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Appalling Quality Control By Noodler's


Ego Id Veto

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Look at it like shaving.... Most folks now use fusion etc blades, while most of us grew up on old safety razors, (fountain pens). You buy a razor, and replace the blades, you do not have to adjust your safety razor when you buy it. Folks who really want to mess around with their shave, buy straight razors, that you sharpen to your liking. You can't sell a straight edge to a safety razor person telling them it is ready too go day 1, but you can sharpen it later.

 

I have a large stash of Gillette Sensor Excel (two blade) cartridge refills and a couple handles. Through experimentation, I have found that I can use them for up to a year before I change the blade. 365 days.

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I thought I would put in my two cents...

 

I have a Noodler's Ahab, and I would say that she is... temperamental. When she's smiling on you, she puts down an amazingly fat wet line, with just enough flex to make life interesting. When she's not smiling... well... she's a (bleep) straight from hell.

 

I am a professional writer who recently switched to pen and paper from a word processor and I write approx 3000 words a day. I write with my Ahab every day. I would classify it as a reliable working pen... if you know what you're getting into. When I got mine, I had to smooth the nib. I had to clean and flush the piston and the feed about twelve times before I got reliable flow. Even now she starts hard and railroads at inconvenient moments. She is, like all good relationship partners, quirky.

 

But that's why we use fountain pens, right? No one ever suggested that a fountain pen will work flawlessly 100% of the time like a ballpoint. We like fountain pens for their quirks and issues. Some people just want to pick up a pen and write and not have to think about the pen... well... I have a box of disposable ballpoints that you can have cheap.

 

I like having to pay attention to my pen as I write, watching its flow, listening to the sound of the nib on the paper, feeling the feedback from the paper... it connects me to my words in a way that I never experienced before I made the switch.

 

I paid $25 for my Ahab at Edmonton's awesome Stylus Pens. For that price, did I expect it to work out of the box? Absolutely not. I paid alot more than that for a Namiki Vanishing Point. Granted, I had different expectations for that pen, but I still needed to tinker with it.

 

I've had good luck with my Ahab, others haven't, but its a great pen if you put in the effort, which to me, is the entire point of this hobby.

 

Cheers,

 

Matt

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  • 2 weeks later...

Ebonite feed.....hard to find outside Indian pens or vintage.

After they have absorbed some ink, they are better than plastic.

We only have plastic feeds in they are so, so much cheaper to make and can make 20 or more by the time one ebonite feed is cut.

 

I have an Ahab that worked right out the box....a gift. Another poster Dremiled the sides of the nib into 'Angel Wings', so it's very much an Easy Full flex nib. That is a huge difference from the semi-flex pressure needed to flex the nib originally.

It was a cheap start to flex nibs. having the nib altered to Angel Wing makes it a different much better pen.

It makes a difference if the nib is long or short in a feed. WoW...Fountain Pen 102.

 

The most important thing an Ahab teaches is the importance of the feed and how to cut it to do this or that trick. Before the Ahab, hardly any one spoke of feeds.

That removing a couple of fins can cause this or that. That widening or deepening the channel can give you a much wetter pen.

Those are things you are not going to do to your '20's-30's Waterman.

If I remember correctly Ahab beat Twsbi out, so was the first to help take a bit of 'fearsome' away from dismantling pens other than C/C

 

Should one buy a hardwood block and drill out a knockout block...having fiddled with an Ahab before can help to know more about what one is doing....and why.

 

Living in Germany I didn't know Ahabs sold out in the wild....and to the unknowning, that didn't know one was supposed to learn....about feeds, how to set a nib to one or that breathing tubes are or are not needed depending on how fast your feed is..

 

That's what happens when you have fly by night untrained work force, that don't know they were supposed to sell the paper for the product and not the fresh product.....

 

One should research what one buys,...and in Modern Times...with internet there should have been no surprises.....it wasn't like one had to drive around looking for a library and look it up in Consumer Reports.

 

That Konrad that didn't work, should have been returned.

 

My Ahab is an Affordable pretty ebonite pen, with an ebonite feed....a neat filling system....that could have been better made a bit better for lots more money. It is an introduction to Flex......for the ham fisted nooble....all noobies are ham fisted, and when they jump off the high board into flex pens...ruin a hell of a lot of irreplaceable nibs.

 

Take out Red and black Noodler's Ahab pen, fill with Noodler's Golden brown and now with Angel wings, it's a nice flex pen now, an Easy Full Flex . (at semi-flex pressure...that's a lot of work.)

Do get your nib Angel Winged....Pendleton Brown does it professionally.

 

Just to add....some perhaps many Noodler's inks are ok....some I'll use in your pen.

Golden Brown takes longer than any other ink I have by far to dry....there are some famous inks that never dry. Sure is a pretty ink....that according to some '''is never the same", from fill to fill in the same pen, much less a different one.

 

I am of course an expert on Noodler's inks I have two.....Apache Sunset is my other....

Edited by Bo Bo Olson

In reference to P. T. Barnum; to advise for free is foolish, ........busybodies are ill liked by both factions.

 

 

The cheapest lessons are from those who learned expensive lessons. Ignorance is best for learning expensive lessons.

 

 

 

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I own five Noodler's fountain pens. Two Nib Creepers, two Ahabs and one Konrad. I suppose it's safe to say I like them.

I don't use mine for writing really, but mostly for drawing so perhaps this changes the way I treat them and expect them to behave.

 

Yes, sadly, none worked well out of their lovely box. But after only a good cleaning (as recommended by so many on this site) they've all behaved and gone on to become excellent workhorses.

The Nib Creepers always start first time, the others need a lick or two on the end or often a little scribble somewhere before they lay down a reliable line.

Once started however, they are a absolute joy to use.

 

Just for fun, I've hacked feeds, and nibs and thrown all kinds of inks at them; all have taken a serious bashing on their many adventures and have yet to let me down.

 

My only "expensive" pens are Pilots - a Vanishing Point and a Falcon and because of their cost they more often than not stay at home.

The Noodler's seem get all the fun.

 

I love what they have cheaply allowed me to do and what they stand for.

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i bought my Ahab thinking i'd get a pen to tinker with, and so i did. happily it seems not to take too very much tinkering --- if the nib had literally cut or ripped paper out of the box, i think i'd've sent it back for a refund; that's more tuning needed than it's worth, even considering i wanted to teach myself pen tuning with it.

 

the nib took micro-mesh smoothing to run even remotely evenly in all directions. it actually snagged the micro-mesh at first, but now it writes smoothly enough for me. feed smoothness and wetness remain to get just right, but that may take me learning how to write well with the pen first; i'm still unsure how to distinguish between a feed problem and just flexing. i should probably try for a very light hand and not even go near flexing the nib for a fill or two before i make that call, perhaps.

 

eventually i plan to take a dremel to its nib and make it flexier. but doing that before i've taught myself how to write with flex at all, and worked out how to diagnose and fix feed issues, would likely be premature.

 

if i'd wanted a pen that wrote 100% out of the box, for to simply write with, and had no other plans --- i would've bought a Pilot or a Lamy. for $20, the Ahab's great and cheap at what i see it as, a tinkerer's testbed and a teaching tool for tuning fountain pens.

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I've had two Ahabs, the first one I just threw away because I was so frustrated with it. The second one I got because I was ready to work on it. I wanted to learn how to adjust the feed and set it to the nib. Even so, I still don't have it perfect.

 

I have one Konrad which has worked like a champ right out of the box.

 

I have five Nib Creapers. All of them have worked great right out of the box.

 

Granted, there is a lot "chance" involved when it comes to the Noodlers pens, but when they work well they are enjoyable.

 

-Lee

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A 10 cent bic works close to 100% of the time.

 

As a newbie, it bothers me to see folks say.... Well, it is a $35 pen, so it is ok that it does not work well.

I have been using fountain pens for years, before and all through my college years and since then as well, and this is the one argument that I have to say blows a hole through any argument for the art of fountain pen use.

 

The simple fact is that fountain pens SHOULD work regardless of what you pay for it. If it takes a little bit of TLC to get it to work as properly as it was meant to, that's one thing, but if there's a real issue with a pen than the price shouldn't matter. There was one video that Mr. Goulet made a while ago that kind of offhandedly disregarded the possibility that a nib-creaper may not perform well by saying it was "just" a $15 dollar pen, and that was just about the only thing from his videos that I considered off-putting. The simple fact is that the whole reason that Nathan Tardif makes the pens that he does is because they're supposed to be economical: the message that is included in each and every bottle of Noodler's Ink includes the calculation that a $12.50 bottle of ink and a $15 dollar pen will write longer for a cheaper price than using dollar pens to write the same amount.

 

If you then have to buy three or four pens to find one that works, that completely misses the point.

 

Having said that, both Noodler's pens that I have perform magnificently. I had one, a Konrad, that came with a bent tine in the nib and performed disjointedly because of that, but after contemplating what kind of proper tool I could use to fix it for a while I realized a simple cereal spoon is smooth enough and straightened it that way. :lol: Worked like a charm ever since.

 

 

The thing is (and it's even stated earlier in this very thread) these pens are sold as tinkering pens. They aren't guaranteed to work out of the box, they are not expected to work out of the box, they are supposed to be an exercise in learning the ins and outs of how pens work, and Nathan has been very clear about that.

On the one side, I agree, and would also defend the statement that the Goulet's and pretty much every other retailer I've seen have made it just about as clear as possible that they need a bit of tinkering, however having watched a fair number of Noodler's videos, Mr. Tardif almost always starts his video by taking the pen that he's using not only out of the box but out of the cellophane baglet they come in.

If that's not a nonverbal statement that they work out of the box I don't know what could be.

 

I don't mean to sound like I'm making fun of Noodler's, clearly I am very happy with the products, but I don't personally find this as much of a defense against reoccurring faulty merchandise.

 

:quote:

 

http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m496/gclef1114/Tutuguans/1116130649-1_zps891febbe.jpg

:/quote:

 

:lol: I must be strange because I actually kind of love the smell, at least for the Vulcan's Coral. A friend of mine as I lovingly call it my "fumigatory pen". :P

thinking outside the bokks

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oddly enough, my Ahab's never smelled very strongly at all. it still does, somewhat, but after a bit over two months i now have to all but stick it up my nostril to notice it.

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Put a Goulet or other #6 nib in the Ahab and/or Konrad and they work just fine. The Noodler's flex nibs are very fussy by comparison and require a bit of adjustment to set up properly.

Tony Thomas

Author of "The Fountain Pen Book" on Amazon.com.

Editor of the Frugal Fountain Pen Blog:

http://thefrugalfountainpen.blogspot.com/

Twitter: @FrugalFP

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have four fountain pens. Three of them are from a pack of Pilot Varsity pens. The fourth is a pumpkin Ahab. Honestly, I never gave my Ahab a chance to work out of the box. The first thing I did was pull the feed and nib out to soak and clean them. After cleaning and drying the reassembled pen wrote reasonably well without any tinkering. It did take a couple days of writing and fiddling to get the nib and feed adjusted to where I have it now.

 

I love my Ahab. It writes the first time every time, and behaves well until there is less than a quarter of a fill left in the ink reservoir. Once the ink gets low I have to be very careful or it will spit when bumped. Are there things I would change about the pen? Sure, I would love a finer point and easier flex. I plan on grinding my nib down to either the falcon nib shape with the two notches or simply smoothing the shoulders off. Both seem to make the nib plenty flexible. I don't really need the flex for my handwriting style, but it will be nice for signatures and drawing. All in all I would have to say that the Ahab was exactly what I expected it to be after thorough pre purchase research.

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I have (now) seven Noodler's pens -- four Konrads (including an ebonite one) and three Flex Piston Creapers (lost my original Konrad someplace, which was annoying -- or I might have eight, but I might have changed my mind about the color of the most recent Konrad). I have not had a whole lot of trouble with them other than a tendency to clog if not used daily; but then, I'm also using saturated inks for the most part -- one PFC is the (new) dedicated BSB pen, and one of the resin Konrads is for Kung Te Cheng (another being for El Lawrence). The Ebonite Konrad, the third resin Konrad, and the other two FPCs have been host to a variety of inks.

All worked well out of the box (okay, the original Konrad was a bit persnickety about what ink worked well in it) with just an initial soapy water flush. Most of them write fairly wet, except for one of the resin Konrads, which is quite dry by comparison. I didn't notice the smell particularly on *any* of them -- and I'm the one who my mom used to check with when she wasn't sure if meat had gone bad in the fridge....

I don't flex them a lot, other than for emphasis or when trying out a new ink. The pen for BSB has the tendency for the ink to feather badly (which my old BSB pen, a cheapie Chinese demonstrator with a hooded F/EF nib didn't have), especially when the nib is flexed, but that was alleviated when the ink was diluted with distilled water.

Disassembling the pens for thorough cleaning is annoying but easy to do, as is replacing the o-ring on one of the FPCs. Neither of these happen very often -- maybe every couple of months for the breakdown and major scrub (and has been less of an issue with the ebonite pen and the pearl-finish Konrad.

For the money (even the ebonite Konrad was only $40 -- and my only quibble about that pen is that the end part on the cap -- which holds the clip on -- doesn't seem to be quite the same color as the rest of the cap or barrel) these are pretty good pens. YMMV, but I liked the original Konrad so much I bought a second one, then a third, then the ebonite one, then one (on clearance at isellpens) to replace the one I lost. Maybe if I had gotten pens that were lemons, I might not be so enthused. But I didn't. Not sure I'd like the Ahabs, though, from what I've read -- but they're also bigger pens, and I really like the piston filler mechanism on the FPCs and Konrads.

You wanna talk lemons, I'll tell you about our second Saturn wagon, which was a piece of cr*p from Day 1 (loved our first one, but it was never the same after getting hit -- while parked in a legal space in a parking lot -- by an 18 wheeler, who couldn't have been moving too fast given where it had started from; donated it to Goodwill when it developed a cracked engine block at only 38K miles, then took the tax write-off). When we got our first Prius and saw what Toyota would give us for trade-in value, we said "Okay...."; then we went outside and gave ourselves high-fives, and basically laughed ourselves sick about what *suckers* the dealership people were). And trust me -- that Saturn cost a whole buttload more than a *crate* of ebonite Konrad pens.

And just for the record -- I've also had persnickety pens (including vintage ones) that cost me more than the Noodler's pens (with the exception of the ebonite Konrad in some cases). And were a whole lot more trouble -- and/or more expensive -- to get fixed.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

"It's very nice, but frankly, when I signed that list for a P-51, what I had in mind was a fountain pen."

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  • 2 weeks later...

No, no Noodler's products for me, especially pens. I am no tinkerer. I want my pen to just write, out of the box. I don't need flex; I need to write lots, fast. Last weekend, I wrote 20 packed pages, really fast, on the crappiest binder-paper you can imagine. My Kaweco Sport Classic kept up perfectly, never once stalling or skipping, at great speed. My J. Herbin Violette Pensee behaved itself perfectly, with just a little bleed-through, but no feathering. I did have to refill my ink cartridge three times, a matter of seconds with my big bottle of ink and a syringe from Goulet (no affil.)

 

Even if I could support Nathan T.'s politics-on-his-ink-labels, which I can't, I still would avoid his pens. I am sure others love them, for playing around with, certainly no bad thing. But I am a writer/editor, and my pens are tools first.

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Even if I could support Nathan T.'s politics-on-his-ink-labels, which I can't, I still would avoid his pens. I am sure others love them, for playing around with, certainly no bad thing. But I am a writer/editor, and my pens are tools first.

 

Politics on the label? What do you mean?

My Vintages:

Sheaffer Triumph, Saratoga, Targa Slim and Targa Standard; Waterman 3V and 52 1/2V; Mabie Todd Swan Self Filler x 2; Eagle Unbreakable in sterling silver; Eversharp Bantam; Parker Duofold Lucky Curve BCHR and Duofold in red hard rubber; Spors Co. glass nib pens x 4; Conklin 2NL and 20P.

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... But I am a writer/editor, and my pens are tools first.

 

To me that is the best point I've heard yet. I too am a writer, and first and foremost my pens are tools that I use to earn my living. I have learned to use them properly and repair and maintain them because every good workman should care for his tools.

 

None of my pens are "works of art." I have never bought a pen for its finish for for its looks. I buy it because 1 - it writes exceptionally well, 2 - it is exceptionally comfortable to use (I will be holding 8 or so hours a day), 3 - the price is right. All those being equal, I will take looks into consideration. Actually, all those being equal, I will usually choose the one with the lowest maintenance or the least flashy.

 

That being said, I have never encountered a pen over $100 whose performance - at the end of the day - could not be replicated by a less expensive pen and a little work and creativity.

 

That said, I have since replaced the nib on my Ahab with the nib from my TWSBI Vac-700. All problems solved. No skipping, no hard starts, a nice wet, fat smooth line -- literally perfect every single time. I haven't had to so much as tweak a single thing.

 

So, if you're having trouble with your Ahab - find a good #6 nib and swap it out -- you'll be amazed my the difference.

 

Cheers,

Matt

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Even after being here on FPN for less than two weeks, I have figured out that some posters have an agenda against Noodler's, which is sad, as the main reason I come here is to get unbiased reviews on pens (FP) and ink.

 

It's impossible to get an "unbiased" opinion. In fact, the term is an oxymoron.

 

Any opinion is someone else's perception about something. We all have a bias based on our experiences and our beliefs.

 

It is my belief that anything I buy as usable or functional is expected to work unless stated otherwise in some form or other at the time of purchase. If I do my research and find that the item requires tinkering or adjustment, I must take that as part of the usage requirements.

 

A number of years ago I was considering buying a Lotus sports car as my only vehicle. I visited the one local dealership. The sales person was very clear when he informed me that I should expect to drive the car 40 weeks per year at most. The other 12 would be spent repairing the car or waiting for parts to arrive from England. After expressing my sincere appreciation, I left and ended up buying another car.

 

Noodler's pens have been around long enough that anyone buying one should be informed, by the seller, of the nature of the potential experience. That would be the approach I would take if I were selling one to anyone. That being said, I own 10 Noodler pens including Creeper, Konrad and Ahab and have excellent results with all of them right out of the box. I do admit that all of those purchases have been within the last 3 years and would not be subject to the early versions with all the teething problems that ensued.

 

Just my BIASED opinion based on my experiences.

“Don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today, because if you do it today and like it, you can do again tomorrow!”

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Politics on the label? What do you mean?

 

Look here.

"When Men differ in Opinion, both Sides ought equally to have the Advantage of being heard by the Publick; and that when Truth and Error have fair Play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter."

~ Benjamin Franklin

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They are made to be modified. If they came in a perfect working condition it would be no fun buying a play pen like that :)

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Posted Yesterday, 09:11

Ego Id Veto, on 01 Jan 2014 - 09:10, said:snapback.png

Politics on the label? What do you mean?

 

Look here.

 

 

There are also political statements on the pen boxes. I tend to agree with them so I just love that feature! :)

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Yes they are cheap, but not necessarily "cheap for a reason". I love many, I.e. Lamy, but I expect it to write and nicely, but not like a $250 pen, but yes, a nice one for work. I have thought of getting one but stick with the ones I know.

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