Feeding Trouble With Goulet Nib?

[Romans5.8]

I just bought two Goulet nibs to stick into my cheap but wonderful Jinhao pens. A Bold and a 1.5 stub. The Bold works beautifully and is smooth as silk and oh so perfect. The stub writes gorgeously but, doesn't seem to want to feed. I have frequent start/stop issues and find myself needing to apply pressure to get good ink flow.

 

I don't think that's the nibs fault. I think it's the pen. But where should I look? What sort of things could I do to "increase flow"? When it does write it writes wet. Seems bizarre.

[Jackson]

+ 1 -- exactly.

[Romans5.8]

+ 1 -- exactly.

 

Huh?

[Romans5.8]

It's perplexing. I've tried moving the nib, cleaning the pen, you name it. The bold nib on the SAME PEN writes so wonderfully. Perfectly smooth, perfect starts and stops. I just can't figure out this scratchy, spotty performance with the stub nib. It writes like a ballpoint pen that's running out of ink.

[ziptrickhead]

Considering you're using the same feed and pen for the 2 nibs, it doesn't sound like the feed is at fault. I would think that maybe the tines are too close together since you say that it seems to flow okay when you apply pressure. Try setting the nib deeper on the feed. When you push the nib and feed back into the section, the wider shape towards the middle of the feed will probably be enough to flair out the shoulders of the nib a little more, spreading out the tines. You don't have to push it that far back, try fractions of a millimeter at a time. Option 2 (if you feel comfortable doing so) would be to space out the tines manually either by running a shim between the tines or flexing out the shoulders of the nib.

[SteveE]

The other thing to check is the gap between the nib and feed. Although you are using two same-brand nibs on the same feed, that does not necessarily mean that both nibs are geometrically the same. One may be flat, the other may curve some, and may not contact the feed enough to support capillary action to maintain ink flow.

 

You should just barely be able to slip a sheet of paper between the underside of the nib and the feed. If the gap is too large, you will either have to try a different feed, heat-set the feed to the nib, or just not use that nib with that pen.

 

I've occasionally had this happen when swapping nibs from my box-o-nibs (parts box with various brands of nibs) into pens to get them to write or to write better.