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.

Home and Office supplies fountain pen

This is a heads-up on this cheap $2 pen which i have shown earlier. while it is cheap and writes well, but it has a major flaw; it is a cartridge killer.

I have put in one long cartridge initially, standard international, and it worked for a while. after a couple of weeks, the pen suddenly leaked on first writing, and i realise that the cartridge's mouth had split. no matter, could be a cartridge issue, so i had it swapped to another short international cartridge. same thing happened, it was working initially, then the cartridge's mouth split opened. the pen leaked and created a whole mess. I am now trying the china standard international cartridge, or the daiso pen refill, which has a bigger mouth and seems to be made of a sturdy material, but i'm not betting much money on it. and no way am i going to sacrifice a converter.

my verdict: buy the pen for the nib, stay clear of using it. the grip isn't very good btw too.

 

 

Monami - Olika

well, this pen is kinda complicated to me.

First, it is ergonomically well made for the hand. using the same design as a parker urban, but yet lighter, it does not wear the hand down when writing for long.

Secondly, it employs a wick. That disappoints me a little thought. But just a little, as the wick can be removed for easy cleaning. same goes for the nib which can be removed easily. since the wick and nib can be removed, they can be adjusted to allow wetter or drier ink flow by adjusting the distance of the wick, which is like a fountain pen. you can also make the nib finer or flexible, like a fountain pen. on top of that, that orange ink used feathers, and after much thought, i reckon this wick should stop the feathering. and it did. the pen writes well with no feathering. the theory is sound.

the other plus point of a wick is that there will no leakages due to change in pressure, i.e. in a flight. So, although i am reluctant to consider it as a full fledge FP in theory, but it seems to be one in practice.

as a side note, the ink fits the pen!

A pitfall of disassembling fountain pens

A simple demonstration of why disassembling the pen is not how hard it can be disassembled, but how simple it can turn bad and hard to assemble.

key takeaway: it is not the hardest to disassemble, but to assemble.

the 2 pens are the same brand and model. hero 373. the original nib depth is the black one. notice that the "GP" does not go into the pen body. the distance from the tip of the nib to the feed is as shown. the silver one is disassembled and the nib is pushed in much deeper.

the result?

the pen with the nib pushed in inner writes without hard start as the tip is nearer the feed, even when i was using a pigment based ink. however, the cap of the pen rotates on the pen as the nib's design contributed to the tightness of the cap.

now, ask youself, do you actually take note of this relationship before disassembling a pen that writes well initially? most people don't, and may end up needing to continue to disassemble and assemble the with it being inked to regain the original state.

and eventually spoil something called mood among other things like the nib, feed and the holder.

modern sheaffer twist converter - one problem you should know.

The modern sheaffer converter, the twist version, has a problem which even some sheaffer sales personnels do not know. 2 words, they break. When they break, the converter will leak ink into the pen body and most notably turn with the piston when you twist the piston while it is inserted into the pen. It is not tight in the sheaffer pen.

Frequency of that happening ? i have a broken one, and i have already found 4 broken ones in new sheaffer pens sold over the sheaffer counters. I conclude it is quite high.

And i had thought a lot of people knew about this. Apparently not. And therefore this post.

How then do you detect it? First, twist the piston while the converter is inserted into the pen. if the converter twists, do a visual check, the confirmatory one as shown below;

This is broken converter. Notice the break line on the inner and second ring in black? that means it will not be tight.

This is a working converter. the 3 rings, the inner black ring, the middle black ring, and the outer metallic ring are complete. this is a working converter which will sit tightly in the pen and not leak.