Group Buy This Weekend - Black Dragon River

September 4, 2013

Got mine! Thank you for all the effort you put into this . (<-There is a white dot over there)!. Impressive that someone who does a not-for-profit group buy handles it better than for-profit shops (Almost completely irrelevant sidenote: I once accepted a job offer for a company (Silicon Graphics) without doing research on the then-current state of the company. Turned out they had been doing really badly for well over a year ("well over a year" being code for "can't be bothered looking up how long before I joined they started doing badly). When there was talk about the taxes the company owed the US government, I pointed out that surely the company shouldn't have to pay taxes since they had become a non-profit organisation! Those around me agreed that that joke was exceedingly daft and should never have been made. Sort of like many of the company's recent products.)

Ah yes, I was going to talk about pens, not places where I've worked (Darn you Compaq! Darn you to heck!). Uhm... never mind that.

So, I opened the package and looked at the new toys and got concerned. I hadn't ordered that Lucky 270 pen! How did Whitedot mess this up?, I wondered. So, I had a look at the message where I ordered the pens and realised I actually had ordered it... I apparently need a memory upgrade.

The first time I bought several pens at once, I inked them all. A few weeks later, I spent a few hours cleaning dried out pens. For one times sake, I've actually learned from a mistake, so I decided to only ink one of them, use it until it runs out and then move on to the next. Problem with getting so many toys at once is that it is difficult to decide which to play with. At first, I decided it should be the Heilongjian 28, which was the "main point" of the group buy, But the Lily has such a cool nib. And that 12K gold nib Wing Sung looked so sweet, and I usually like WS pens (I did decide I don't feel brave enough to try the Fude nib right now). After dithering, redithering, and a wee bit of additional dithering, I made a final decision: I'd start with the Wing Sung.

I opened up my bottle of Diamine Damsun and drowned the nib of the Heilongjian 28 (which, as you might recall, I decided should be the first one) in the ink. It emerged and demanded to be introduced to the nearest paper. (At least I think that's what it said. I'm not good enough at Chinese to understand what it said, but surely that must have been what it meant. It said "yáng guǐzi" several times, I wonder what that means?)

Unfortunately, it wasn't really to my taste - the nib is too wide, and to make things worse, it is quite wet (at least with the ink I used). I know many people consider both of those to be Good Thing, well, you're quite simply wrong! Doesn't help that I'm using cheapo paper made for ballpoint or pencil when practicing Chinese (since I intend to discard it when I'm done anyway) and heavy ink flow tends to lead to blobs rather than lines. The cap threads where a bit poor too, and it sometimes skips on side strokes. However, the nib is very smooth, and I like the way it looks and feels in the hand.

Here are two photos of the result of me writing with it:

WARNING! The photos below contain examples of Aspie writing. Handwriting teachers, fans of straight lines, and other sensitive people might consider if they really want to expose themselves (or an NSA agent) to something that gruesome.

Yes I should

get a better camera

My camera likes turning white things yellow.

Some of you might have noticed what looks like a Wing Sung in the photos. Specifically, a Wing Sung with possibly the nicest nib i've ever tried (in a non-Japanese pens), powered by Pilot blue-black ink. Obviously, you're delusional since I clearly stated I wasn't going to ink another until I had run out of ink on the 28. You probably should see a shrink about this.

September 4, 2013

I received my parcel today! Woohoo!! Thanks so much Whitedot! You are amazing!!

September 5, 2013

Mine arrived yesterday! Thanks, whitedot!

September 5, 2013

I missed this group buy but I managed to get the Heilongjiang 90 and received yesterday. The Heilongjiang 28 and several Jinxing are on the way. Woohoooo...

September 7, 2013

I discovered that the 28 works a lot better with the nib upside down, which is, shall we say, a bit odd. Flow problems (alternating skipping and flooding) almost completely disappear, and the line width is a bit thinner. There is more resistance when it moves over the paper though.

This would have made more sense if I lived in southern South America, since holding it upside down there would then match the direction it was made to be held on the other part of the world!

I also tried the Fude nib, but apart from not actually knowing how to use it properly, I think Fude is probably Chinese (Japanese? Kaledese? Minbari?) for "Tool for digging fibres from a paper" so I think I'll put that away until I get a more suitable paper (I had to press a bit to get ink to flow, which is probably also a factor)

September 10, 2013

I discovered that the 28 works a lot better with the nib upside down, which is, shall we say, a bit odd. Flow problems (alternating skipping and flooding) almost completely disappear, and the line width is a bit thinner. There is more resistance when it moves over the paper though.

Bad news: Your feed is badly set. Is there a gap between the feed and nib?

Good news: You can easily reset it, because it is ebonite.

Use off the boil water to soften the feed. Make sure it is aligned - shoulder to shoulder, feed channel centered, then press until it is snug against the nib. The raw materials are all there: good nib, good feed. They just have to fit together.

Edited September 10, 2013 by whitedot