Twsbi Troubles

[therealjamesg]

Bought a TWSBI 580 Diamond a few weeks back from the lovely folks at Cult Pens. This was my first fountain pen purchase in a number of years so was very much looking forward to rejoining the flock

 

Anyway, it took a while for me to decide on this pen and it was largely due to good reviews but I was distinctly underwhelmed upon receiving it. It was a little scratchy, not as wet as I was led to believe it would be and generally sub-par. Still, I persevered for a little while in case it was just poor technique or teething troubles.

 

Recently the pen just straight up gave up putting ink on the page so I got in touch with Cult Pens and they happily swapped out the nib for me.

 

That replacement arrived this morning and having inked it up, it again refused to lay down any ink at all. A full strip down and clean of the pen yielded 3 whole sentences before it stopped again. The nib felt much, much smoother than before though. No scratchiness at all.

 

So, I'm of course in the process of contacting Cult Pens again but in the meantime, is there any other helpful advice out there for what might be causing this? Has TWSBI's nib manufacturing or QA taken a nose dive recently? If push comes to shove, what alternative pens would be worth considering as a replacement?

 

I'd really rather keep this one to be honest though - the weight is just lovely and when it's working, it's a lovely thing to write with. Plus, it's lovely looking

[bushpig]

I've been having trouble with my medium nib on my 580 as well. Not as bad as yours.

 

Just hard starts and a skip every so often. I'm pretty new to pens so I think mine might be baby bottom (maybe?), but yours sounds more like a feed issue than the nib. I'm not sure though. Someone more pen-smart than me will chime in soon.

[WirsPlm]

TWSBI has always had some QC issues (the plastic used to crack quite a bit, and from what I read the nib QC is the same as Lamy Safari nibs despite being much more expensive), if you really like the rest of the pen I'd say try to figure out the problem (I'd start with the feed for flow issues), or for low cost replacements I think Pilot pens are great (MR for M nibs, 78G for F nibs, Prera for a bit nicer pen) and many people like Lamy Safaris which are cheaper in the EU than US.

[23Larsen]

I also got myself a 580 with a Fine nib from cult pens a few weeks ago and i love it. I think it is the most beautiful demonstrator pen available i was really happy when i got it.

I filled it up with Diamine Ancient Copper and started writing. I did not have any issues with skipping but i did definitely feel more feedback than my Safari, i was surprised by that. But it was not unpleasant, just different from what i was used to.

 

A couple of days ago i received an 1.1mm stub from cult pens for the 580, i had read good reviews of that nib and was looking forward to trying it. I changed nibs and still kept the pen filled with Diamine Ancient Copper.

The experience was horrible. Skipping and an all around unpleasant feeling. In the same package as the nib i had ordered a bottle of J.Herbin Perle Noir. I cleaned the pen and filled it with the new ink an voila! A whole new experience!

The 1.1 mm stub was excellent but sadly as i happily played with it i discovered that i wrote far to big for my hand. This i could not use on a daily basis. But now i was wondering how my Fine nib would do with the new ink so i changed again.

 

In my haste i did not let the pen dry properly and water made the pen skip and burp ink. I realized this quickly and did i new flush and dried the pen properly.

With Perle Noir in my Fine nib the dryness of the nib was gone and it was really, really smooth!

 

What ink did you use and did you try more than one? (giving it a good flush with water might also help)

[therealjamesg]

Mine's also a 1.1 stub nib. I'm using Private Reserve Electric DC Blue and have tried a more standard Quink Black.

 

Cult Pens wrote back to me this morning and recommended I flush with water a few times.

 

I've actually gone ahead and completely deconstructed the pen and cleaned every component in tepid water with a drop of washing up liquid before rinsing clean and drying thoroughly. Then, once the pen was back together I was advised to fill and flush with the same water/soap combination before flushing to clean, all of which I've done.

 

Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Not a drop will mark the page.

 

I can see ink along the edges of the feeder beneath the nib and touching around that area with the corner of a piece of paper shows ink is there. Also, wiping the back of the nib on the paper will show ink too. It's almost like it just can't make it that last 2 mm from feeder to tip.

[heldercgrande]

Hello all,

 

I had a bad experience with Twsbi nibs recently. A bought a 580 with a fine nib, more a medium replacement nib. The fine is just to scratchy (more than my Lamy Safari extra-fine), it is just unusable for me. The medium nib skips a lot, and is not smooth as a medium should be. For now it only works nicely with Noodler´s black. I am not happy with neither nibs for now.

 

It makes me wondering, why there are so many positive reviwes about the TWSBI 580? Did the quality of their nibs just got poorer lately?

 

Since I live in Brazil, where international posting service does not work well (sometimes it takes 3 months to receive an item from US), instead of send my nibs to be changed by thewritingdesk.com, I decided to buy an polishing kit to try to smooth out my nibs.

 

My kit is about to arrive, when it does, I will write here about the results.

[23Larsen]

As i stated above i have also purchased a TWSBI 580 recently, only my fine nib worked well. That was also the case with the stub 1.1 i got about a week ago. So for me it certainly doesn't seem like the QC has gone down.

 

I´m loving my 580

[therealjamesg]

I decided to buy an polishing kit to try to smooth out my nibs.

 

My kit is about to arrive, when it does, I will write here about the results.

 

Definitely interested to hear about your results.

[Algester]

I have a TWSBI mini well technically my EF nib was a bit scratchy at first but after some smoothing sessions with it it turned out to be a good writing pen what I used was your typical 3 sided nail buffer

[GUNGA GALUNGA]

Maybe I'm just the lucky one. I just bought three TWSBIS straight from TWSBI and mine lay down a line just fine. They are how ever a little scratchy

[Gaslight]

Bought a TWSBI 580 with m-nib a while ago, without flushing first it wrote pretty nice, no problems at all. However I noticed that the nib and the main channel on the feed weren't properly alligned.

I took it apart, flossed the channel, cleaned everything with a brush and reassembled it, this time well alligned.

 

It has gotten much wetter, from 5/10 to around 7-8/10.

Since then I wrote big letters, short memos, etc. on cheap copy paper up to Clairefontaine and never did it skip or had any other problems. It could be a bit smoother, but it's allright.

 

My other TWSBI is a Vac 700 with 1.5 stub nib.

Sometimes (pretty rare) it skips my first line, but only when this is a sideways-up motion, like the start of a 'b'. Otherwise it's pretty fantastic, wet and supersmooth, never used such a smooth stub before, it's equal to my binderized VP with m-nib.

 

So far I'm pretty happy with TWSBI

[isabelle304]

Maybe I'm just the lucky one. I just bought three TWSBIS straight from TWSBI and mine lay down a line just fine. They are how ever a little scratchy

My opinion is that buying a TWSBI is a bit of a lottery. I bought two recently, a 540 with a 1.1 stub nib, a 580 with a medium nib. The 580 wrote beautifully out of the box and has become my daily pen, I love the feel of it in my hands and how it writes. The 540 however I just could not get to write at all, failed on most vertical lines. Sent it back to where I bought it from (Cult Pens) and they could not find anything wrong with it whatsoever (!). Apparently it was tested there by two members of staff ( a right-hander and a left-hander) and - I am told - behaved well with both. It was therefore returned to me and, guess what, yes it is still a hard starter and failing me on some verticals :-(

 

If I'd only bought the 540, this experience would have put me off TWSBIs for ever, but as I love my 580 so much, I'll probably end up getting a replacement nib for the 540 once I've cooled down a little and am 100 % certain I want to spend more cash on it.

Edited May 20, 2014 by isabelle304

[Wolverine1]

TWSBI is a Taiwanese brand, from the Republic of China. Please, therefore, post in the correct forum.

[therealjamesg]

TWSBI is a Taiwanese brand, from the Republic of China. Please, therefore, post in the correct forum.

 

But the topic relates to issues with the brand.

 

Anyway, back to the point in hand. I'm on my third one now. This is a full replacement. I hate it. It is bearable on cheap paper where the feathering a bleed-through is enormous but on any quality paper it skips and slides like you wouldn't believe. I'm so over this pen now

[Algester]

ohh well but again do check the nib and feed I had to cut a little more on the ink channel just to make my Mini work also there are some drying out issues but thats relatively minor unless your writing in the dead of a winter storm... anyway for me what I did was check the tines with a brass shimm found it a bit too tight so I loosened that a bit then did a smoothing session then adjust again it's now quite a wet writing pen of course considering I extended the slit of the feed and made it a bit deeper may have also helped.
PS: the mini is a bit more fragile to dissasemble due to how the fins of the feed are on the "weak" side than the 580 with that said good luck

 

all in all it took me 3 smoothing session and a tuning and adjust to get the nib to flow a bit better

[Florenze]

There's an excellent video from JonoGilmour on YouTube, that shows how he adjusted his fine TWSBI nib. (I found it easy to follow, and I'm pretty much a klutz working with nibs. ) There's also a video on the TWSBI channel where they

show how to increase and decrease ink flow.

 

Here's the JonoGilmour link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO-seVGmKv8

 

If it doesn't work, you can go to YouTube and put his name in the search bar, and this video should come up. He posted a 5 part series on the TWSBI, and did a very nice job of it. Hope this helps!

[therealjamesg]

Thanks all for the helpful input. I'm done with the TWBI for now - it went back for a full refund.

 

While I find it pretty frustrating to have to perform user adjustments on a brand new pen that, let's face it, isn't exactly cheap, having three of them in a short period that were all largely unusable, tells me I'm probably better off looking for something else. Such a shame too - wonderful weight and balance, good looks but that stub nib is.....well, wrong.

 

For now I'm biding my time and will in due course decide on another stub nib to take the TWSBI's place.

[bullet08]

i'm new to fountain pens. but before i dived into it, first thing i did was read on how to tune up the nibs. my 580 in medium nib has been very good to me since i received it few weeks ago, more like a month. it's little on dry side, and it gets little dryer after about 4-5 pages of writing, and penmanship practice. but there is few things that can help with the situation.. if you are willing to try them.

 

i take no responsibility if you decide to try the following

 

first thing and easiest is to squeeze the widest part of nib together few times.. gently. this opens up the nib and help with the flow. second thing you might want to check is if the feeder is actually touching the nib or not at the tip. there should be very slight.. small gap between the nib and the feeder tip at the.. tip. if they are touching and there is no gap what so ever, you want to take the nib out and gently press it against a pad. another thing is baby bottom. you will need a magnifying glass to see that one. with baby bottom.. depends on how big they are, you can either try smoothing out, or send the nib back for replacement.

 

if any of above doesn't sound reasonable, sending the nib back to exchange would be the best thing to do. i actually was looking forward to having problem with my nib so i can play with it.. but i think i'm one of the few who feels that way..

[heldercgrande]

 

Definitely interested to hear about your results.

 

Hello, after a long time, I finally got some micro-mesh sticks, and some mylar paper to polish my fine (super scratch) nib.

 

Lets say, it worked somehow, but it was a difficult task. Polishing a nib is not easy as the youtube vídeos show.

 

It didnt worked with mylar paper whatsoever. I tried several times, and I always got a nib that was scrath in certain spots.

 

When I changed to the micro-mesh sticks, it worked better. After the first section, it worked kind well. Then I noticed that the nib didnt write perpendicular (upright) to the paper. So I tried to spread the tips a little bit, which worked. I should have checked this before starting the polishing process. After I polish the nib upright too, it start to work in this inclination too.

 

Some more sections of smoothing, correcting some spots, to make the pen really comfortable to write, I am finally happy with the result.

 

I notice that I made a flat spot in the nib. And there is no way I can solve this. It has to have this kind flat spot to be smooth.

 

Also, my fine nib, which wrote as an extra-fine at first (and I could cut paper with it), now writes as an medium, or fat fine nib. But it is very smooth.

 

I am happy that I can use my pen now.

 

For me it was the only way. I live in Brasil, posting costs are to expensive to send objects abroad. Custom services are crazy, and I could have to pay a second round of taxes to receive my pen back.

 

Anyway, if you have better chance than I to exchange your problematic nib, I would do that.