Konrad Runs Dry

[KrazyIvan]

I receIved my Konrad yesterday and before I did anything, I washed it. I inked it and it railroaded. I reseated the feed further back and inked. Has been working fine on Rhodia Paper and Waterman Mysterious Blue/Blue-Black. I was Leary because of all the comments but it is working great. The feed is very wet and does what I thought not possible, it made Rhodia paper blead.

[terminal]

Hmm... well that's good to hear in a way I guess. I'm tempted to order another one just so I can really fix this one's wagon

[grahamtillotson]

A somewhat funny follow-up on this thread since I did the old "hey let's look at the Konrad again" thing and actually got it working. Note that where I'd left off on previous tweaks was 1) used clear nail polish inside the section to tighten up the fit for the feed/nib and 2) set the nib/feed right where I wanted them, not stuffed way up in the section (I'm not a big fan of nibs looking stubby and short). OK then. On to the success story.

 

• Konrad comes out of the drawer and still has ink in it.
  
• Take the cap on and off and am annoyed by some sort of scratching.
  
• Unscrew the top of the cap and see where the nib is rubbing the plastic. Need to fix that.
  
• On the train and headed to work ... have the cap posted and take it off. The whole filler comes with it. Threads are loose enough to pull right out I guess.
  
• Ink on my pants. Yay. Right where you don't want it.
  
• Spend the day on conference calls and working on the ink stains.
  
• Get home and put teflon tape around the filler unit threads to tighten that whole thing up.
  
• Put a light coat of grease on the plunger.
  
• File out the inner diameter of the top of the cap so that the nib won't rub.
  
• Flush and reload the pen.
  
• Go back to work on the ink stains on my pants.
  

 

After all this the pen has been writing wonderfully. No ink blobs or sudden stopping of ink flow. The issue with the filler unit threads was interesting, and it makes me wonder if there was some connection to the ink blobs if air was getting in, but that would mean the seal on the piston was loose too. Whatever -- not going to overthink it at this point.

 

The rubbing of the nib was annoying though. This seems to be an engineering thing that should be addressed. Having close tolerances is one thing, but when you look at the side clearance and the vertical clearance in the cap there is absolutely no room at all, and that seems like a bad way to go for pens meant to have adjustments to the nib and feed settings.

 

Best of luck to everyone else!

 

Graham

Edited December 8, 2012 by grahamtillotson

[mhosea]

Clear nail polish to fix the fit between the feed and section was a good idea. Sometimes I wonder if all the different experiences people get or don't by adjusting the feed have little to do with the adjustment they make, rather with simply getting a better or worse fit there. Peyton Street Pens is selling some other Indian-made pens, ED rather than piston, but they replaced the hand cut ebonite feeds with Sheaffer No Nonsense feeds because they felt there was too much variance with the hand-cut feeds to prevent burps. With the Konrad the capacity is lower, so the problem should be lessened, but if there isn't a good fit with the section, seems like trouble.

 

I agree with you on the cap tolerance. The cap simply ought to be a few mm taller. Note that of the three Konrads here, two seem to be glued at the top, i.e., I could only ream out one of them.

[pe2dave]

Just to let you know of another thread, gushing Konrads, at

 

Wet Konrad

 

No conclusions, just problems.

 

Dave

Edited December 12, 2012 by pe2dave

[AlejoPlay]

A somewhat funny follow-up on this thread since I did the old "hey let's look at the Konrad again" thing and actually got it working. Note that where I'd left off on previous tweaks was 1) used clear nail polish inside the section to tighten up the fit for the feed/nib and 2) set the nib/feed right where I wanted them, not stuffed way up in the section (I'm not a big fan of nibs looking stubby and short). OK then. On to the success story.

 

I have that gap between the section and the feed/nib where ink is getting in. The clear nail polish solution seems like a great idea.

[inkstainedruth]

Well, I now have four Konrads (including one of the ebonite ones; the one I bought initially got lost, sadly). Three of them have sort of become single ink pens -- the Hudson Bay Fathom is the new KTC pen, but I think there's an issue with not sealing well enough (and I do get ink in the cap if the pressure changes -- which happens fairly often in Western PA). The replacement Mesa Red Tortoise does very well with El Lawrence; I keep thinking I should see what else does well in it, but then just refill with El Lawrence.... And the ebonite one is the 54th MA pen.

The fourth one, though, the Poseidon Pearl Konrad. That pen is just, well, weird. To start with, it writes dry. Really really dry. Much drier than almost every other pen I own (at least of the ones that are in working condition). And for some reason it just will not post (which makes me kinda nuts) -- it's like there's something stuck in the cap. I probably should really disassemble the cap completely the next time the pen gets flushed out. But that's not happening right away, because I just filled it a couple of days ago. I put De Atramentis Dante Alighieri [Ruby Red] in it, and that seems to be a wet enough ink to combat the dryness of the pen. Which is good because it's probably the prettiest color of the ones I have.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Arkanabar]

It's time for some thread necromancy.

 

I have a problem unlike anyone else's. After filling my Konrad, writing with it (very satisfactory, by the way), capping it, and setting it aside for some four hours, it was too dry to write. I had to dunk it in water to get it going again.

 

What do I do?