Con-40 partial disassembly.

To those who hated that con40's stupid design of gate and the rattling ball bearing like me, u can remove them. Yes you can. And use it like a con50. Clean it easily like a con50. If ink gets behind the converter, do know that there is a hole behind and that allows you to flush water in to clean it.

to remove the metal gate : get a pincer, 2 legs in. turn, wiggle, and it's loose.
 

派利003 compared to prera. size difference, body not interchangeable. Personally Prera is still better in terms of the feel, as the length is just right. oh, 003 is back heavy when posted, unlike prera which is still balanced. however, the talk of the town. however, 003 may be preferred for those with bigger hands.

body built is quite steady, plastic is quite thick and not weak. smoothness well, you can swap with a pilot pen, or some tuning is required. not too much.

recommended to buy but please get a prera as well. FYI i have gotten the full set of clear prera a long time ago.

 

 

The "wicked" system

My usual style is to release version 1 once version 3 is made and stabilized, so here goes...version 1.

Personally, i do not consider a fountain pen that uses a wick in its feed to be a fountain pen, because, well, that is cheating. and for a long time i refused to look at its merits.

until now (or then since i'm already on version 3).

so, if a wick can work, why then shouldn't we extend the wick to be....the reservoir too?

why not?

why yes? well there are these advantages:
1) a full wick system means there is no air in the reservoir, which means no sudden air expansion which causes leak.
2) with no reservoir, there is no chance of ink leaks as the ink is held in the wick.
3) the ink flow is very controlled. seriously, it's writing dry, not like the usual wick feed which are usually wet
4) the wick reservoir looks nice
5) it is easily refillable
6) it is easily washable (the wick, that is). i think. i mean, easy is relative.

materials are simple:
1) a wick FP. the daiso pen, the pilot petit1, the zebra pen or any pen you see with a white thing in the middle, that is a wick pen.
2) a highlighter pen that does not use ink, but a sponge inside. remove that, wash it clean till it is white, and you are good to go.
 
anyway, here goes. the first full wick pen. For the lack of a better name, i call this the "wicked system"

Pilot VPens waterproof test

it's something that is bugging me for a long time, is the pilot VPens' ink waterproof? i mean, the ink do have nice color. i wanted to use them for daily work use....

too bad, the test turned out as such....

 

 

Sheaffer converter

For those who are interested in a full breakdown of a sheaffer converter. I had to do this to repair the faulty converter.

Daiso fountain pen in hotrod red

finally it is done! Daiso fountain pen in hotrod red! also comes with a red nib! the one of its kind in the world ( i think ). anyway there's a lot of sweat put into it, don't think i will want to make more.

maybe one more in black. in blue too. hmmm

 

 

daiso fountain pen : old and new comparison

well, this is something new....

daiso had a recent change of their fountain pen in terms of packaging, and i didn't think much of it. until i gotten a couple to replace the few i have used, and realized not only did the packaging changed, the pen actually has changed too.

1) the cap cannot be exchanged between the 2. the newer version the cap is bigger.

2) the nib is different.

3) the feed on the old version has 1 drain. the newer version has 2 drains. i have not physically tested it, but i think the newer version will write even wetter.

in retrospective, it was wise of me to get 300 pieces of the old daiso pen. lame excuse for myself. :p 

 

 

cerruti 1881 fountain pens

brass shrim for cleaning fountain pen? save your money with these.

you can cannibalize those metal strips in those anti theft thingy as brass strips to clean your nibs.