HI I was reading the thread on inexpensive pens and I read that you pulled the nib (or removed it somehow) on the Wality fountain pen.

Could you explain how you did that? thanks, jc

PM'ing him might get his attention

John,

I'm not Apollo (nor do I pretend to be him on TV ), but I accidently pulled the nib on my Wality 52 on either Sunday or Monday night, actually I completely disassembled the pen, including removing the piston.

Note: I do not necessarily recommend doing what I did, I may have just been very, very lucky.

here is how I did it
1) I flushed the pen with some cold water
2) was not happy with the ink that had crept behind the piston (how did those droplets get there )
3) I grabbed the nib with a papertowel, held the section and gave a pull and twist. The nib came out suprisingly easy. Be careful, the nib and feed are not connected (you learn something new everyday, unless you are really careful)
4) I flushed the barrel with cold running water & got the brilliant idea of removing the piston.
5) I unscrewed the piston, as if I was going to fill the pen. When the piston was fully forward I kept unscrewing and the back part where you hold and turn came off.
6) I got a blunt implement and pushed the piston through the back of the pen.
7) washed everything out & let dry
8) re assembled by doing what I did in reverse order
9) filled the pen & let it sit in an empty coffee mug nib up overnight
10) the mug didn't have ink all over the bottom the next morning, and the pen still wrote a nice line. I decided to give the pen a real world test and take it to work in my pocket. So far so good, no inky pocket and the pen still writes well.

I hope this helps. I omitted the under my breath mutterings that highlighted this exercise.

French

Look out now, there's goes French trying to blow my cover!

John, I did exactly as French described. Grabbed the nib with a papertowel, held the section and gave a careful pull and twist. The nib and feed are separate so don't be alarmed if the nib comes out before the feed. To place it back, align the nib with the feed and press fit it back into the section. It works fine and there are no leaks once your done.

Thanks. I am ordering one of those pens and plan to use it with some of the super saturated inks that I don't want to put in my Pelikan 800.

I figure at some point I will need to do more than a typical cleaning.


thanks again, jc

John, they're great pens for such little money. I've got my eyes fixed on a Wality 69L, but I'm debating on the piston filler or eyedropper model.