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Hero 395: Flex? Huh?


celesul

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I found my 395 a bit thin and the copper material was a bit slick for me. I ended up pulling the nib and putting it in a Noodler's Ebonite Aeromatic pen I was recently given. With the nib set slightly farther out in the pen, the flexibllity is even further enhanced. These nibs are nice semiflex steel nibs for a reasonable price. Thanks for resurrecting this thread. I may have to buy a couple more of these pens just to harvest the nibs.

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Wierd, I'll bet the nib is a fluke. Thanks for sharing.

no, I have the same pen -copper color- and it does flex. I wouldn't call it flex, but quite springy... well, maybe semi-flex.

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It's strange how the tines are steel. You would think gold tines would flex. I wish there was some way to check.

 

*Oogles Hero 373*

oh, steel flexes a lot!! tho' my fav flex nibs are 14k gold -vintage. Hero makes nice 10k and 12k semi-flex too.

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i don't understand why people think gold would make a better material for leaf springs (and what else are a flex nib's tines, eh?) than steel. we've been making springs of all shapes out of steel alloys more or less exclusively for decades; gold, on the other hand, is known as a soft and malleable metal that keeps its shape without springing back.

 

sure, alloy it carefully with... i don't even know what other materials go into the alloy for a flexible gold nib, to be honest... and you can change its properties enough to give it a decent spring constant. demonstrably, as it's been done. spring steel isn't pure iron/carbon, either, after all. but if gold were a good base metal for spring alloys, it'd be used as such in applications other than this one, niche, luxury item.

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Well, I don't think it is based on theoretical considerations like you mention -- it's based on experience with nibs;-) I have no idea WHY that is, but facts always trump theory. The reasons could have nothing to do with metallurgy. For example, buyers of expensive pens may expect a springier "feel" so the pen companies deliver that even if it is harder to do with the gold those same buyers demand. I am not saying that IS the reason -- it's just one of many possible explanations. Any nib designers out there?

 

From a former MIT mechanical engineering major

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 11 months later...

Having had decidedly mixed experiences with Chinese pens--though more positive ones over the past couple of years--I bought one of these and discovered that the good reports about it are right on the mark. The one down side is the short section; it doesn't bother me but it might well be a deal-breaker for some folks. On the plus side, the copper color and embossed texture of the body are nicer than I'd expected. But it's how it writes that's the real selling point. Mine is a wet writer with some surprising flexibility to the nib. Also, so far it doesn't dry out when left unused for several days (a pet peeve of mine). In sum, I'll likely get another one.

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  • 1 year later...

I have a Hero 395 and a 901.

 

The nib on my 395 is quite flexible. I get a significant difference in line width and intensity writing with this. It reminds me of my ancient Sheaffer Lifetime pen with a signature stub nib. The 395 writes fine for letters, etc. If your nib was a fluke it was in writing poorly, not in being flexible;-)

 

The 901 is pretty much the same but less so. The end result looks very similar, but it does not feel as flexible. It does not write as well, and it is poorly balanced and does not post well. It does have much more flamboyant styling!

 

I am not sure the situation with gold versus steel for flexible nibs is quite as black and white as portayed in the previous message. That Sheaffer Lifetime pen had an incredibly tough 14K gold nib. During the years that I used it I wore out many Sheaffer Dollar pens with stainless steel nibs. The lifetime was about as flexible as the 395. Perhaps gold would not be as suitable for a nib with considerably more flex than that, and perhaps the fact that the Lifetime nib was heavily alloyed contributed to its durability. I wish I still had it but it developed problems getting the ink from the cartridge to the page. Sheaffer "fixed' it under their Lifetime warranteee, but their fix was to repalce both nib and section with a broad nib, presumably because the signature stub had long since disappeared from their catalog. It's nice too, but I don't have much interest in broad nibs;-(

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  • 8 months later...

I looked at this again today and may need to make a correction about what cartridges/converters you can use. First, the squeeze cartidge DOES come out without harm. It looked somewhere between Parker and International size. I tried a Thornton cartidge made for Lamy pens but more the size of Parker than international, and it fit.

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Oooops, correction to the correction;-( While that Lamy-shaped cartridge seems to be working fine, the 395 converter would not fit in a Parker pen. So, it looks like the correct cartridge/converter should be standard international.

 

BTW, a number of older Chinese pens really do take Parker or Lamy cartridges, such as the Wing Sung 500 or Hero 50.

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No fluke.

 

I have a Haolilai 88a, Baoer 516, Yiren, and Hero 901 capable of the same feat.

my Hero 395 copper color body, steel nib, does the same.

 

PS. oops, old thread. i realized i had commented on this before......

Edited by lovemy51
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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 year later...

Hi All

 

I have one of these pens and want to remove the nib and feed for a good clean. Does anyone know if the feed in particular is removable. The one on mine doesn’t seem to want to budge.

 

TIA

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i don't understand why people think gold would make a better material for leaf springs (and what else are a flex nib's tines, eh?) than steel. we've been making springs of all shapes out of steel alloys more or less exclusively for decades; gold, on the other hand, is known as a soft and malleable metal that keeps its shape without springing back.

 

sure, alloy it carefully with... i don't even know what other materials go into the alloy for a flexible gold nib, to be honest... and you can change its properties enough to give it a decent spring constant. demonstrably, as it's been done. spring steel isn't pure iron/carbon, either, after all. but if gold were a good base metal for spring alloys, it'd be used as such in applications other than this one, niche, luxury item.

 

Your metallurgy understanding needs work. The main issue at play here is work hardening a flexible material. If you get steel that flexible, you've got rust issues, because you can't give it enough chromium for stainless properties as that makes the material harder and more brittle. There are also limits to the number of times a steel part can bend before it starts to work harden. Gold is almost impossible to work harden, so it adds a lot of ductility and toughness. You can get around the need for gold (which is REALLY expensive. You have to consider costs of parts in even multi-billion dollar items when there are alternatives) and the rust when the material is either thick enough to let the surface oxides build a protective layer (And the material is not constantly exposed to moisture or salt) or when the material is exposed to protective lubricants like enigne oil.

 

Gold makes no sense to build springs from. It'd be nightmarishly expensive. But getting spring steel to work as a nib IS a thing. dip pen nibs are testament to this. But they can't have the corrosion resistance of stainless steel, so they are titanium or chromium plated and will wear out as those ultra hard materials stress fracture. There is a happy middle ground, there have been wonderful semiflex steel nibs in the past, like the japanese shiro nib, but this metallurgy is INCREDIBLY specific to this task, and nobody can afford to have a foundry tool up just to make a few plates of sheet steel just for this task. It's why we also can't mimic old flex nibs. The sheet stock production would be so expensive that the economies of scale just aren't there.

Edited by Honeybadgers

Selling a boatload of restored, fairly rare, vintage Japanese gold nib pens, click here to see (more added as I finish restoring them)

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  • 5 years later...

This is a very untimely reply to this thread, but I wanted to thank all for for your time and information. 

 

I bought one of these recently on eBay - https://www.ebay.com/itm/334760460592 - still available.  I offered $4 and my offer was accepted.  While googling "Hero 395" I found many hits but the FPs all looked very different, especially the caps (mine is round versus the usual flat for most if not all the395s I found), and the pocket clip looked so very different.  I haven't inked it yet, but my impression based on eye-balling is that the nib is a flex. 

 

Until I found this thread, I thought it was an imposter.  Not that it isn't, I guess, but I had been unable to find a Hero 395 that looked just like mine until I located this thread. 

 

   Happy holidays to all, and best wishes in 2024,

                        David

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