Hi all,

I purchased a Pilot VP a few months back, and it's been a great pen. But I was not happy with the Medium nib unit that it came with (it would skip on upstrokes). So, I got a Fine nib unit for Xmas, but it came with a piston converter, instead a pressbar converter (like what came with the VP). It seems that with the piston converter, the trapdoor on the VP won't close all the way - I found this out the hard way with a dried out nib. I ended up swapping the converters (so that the pressbar converter is mated with the Fine nib) and all is as it should be.

I'm wondering what other people have for experiences with the VP and the piston converter. I know that new VPs come with the piston converter, so my experience can't be common. Could this be user error (certainly possible ) ?

Thoughts?

-- Edmund.

Edit: Sorry for the confusion, this is for the newer VP, not the older, faceted Capless.

Piston converter -- just to make sure I'm talking about the right thing, this is the cylinder with a top that you twist in order to move the piston inside up and down, right?

I have four of these, each with its own nib -- one medium, one fine, and two italic created by Richard Binder. I haven't had any problems with any of these when retracting the nib.

Could your piston converter be malformed? Maybe the nib is not seated properly? I was actually under the impression that the nib didn't come off the piston converter, so I've never fiddled with it.

--Rob

The converter is removeable, but it's quite firm. Might just not be fully seated in place in the nib unit.

If you bought the nib-filler unit from somebody in the business, it's too bad that person didn't just sell it to you with a squeezy bulb converter. But that's nice, finding a NOS Namiki VP.
You do mean the old faceted plastic version, as opposed to the newer metal Pilot VP, right? Somewhere along the length of the piston converters, the diameter is too big for the barrel. Yeah, they had to go and change things just for fun. So use the old converter on your fine nib.

Models with an older barrel only take the squeeze converter, and newer barrels can use either. The twist converter seems to fit in the old barrels but really doesn't. Same thing happened to me.

No, this is actually a Pilot VP, not a Capless, so it's the metal trimmed VP - mine in the solid blue with the silver trim (Navy/Rhodium, I believe).

I know that the Capless came with the pressbar (bulb) converter and the piston converter won't fit those. I've been doing a lot of reading about the VP, its nib units and the various converters, since I noticed the problem.

I'm thinking that pigpogm may be right. Maybe the converter and the nib unit weren't mated as tightly as possible. I just compared the lengths of my 2 nib units after pulling out and replacing the piston converter - both are a lot closer in length now. Originally, the nib unit with the piston converter looked about 1-2mm longer.

Thank you all for the thoughts and ideas. Even thought I like the Fine nib more, it was bothering me that I had a Medium nib lying around that I couldn't use.

I have two VPs. The first came with the squeezer, but I replaced it with the piston twister. The second came with the twister, and I have a third nib unit also with twister. They all fit correctly and allow the trapdoor to close. Maybe your twister isn't seated correctly? As I recall, they just push in and pull out (no threads). Why not try reseating the converter.

I notice that all three nibs are on the dry side, which is good since I generally use them at work on crappy paper which is more suitable for a dry nib. But I do use one more on better paper that likes a wetter nib. I got a nib flossing kit from Tryphon or Binder (or maybe even both) and adjusted the flow of one of the nibs to be wetter. Flow now matches the paper and I'm a happy guy.

Doug