Help! New Twsbi 580 Stub Nib Driving Me Nuts

[swanjun]

I had a similar problem with my 580 1.1 stub. I inked it up with Diamine Blaze Orange without flushing it first, and had some skipping problems along with what I think was a combination of smoothness issue/user error. (It didn't seem to grip the page as well as my Pilot 78G Broad or Lamy 1.1, but I also couldn't seem to find the right angle.)

 

So, I dumped that ink, gave it a few rounds with J.B. Pen Flush, then decided to ink with one of Noodler's Eel series (Cactus Fruit Eel). So far, so good! I just took it out of my purse while reading this thread and gave it a downstroke test, and even after sitting there, nib up, for several hours, it responded right away. I'm still working to master that angle, and I have no idea how it'll behave with other inks, but at least I feel like some progress has been made.

 

I'll be bringing it to the Atlanta Show for Pendleton to look at.

[pb2]

 

 

 

 

Ah yes, I have had to "Pendletune" a good share of the TWSBI "Stubs" to make them behave well. It's usually one of 3 things:

 

1 ~Too smooth to write right

 

2 ~ slight "baby bottom"

and...

C ~ user learning curve.

All of these are correctable; some easier than others.

 

Oh and also ... tight tine tips.

[jhass]

I am trying to use up the Shocking Blue I put in the pen before I go for Flush-A-Rama. I am going to use the Perfect Pen Flush. I do hope you let us know what Phillip says from TWSBI.The hard start is intermittent while I am using the pen, but I can be sure of a hard start on the downstroke when it has sat for a while, capped or not.

 

Got a response from Philip today regarding my TWSBI I sent him. The following is what he said:

 

I did a little nib adjustment for you and it does not skip or hard

start on any down strokes. I didnt have too much trouble even before

I adjusted it. It was only when I left it uncapped for a while and

went back to test it that it would hard start. It could be the ink

you are using but then again I dont think there is anything wrong with

the ink you mentioned you used.

 

His experiences with my pen do not align with my own experiences (see photo posted earlier)' date=' but perhaps it just corrected itself somehow during transit. Hopefully when I get the pen back it will be good to go... I will be sure to post an update once that time comes.

 

I don't believe it had anything to do with the inks that I tried (Noodler's Apache Sunset, Diamine Oxblood, Diamine Green/Black). Perhaps, just as others, these pens only need a little bit of a break-in period before they work consistently well. I find that very odd, as I've never had another pen that required such a thing, but oh well. I guess as long as it ends up working, all is well.

[/quote']

So here's what I did that *appears* to have worked . . . keeping the nib perfectly aligned with the paper, I pressed down firmly but carefully several times, really flexing the nib open each time. Now it seems to be flowing better. We'll see if it lasts.

Nope . . . didn't last. I've stopped using the TWSBI, and am sending the nib unit back to Philip.

[kwk1]

I got my 580 1.1 today. Filled it with Waterman ink and it wouldn't even write anything at all. Cleaned it with some dish-soapy water, and nothing.

Tried to smooth it out in case of baby bottom, nothing. Moved the nib shoulders out to increase the space between the nib and feed and also ran a brass shim between the tines, nothing doing. Last step was to disassemble the nib and feed, saw no glaring faults and re-assembled the pen. Could not get one speck of ink to go on the paper (Rhodia), but when put to a paper towel, the ink comes out.

 

Do you send the nib back to the dealer for a replacement, never had this happen before.

Thanks,

-Ken

[Malcy]

I ordered a medium nib for my 580 and it was a hard starter. I cleaned a bit of something from the feed capillaries and there was something like a bit of cotton waste in the fins which I removed but the hard starting didn't improve.

 

Inspection of the nib tip showed a baby bottom profile. A bit of grinding to remove this and the pen starts every time.

[avlisyar]

Mine arrived from Anderson Pens a few days ago and like many others,

skipping, flow was erratic and it was a very hard starter. I cleaned it

several times with soapy water to no avail. Checked the nib and yes,

baby bottom. Took care of that and then removed the feed and nib.

Opened the tines and checked the feed. Put it back together and I now

have it filled with Sailor Blue Black and I am happy.

Started right up after leaving it overnight with no issues.

 

I am a little surprised as I have two 540's, one with the 1.1 nib and the

other with the 1.5 nib and both of those have never had these issues.

 

Anyway, the 580 is a great pen for the money. Hope they can get the

nib thing corrected.

[sh0ebox]

Well, I got my pen back from Philip today. Took it out of the box, cleaned out the residual ink from when Philip was testing it, then filled it up with some Oxblood and put nib to paper. The pen seemed to work great right off the bat, with very little issues in terms of hard starts. Everything looked good! So I re-capped the pen and went off to do some errands.

 

Came back later in the evening and decided to continue my testing. It worked straight away when I uncapped it. However, it seems that the longer I write with the pen, the more hard start issues I have. It has gotten to the point that the hard starts are so bad they occur every single time I left up the pen, such as when I go to cross my t's at the end of writing a word. Sometimes I can't get the pen to start even after scribbling on the paper for several seconds. If I press down slightly to spread the nib tines, I can see that there is absolutely no ink that is making it to the end of the nib.

 

I found, however, that if I hold the pen in a nearly vertical position (perpendicular to the surface of the table), the ink flows fine and I don't really experience any hard starts. But I don't write like that, so that doesn't really solve my problem.

 

Not sure what's going on, but hopefully it will remedy itself as I continue to write with the pen.

[kwk1]

That's not too good sh0ebox, it may get better for your writing angle over time.

Philip asked me to send him my 580, because it won't write at all. I'm quite disappointed because I was able to tune my 540 to write how I wanted. The 580 won't even leave a dot of ink on the paper, so I can't even fine tune it.

[steven_ffm]

Hello to all,

 

this is my first posting here. I recently got my TWSBI 580 with 1.1 stub nib and have the same problem as many of you have.

Therefore I contacted TWSBI and received quite long answer. Due to the fact that my English is not so good, I like to

quote the solution I have been told instead of putting it in my own words. These two steps eased my pain with the nib, but made it

not fully go away.

 

Hope this helps some of you!

 

Have a nice Easter weekend

 

 

 

So please take the very tip of your nib, and push it gently against a

piece of paper or say a notebook. Reverse the nib, meaning, pushing

the surface of the nib that usually doesn't touch the paper against

the paper. The purpose of this is to try to get a better angle for the

tip of the nib with the feeder, that when when you write a downstroke,

the tins spreading becomes a proper degree.

 

Also, give the two sides of the nib, the widest point on the nib a

good squeeze with your thumb and index finger. So if your looking at

the nib and pretend the nib looks like a "V" shape. The top of the "V"

is the the widest part of the nib. Squeeze that part a few times.

[e17]

Just my 2 cents...

 

I've received my 580, with a 1.1 stub yesterday. Didn't clean it (didn't know I had to), and filled it up right away with Noodler's blue-black ink.

 

The first tries were chaotic, but now it's working like a charm.

But I have to say I was using a kind of glossy paper - Clairefontaine and Rhodia to name them.

Now that I'm using a regular paper (almost kind of cheap ), it's working fine, after finding the right pen angle.

 

So... could this be related too with the kind of paper you/we use?

 

 

 

Hope to see your probleme fixed soon

[kwk1]

Sure, the type of paper will make a difference on how the pen performs. I have 32lb HP laser jet paper that is slick as oiled glass. But, I want the pens to perform well on the Rhodia 80gr paper more than anything else.

And yes, I hope Philip can at least make the pen work to some degree, then I can fine tune it to my liking.

[e17]

Sure, the type of paper will make a difference on how the pen performs. I have 32lb HP laser jet paper that is slick as oiled glass. But, I want the pens to perform well on the Rhodia 80gr paper more than anything else.

And yes, I hope Philip can at least make the pen work to some degree, then I can fine tune it to my liking.

 

Good news ! I've made some more tests and on the Rhodia 80g it's working fine. I just have to take care of the stub angle, not too perpendicular to the paper but a slight angle to the left. But I had to do so with all my FP.

 

(well, okay, I miss a little bit the number "8" as I've changed the angle)

[e17]

Any update on the situation?

 

 

On m,y Rhodia 80g, I've discovered that in fact I have some problems too.

After a couple of minutes of writing, like 10-15 minutes... I encounter the same problem.

I've unscrewed the back, removed all air, leave it unscrewed and it seems that this corrects the problem. The amount of ink delivered by the nib is lesser, too. (read better).

 

I just don't understand why it's seems to correct the situation, and this bugs me.

Does that part, the "piston", is supposed to follow the ink level?

[dspeers58]

I received the TWSBI 580 with a 1.5 stub, and I ran some waterman blue through it, and yes it did skip a little bit. I checked the space between the nib and feed using a piece of paper and it was very tight. I opened that up a bit, (I believe that Stephen Brown has a video on this on his youtube feed, for cheaper asian pens, like a Jin Hao, which was skippy and dry), and then filled the pen with Iroshizuku Asa Gao. I think that the waterman blue did a bit of cleaning (no, it is not a cleaner, but i believe that the liquid helped to wash out some of what oil/dirt might have been left behind), and the Asa-Gao is a very good ink with great flow and shading. The pen writes without fail. I believe that sometimes, there is little to no space (and here I mean that you are to be able to slip a piece of paper in between the front of the nib and the feed with some resistance/feedback, to insure ink flow, if there is no way to get a bit of paper between feed and nib, a least at the front end, ink will not flow well). I had the same problem with my Micarta and Vac 700.

[dspeers58]

Here is the Brown video, use at your own risk!

 

[TwoSeat]

Following on from my earlier post I tried flushing my 1.1 stub more thoroughly, checking that the shoulders were even, and writing a lot, none of which made the skipping go away. What has fixed it entirely for me is switching from Diamine Grape to Diamine Green/Black. The latter seems a much wetter ink to me, and as a result the pen will work even after being left overnight. The only 'problems' I have are sometimes if left uncapped for a few minutes (I'm new to fountain pens, but that seems entirely reasonable to me), and rare, random skips that I suspect are down to my lack of familiarity with stub nibs.

 

tl;dr - try a different, wetter ink.

[swanjun]

tl;dr - try a different, wetter ink.

 

I think that, essentially, that's what helped me. Diamine Blaze Orange was too dry, but I haven't had any issues with Noodler's Cactus Fruit Eel. That said, I *want* to be able to use any ink with it, so I'm gonna have Pendleton Brown take a look at it in Atlanta next weekend.

[bostonfin]

I followed the video with my 580 fine nib that was super dry. To my shock it worked nicely the pen is a total joy to write with now. Guess I don't need that M nib I ordered yesterday.

[adamselene]

1363560241[/url]' post='2631602']

Have you written with a stub or an italic before? It might be that your pen angle is just a little off.

 

Otherwise, the nib is probably just a dry writer. There are ways to fix that.

 

What pen is this? Is it me, or is that nib HUGE?

[DouglasBaldwin]

I have the same problem. I got my 580 with 1.1 stub a few days ago; I flushed it with cool water several times, a water-household-ammonia (with detergent) solution several times, and more cool water before inking it up with J. Herbin Bleu Pervenche. I had a few hard starts on my downstrokes right away. This evening it wrote a few letters and stopped. I usually write with a cursive-italic nib and often use sharp-italic nib dip pens, so it seems unlikely that I'm holding it wrong.

 

I removed the ink and then cleaned it as before. The tines look fine under magnification and thin paper slides as easily between nib and feed as with my other fountain pens that write great. I think I'll just return it.