufacturer anywhere has a 100% positive QC record (and I used to work in QC so I would know). 

 

Would I prefer that Lamy tighten their tolerances? Absolutely. But they do tell us what their tolerances are which is more than most companies do and they are in line with the amount of variance I've experienced from all other western manufacturers. Perhaps Lamy is called out more than most because German engineering has a reputation for being so precise (and the engineering that goes into the pen bodies does bear this out), so we expect tighter tolerances on their nib sizing than is realistic given that they're outright telling us what their tolerances are.

When you see something like this from Kaweco you do worry. They don't make their own nibs, right? JoWo and Bock have made their nibs over the years, I believe. I've not been lucky with either JoWo or Bock's lower end nibs.
 

Perhaps I've just simply had more bad luck with Lamy and Kaweco over the years- more so than with $1-3 dollar Chinese pens. I've owned a good number of both Lamy and Kaweco pens because I like their designs, but I don't believe I liked more than a quarter of their nibs before tuning- some have been simply awful. Meanwhile, other European and American companies have been generally good, while Japanese pens I've bought have been great, with only a single exception to date.

 

I can comment on what I personally experience, but there remains a wealth of people whinging about Lamy and Keweco nibs on the internet- maybe they just sell the most pens so get the most complaints?

 

The tolerances are now advertised by Lamy, which is honest, which does mean fewer nibs would fail a QC inspection because of line width, but that doesn't explain the scratchy/super smooth/toothy lottery than I and others seem to have encountered. Well done to those that have been luckier with their Lamy nibs. Who knows, maybe I've just always been lucky with Japanese nibs, over and over again. 🤷🏼‍♂️