A Sailor 14K nib that gouges paper?

[DelibleCipher]

I have seven Sailor pens. I love using them. I have three with steel nibs:

1. a fude ProFit Junior +10
2. a MF 1911 Compass.
3. a gold plated F Sailor Shikiori Tsukuyo no Minamo Shimoyo

 

I have three with a 14K gold nib:

1. a black lacquer F Sailor ProFit.
2. a MF Sailor Shikiori Fairy Tale Orihime (Vega)
3. a black lacquer M Sailor Pro Gear Slim

 

I also have a 21K gold nib model

1. the EF Wicked Witch of the West 1911L
    

I’ve written nine journals with them since last year alone, so I use them a lot. 
 

The problem is with the 14K black Sailor ProFit model. No matter how much I use pen flush or break the nib in through use, it gouges and scrapes the paper surface. It picks up paper fibers and becomes a brush all the time.
 

I've been told that Sailor gold nib pens write “buttery”, but they are patterned after dip pens, so they make a scritchy sound on paper. Since I do art with dip pens, I love this tactile feedback.
 

My 21K EF Witch writes smoothly as does my gold plated F Shimoyo. They’re a joy to write with, but not the ProFit. It even writes thinner than the EF. 
 

What can I do to fix this on my end? Is this a common difference between 14K nibs and 21K ones?  How do I send this in to Sailor to get the nib repaired or replaced? Thanks for your friendly suggestions. 

[Claes]

Hi @DelibleCipher

 

Do you have a magnifying glass available?

How does the nib look (at the part that contacts paper)?

 

Ref: http://www.richardspens.com/ref/nibs/beginners.htm

 

Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden

 

[mke]

 

47 minutes ago, DelibleCipher said:

How do I send this in to Sailor to get the nib repaired or replaced?

 

Without knowing where you live and where you bought it, it is difficult to advice. 

If you are living in the US, take it to a penshow where a nibmeister is present.

 

Surely you meant 21k, not 24k?

[DelibleCipher]

51 minutes ago, mke said:

 

 

Without knowing where you live and where you bought it, it is difficult to advice. 

If you are living in the US, take it to a penshow where a nibmeister is present.

 

Surely you meant 21k, not 24k?

I live in Utah and I bought the pen off of Amazon last Fall from a Japanese dealer. It is well past the return window, unfortunately. 
 

I’m sad to say that there are no pen shows in Utah. I would have to make a special trip to California or Denver to find a nibmeister at a pen show. Might be fun, though!
 

Is there no way to contact Sailor to have the pen looked at? Is this simply not possible in the States?
 

(Yes, 21K. It was a typo. Corrected now. Thank you.)

[DelibleCipher]

3 hours ago, Claes said:

Hi @DelibleCipher

 

Do you have a magnifying glass available?

How does the nib look (at the part that contacts paper)?

 

Ref: http://www.richardspens.com/ref/nibs/beginners.htm

 

Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden

 

I’ll get to that later today and get back to you! Thanks for the suggestions. 
 

I liked Richard’s suggestion to use throwaway pens to learn how to smooth nibs. The link still works, too. 

Unfortunately, the PDF that teaches how to smooth nibs is gibberish on my iPhone. I haven’t encountered text encoding issues in ages, and never on a PDF. That takes me back. 😌

 

Before experimenting on my nib, I’d like to explore other solutions first. It’s something I’ve always wanted to learn, but haven’t had the time. 
 

Meanwhile, I’ll dig up a magnifying glass and post the results. 

[Claes]

Does this direct link work better?

http://www.richardspens.com/pdf/workshop_notes.pdf

 

[mke]

35 minutes ago, DelibleCipher said:

Is there no way to contact Sailor to have the pen looked at? Is this simply not possible in the States?

You can contact Sailor directly but they say you need to contact the seller of the pen:

https://en.sailor.co.jp/contact/

 

The nibmeister Penrealm lives in Colorado.

[Harold]

If it is digging into the paper so much that it's pulling up fibre that gets stuck between the tines/in the slit, there is a 99% chance the tines are misaligned, with one tine sitting lower than the other. It's not that hard to correct on your own, but it may seem a bit daunting doing it the first time. Useful skill to have though.

[Cjtamu]

Good advice given above. To answer your other question, there is NO comparison between the Sailor 14K nibs and the 21K found on Pro Gear and 1911L. The 21K is smoother, softer, and has better ink flow IME. Not that I dislike the 14K nib, just not the equal of its larger cousin.

[mke]

17 hours ago, Claes said:

Does this direct link work better?

http://www.richardspens.com/pdf/workshop_notes.pdf

 

This document has some problems. In my case it doesn't show e.g. f's.

[DelibleCipher]

20 hours ago, Claes said:

Does this direct link work better?

http://www.richardspens.com/pdf/workshop_notes.pdf

 

Nope. The characters are all garbage as I showed above. It’s probably an encoding issue. Odd to see it in a PDF, though. I can’t think I’ve ever come across an incompatible PDF before. 

[A Smug Dill]

22 hours ago, DelibleCipher said:

I have three with a 14K gold nib:

1. a black lacquer F Sailor ProFit.

 

Only Sailor Profit Standard and Profit Light models have 14K gold nibs. The (unqualified) Profit model has a physically larger 21K gold nib in comparison.

 

22 hours ago, DelibleCipher said:

I've been told that Sailor gold nib pens write “buttery”,

 

I'm afraid you either “heard” wrong, or have been misled by those who don't know what they were talking about, especially in the context of Sailor F nibs.

[A Smug Dill]

7 minutes ago, DelibleCipher said:

The characters are all garbage as I showed above. It’s probably an encoding issue.

 

I got all that gibberish on my MacBook Pro (M1), too, but only in the Safari browser. When I opened that document in Google Chrome just now on the same computer, there was no problem with displaying the text in an intelligible manner.

[DelibleCipher]

20 hours ago, mke said:

You can contact Sailor directly but they say you need to contact the seller of the pen:

https://en.sailor.co.jp/contact/

 

The nibmeister Penrealm lives in Colorado.

I remember seeing that page a few months ago when I first started looking into fixing this problem (but then I had some family issues come up). I purchased it in January from Amazon, and it turns out the Japanese seller was Amazon Japan. The return window on that closed a long time ago. I guess paying to have it repaired or learning how to do it myself might be my only option now. 
 

Thank you for the name. I’ll have to reach out to them.

[DelibleCipher]

The magnifying glass that I have doesn’t magnify nearly enough, and I cannot find my loupe atm. Please visit this link and tell me if the photos I took with my iPhone’s zoom are enough. If not, then I’ll have to find some other way of getting a close-up for you.  https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yc5ex7hbthlelamoum3gt/APCf1HnSz6hbaZFI-Qr34ak?rlkey=f29xrl5bshxjoj2yrcq2ioy4l&st=vtrdyvij&dl=0

[DelibleCipher]

1 hour ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Only Sailor Profit Standard and Profit Light models have 14K gold nibs. The (unqualified) Profit model has a physically larger 21K gold nib in comparison.

 

 

I'm afraid you either “heard” wrong, or have been misled by those who don't know what they were talking about, especially in the context of Sailor F nibs.

I checked the old order and I have the Sailor ProFit Standard, Black, with a 14K gold nib. 
 

The internet is filled with all manner of helpful individuals, so I’m not surprised that they were misinformed. I may be relatively new to Sailor fountain pens compared to folks around here, but I can tell when “buttery” is the wrong adjective to use when describing F & EF Sailor nibs. What remains true is that my Sailor 21K EF does write smoothly, as do my two other Sailor 14K pens. One is MF and the other is M point. But the Sailor ProFit Standard is a slow starter and writes scratchy. I’ve thrown out cheaper pens that wrote as badly. Would it help if I shared some writing samples?

 

I’ll try the document with Chrome. Thanks for the tip. 

[Claes]

Do you have the same kind of ink in them all? What ink?

[Harold]

3 hours ago, DelibleCipher said:

The magnifying glass that I have doesn’t magnify nearly enough, and I cannot find my loupe atm. Please visit this link and tell me if the photos I took with my iPhone’s zoom are enough. If not, then I’ll have to find some other way of getting a close-up for you.  https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yc5ex7hbthlelamoum3gt/APCf1HnSz6hbaZFI-Qr34ak?rlkey=f29xrl5bshxjoj2yrcq2ioy4l&st=vtrdyvij&dl=0

You may be able to tell if the tines are misaligned with your naked eye if it's severe enough. To check for this, hold the pen horizontal with the nib pointing toward your eye, as if you're about to stab yourself in the eye with the pen. You may be able to see something like the picture below, though it would be much easier to tell with a 10x loupe. Japanese fine nibs are quite fine, so even a relatively minor misalignment may leave the nib feeling significantly scratchy.

 

[DelibleCipher]

1 hour ago, Harold said:

You may be able to tell if the tines are misaligned with your naked eye if it's severe enough. To check for this, hold the pen horizontal with the nib pointing toward your eye, as if you're about to stab yourself in the eye with the pen. You may be able to see something like the picture below, though it would be much easier to tell with a 10x loupe. Japanese fine nibs are quite fine, so even a relatively minor misalignment may leave the nib feeling significantly scratchy.

 

Thank you for that gorgeous and clear picture. Using it as a reference, I could see with my naked eye that the left side of my nib seemed raised.

 

I used the following video to quickly adjust the misalignment and improved the pen’s performance immensely. I’ll test it out thoroughly this afternoon and see if it behaves.
 

It was such a simple fix, but I didn’t know to do it. I’m glad I found this forum. 

 

[Harold]

34 minutes ago, DelibleCipher said:

Thank you for that gorgeous and clear picture. Using it as a reference, I could see with my naked eye that the left side of my nib seemed raised.

 

I used the following video to quickly adjust the misalignment and improved the pen’s performance immensely. I’ll test it out thoroughly this afternoon and see if it behaves.
 

It was such a simple fix, but I didn’t know to do it. I’m glad I found this forum. 

 

Glad to hear, that definitely seems to be the issue then.

 

I will say that the method outlined in the Jetpens video is one I would recommend against using, because it can potentially solve one misalignment, but in the process it can create different issues that are much more difficult to fix.

 

The method I'd recommend for fixing one tine that is higher than the other is to softly push up on the lower of the two tines using the finger nail of your thumb; you can get underneath the nib with your nail from the side of the feed, where the tines stick out over the feed a little bit. The first time you do this, nothing should happen, because you will not be bending the nib hard enough to permanently alter the tine position. So the second time you will push a tiny bit harder, and it will probably still not show any change. Keep repeating that process until it starts to visibly move when you look at it with a loupe, and then keep using that same amount of pressure to move it in tiny increments until the tines are level.

 

As long as you don't get overzealous and increase pressure by tiny amounts and check with a loupe after every nudge, you should be able to get them perfectly even. Don't think "oh, it only moved a little bit and it needs to move much more, so I'll apply even more pressure even though it was already moving". That's how you end up pushing it too far, which means you then need to correct the other tine, and at that point you may have created a little air gap between the nib and the feed that can severely impede ink flow. This is also one of the major issues with the Jetpens' video, and turning the nib upside down and pressing on it to correct that gap can do damage to your nib that is quite a pain to fix.