Just acquired an old 400 nib, with the vertical fins on the feed.

The feed is considerably off center (almost 35 deg I reckon), though the medium nib writes properly, if a bit on the dry side (due to the misaligned feed I assume)

I've also found that when I flick the pen, a blob of ink comes flying out of the nib.

Should I expect Pelikan 400 nibs with the old style feeds to be this leaky? Or is it to do with the misaligned feed?

Thanks in advance.

needs a fix. I had a 120 nib with vertical feed and behaving the same bad way. Ink pooled then blobbed. A nibmeister repaired it for me.

This nib is definitely in need of a fix. Being off center is part of the problem.

Maybe someone tried to screw the nib out of the body but the nib stuck. If you use some force the nib misalignes and comes off center (nib moved to the right?). Have one vintage nib that does not move at all despite ammonia solution and US cleaner. Just gave up to avoid doing any harm to the nib ....

Writing characteristics: any proper vintage Pelikan nib behaves like a modern Pelikan nib. Due to the ebonite feeder vintage nibs tend to be wet writers with good ink flow and have some flex. This may explain why some of the old inks are dry inks (e.g. Pelikan or Lamy: using Pelikan blueblack with a wet vintage Pelikan nib does make a difference!). Being a dry writer is nothing I would expect from a vintage Pelikan nib.