Fountain Pens - Something Of A Puzzle At Times

[BillPorter]

I just read a thread about a Pelikan M805 that was writing poorly. Two or three posters in that thread reported similar problems with the same model. In the four months I have been in the fountain pen hobby, I've read many posts by people with an expensive pen that didn't write well "out of the box." None of the major pen makers have been spared such reports.

 

I'm sure what I'm about to write has been written many, many times in the past on this forum, but I'm going to write it anyway. :>)

 

It is puzzling to me that if you want to be very, very sure that a new pen will write "out of the box" with no hard starts, skips, blobs of ink, or excessively dry ink flow, you would probably choose a Pilot Varsity or Platinum Preppy. Of the dozen or so Varsity and Preppy pens I have tried when they were brand new, none have ever displayed any hard starts, skips, blobs of ink, or excessively dry ink flow. Now don't get me wrong here, I prefer my two Watermans and my old Sheaffer Crest to any Varsity or Preppy. But still, it's puzzling to me. How can it be that $3 pens would be a so much safer bet to write well for a page of writing than virtually any pen costing $100 to $1,000???

 

Keep in mind that I am a newbie to pens and may well be ignoring something obvious here. Just curious to hear others' opinions.

[fly_us]

I just read a thread about a Pelikan M805 that was writing poorly. Two or three posters in that thread reported similar problems with the same model. In the four months I have been in the fountain pen hobby, I've read many posts by people with an expensive pen that didn't write well "out of the box." None of the major pen makers have been spared such reports.

 

I'm sure what I'm about to write has been written many, many times in the past on this forum, but I'm going to write it anyway. :>)

 

It is puzzling to me that if you want to be very, very sure that a new pen will write "out of the box" with no hard starts, skips, blobs of ink, or excessively dry ink flow, you would probably choose a Pilot Varsity or Platinum Preppy. Of the dozen or so Varsity and Preppy pens I have tried when they were brand new, none have ever displayed any hard starts, skips, blobs of ink, or excessively dry ink flow. Now don't get me wrong here, I prefer my two Watermans and my old Sheaffer Crest to any Varsity or Preppy. But still, it's puzzling to me. How can it be that $3 pens would be a so much safer bet to write well for a page of writing than virtually any pen costing $100 to $1,000???

 

Keep in mind that I am a newbie to pens and may well be ignoring something obvious here. Just curious to hear others' opinions.

 

It is the level of expectation. I spend $400-500 and of course i expect the top notch performance from the pen. Anything less than that i will start to complain. And parts and details of expensive pens are much more complicated than cheap, mass producing pens.

[ptgearguy]

I think a big part of it as well is that many people buy online from the cheapest they can find. Problem with this is that you are much likely to get a nib you don't like. If you visit a store you actually get to trial the pen before you buy and thus tend to be happy. Remember with fountain pen writing is highly subjective. Some people like things much more than others. Skipping etc are always bad but can happen with an untested pen when it has been traveling around the globe.

[Tweel]

It may be a skewed image of the state of things due to the nature of self-reporting. If everyone who bought a pen that worked properly reported it here, I suspect the board would be overwhelmed with posts. I have a number of pens, but can only think of one that didn't work right "out of the box". It was a Waterman Harmonie, not one of my expensive pens.

[rwilsonedn]

It's kind of ironic, but well-designed mass production can produce higher quality than anything short of individual hand-crafting. The vast majority of pens fall in between: then aren't made on a carefully-designed and maintained automated production line, so they don't have that degree of uniformity. And they aren't built and tested individually by a master craftsman (like some Japanese pens, for example) so no one has checked that they actually work well. Combine a modest variation in quality of the parts with no-one inspecting the finished assembly, and you get a pen that may or may not actually be a good pen. The best ones, when all the parts happen to be in spec and everything went together well, will be great. The worse ones, when some parts are out of spec or the assembly was careless, will be really annoying.

Maybe the best compromise I've heard of is Mr. Pen in the UK, who buys manufactured parts and hand-assembles them. From the rave reviews the pens have been getting, he clearly has knowledgeable people doing the assembly and final inspection. The pens are not hand-made, and he is very clear about that. But it sounds like they approach the quality of the vintage Parkers and Sheaffers, when both the manufacturing inspector and the dealer were skilled penfolk who looked carefully at each pen before it went to their customer.

ron

[Notgatherox]

It may be a skewed image of the state of things due to the nature of self-reporting. If everyone who bought a pen that worked properly reported it here, I suspect the board would be overwhelmed with posts. I have a number of pens, but can only think of one that didn't work right "out of the box". It was a Waterman Harmonie, not one of my expensive pens.

 

+1

 

I would agree with this too. IMO, it is more likely for one to praise the Varsity and Preppy when they work well (OMG what good quality for less than five bucks!) and less likely to complain when they don't work well (Oh well, it only cost me less than a fiver, it doesn't work, fine). Similarly, if I'm paying, say, over 300 bucks (arbitrary number here, insert whatever amount you like), I would expect it to work well and so not report it when it does (Come on, I paid good dollar for you here, of course you better work well!), but when it doesn't work well, one will be upset (Hey, I paid so much! How could you not work well!!!!)

 

Just my two cents, I may be wrong and you are free to disagree with me.

 

~Epic

[PDW]

Also, maybe, people need to get used to the strangenesses of any particular pen. Each new (to you) model of pen will have its own characteristics - large or small sweet spot, degree of tooth in the nib ... and that's before you get to the differences between examples where even an expert tuner's view of what make a nib write well may differ from the eventual owner's.

 

If you buy a pen off the web rather than going into a shop, trying a pen and saying (as I have once) I want that specific pen rather than another example off the shelf, then you're taking more or less of a chance.

Edited May 21, 2015 by PDW

[nickmazur]

Yes, this is crazy, and a huge puzzle! Thank you for bringing this up. I joined the forum because I wanted to buy a decent starter pen for me after years of not using a fountain pen. I was not interested in collecting pens, or even having a small pen rotation, I just wanted one good pen. My head started spinning after I've read the forum! Finally, I decided to either buy a vintage pen from a reputable seller who overhauls the pen prior to sale, or buy a new one from a company that builds the pen in house (including the nib) and has good technical and customer service. I was lucky, I guess, because I really like the pen I bought. However, I am not buying another pen, it's just too traumatic .

 

The other thing that goes along with pen not writing well out of the box, is that there's a large group of users who work on their nibs. I've even seen videos encouraging people to do that. That completely put me off buying a used pen. It's not that I don't trust the seller's competence in smoothing or adjusting the nib, it's just that they most likely did it to suit their particular hand, which may be completely unusable for mine.

 

Rant over.

 

Nick

[httpmom]

Bill,

Like you I am not a collector. However I do have a decent group of rotating pens. And to the right-out-of-the-box-great-writing-pen group I would certainly add the Pilot Metropolitan and the Lamy Saffari. Extremely satisfactory pens for the money.

 

I also purchased from Mr. Pen in London, The Parson's Essential. These pens are all individually tested and tweaked. It turns out that while the pen was beautiful, I made a mistake on the nib choice. It didn't meet my personal preferences, but because I purchased it from a reputable brick and mortar establishment I was able to return the nib for replacement at the small cost of postage to the UK. I ended up with a perfectly wonderful pen that cost less than $100. I have also purchased “on line discount” pens directly from Japan, but because they were all manufactured from Pilot and Platinum have had no bad experiences.

 

My other purchases have been made at pen shows so I can test drive the individual pen. Recently, while on a trip to San Diego I actually went to an honest to goodness stationery store. What a treat to find an entire counter of fountain pens to experience, especially with the help of a salesperson who knew what they were all about. It was like going back in time and I enjoyed every savory moment. In the future I plan to seek out such stationery stores. Another option could always be Amazon because they have a very generous return policy. Adding fountain pen internet reviews, forums, blogs, and YouTube to the equation it’s probably the best time in history for a person to be involved with fountain pens.

[jar]

Experiences definitely vary.

 

I've been accumulating fountain pens for over a half a century and of the hundreds of pens that entails, maybe three or four needed work to perform adequately and reliably. I can remember only one that had to be sent back to get the seller to work on it because of performance and a few more because things like a cap jewel broke. Another came with the wrong nib and the seller simply shipped the correct nib when contacted.

 

I find it hard to believe that I am simply lucky but that is one possibility.

 

Another is that I might be more experienced and understand that pens from different companies or models will not feel or perform the same. They will have individual personalities and I need to modify my behavior to fit their fixed personality. I am a flexible multipurpose tool and can change easier than an inert object.

 

I also have the advantage of having fewer bad habits related to writing I need to change to use a fountain pen. I've never used ball points or roller balls much and so don't need to untrain those habits.

[BillPorter]

I find it hard to believe that I am simply lucky but that is one possibility.

 

I've only been in this hobby for a few months and have accumulated only 18 pens, but I think it's incredibly lucky to have had hundreds of pens without any of them having the problems I keep reading about on this and other forums. Problems such as skipping, hard starts, and misaligned nibs seem pretty common. But then I seem to recall that in a thread I started which asked how many "perfect" pens people had, you commented that all of your pens were perfect.

[jar]

 

I've only been in this hobby for a few months and have accumulated only 18 pens, but I think it's incredibly lucky to have had hundreds of pens without any of them having the problems I keep reading about on this and other forums. Problems such as skipping, hard starts, and misaligned nibs seem pretty common. But then I seem to recall that in a thread I started which asked how many "perfect" pens people had, you commented that all of your pens were perfect.

 

My experience has been that most skipping and hard start issues are simply related to physics and so easily solved. It is more a matter of the user not understanding what is causing the skipping or hard starts and how to address the issue. So far I can only remember one instance where nibs on a new pen were misaligned and that was on a Montegrappa with a custom nib grind that would dry out if left to sit longer than just overnight. It was sent back to the seller who fixed the issue and returned immediately working just fine.

 

I think many of the problems we hear about are not really due to the pens but rather a matter of the inexperience of the user.

[Moshe ben David]

It's kind of ironic, but well-designed mass production can produce higher quality than anything short of individual hand-crafting. The vast majority of pens fall in between: then aren't made on a carefully-designed and maintained automated production line, so they don't have that degree of uniformity. And they aren't built and tested individually by a master craftsman (like some Japanese pens, for example) so no one has checked that they actually work well. Combine a modest variation in quality of the parts with no-one inspecting the finished assembly, and you get a pen that may or may not actually be a good pen. The best ones, when all the parts happen to be in spec and everything went together well, will be great. The worse ones, when some parts are out of spec or the assembly was careless, will be really annoying.

Maybe the best compromise I've heard of is Mr. Pen in the UK, who buys manufactured parts and hand-assembles them. From the rave reviews the pens have been getting, he clearly has knowledgeable people doing the assembly and final inspection. The pens are not hand-made, and he is very clear about that. But it sounds like they approach the quality of the vintage Parkers and Sheaffers, when both the manufacturing inspector and the dealer were skilled penfolk who looked carefully at each pen before it went to their customer.

ron

 

Absolutely! So good to hear from someone who recognizes the value and effectiveness of a well-designed production process to achieve high quality!

[Sandy Fry]

I have been a user/collector for a couple years and have about 100 pens. So far, no problems with any of them right from the get go.

I am with Jar on this one. Think it has more to do with the user than the pen.

 

David

[jar]

I have been a user/collector for a couple years and have about 100 pens. So far, no problems with any of them right from the get go.

I am with Jar on this one. Think it has more to do with the user than the pen.

 

David

 

Well, it just so happened that yesterday I got a new, modern (likely made within the last 12 months) pen. To test things out I purposely did no initial cleaning, just stuck a cartridge in and let it sit for about a minute, then began writing. It worked just as it is supposed to work with no skipping, no halts, no misaligned tines. In fact it was anticlimactic in the extreme. I let it sit overnight. Today it is still working just as it should. It is very possible that it might stop working at any moment and should that happen I will report back.

[BillPorter]

This thread is starting to remind me of my experiences doing computer repair. Many of the problems my customers encountered would have been easily solved if they had had more computer experience and knowledge. I once found a desktop computer sitting on the curb for garbage pick up and took it home to find that with a simple software re-install the computer worked flawlessly.

 

Perhaps those of you with years of experience with fountain pens would so easily solve "problems" such as hard starts, skipping, or dry writers that they wouldn't even consider them problems?

 

I appreciate the responses to the thread and I'll admit that Jar and Sandy Fry have given me more confidence that when I finally purchase one or two more expensive pens (I have been considering an Edison and a Franklin-Christoph), I will likely find them fully functional out of the box. Nevertheless, if you inked up a dozen new pens from the major pen companies and then, without trying to write with them, tossed them along with a Pilot Varsity into a drawer for a month, my money would be on the Varsity to write when the nib touched the paper.

[fplover01]

Since I was one of those who shared the problems with the M805, I have to tell the other side of the story too.

 

My first fountain pen was a Cross Century II. Then I discovered Pelikan. For almost 10 years I have written exclusively with Pelikan pens. More than 20 pens have passed from my hands. 200s, 205s, 215s, two 605s... Some were new and some were used, Most were bought on ebay. I have learnt two new foreign languages with them and they have accompanied me in a career/direction change and going back to college. I have written letters to my wife, important exams, signed contracts, kept a diary and a calendar. I dont buy pens that would stay in a showcase (and besides I cannot afford pens that would really be collector pieces). What I did with those pens was to write, on crapy college grade and copy paper, and not Clairefontaine. These pens have always worked out of the box. I have sent one to the Pelikan service because I dropped it and the cap end broke.

 

Only one time did I have a problem with the M805. It irritated me because of its cost, I thought what the hell, if a 60 Euros M205 can write better than this thing, then... And because it was not what I had come to expect. But Pelikan made my pen right and it writes like a dream. And I bought another one. Sometimes things can go wrong. but Pelikan stood behind their product. And when I look at all the stuff I have written using Pelikan pens then it is no wonder, these pens do work for me.

[max dog]

I appreciate the responses to the thread and I'll admit that Jar and Sandy Fry have given me more confidence that when I finally purchase one or two more expensive pens (I have been considering an Edison and a Franklin-Christoph), I will likely find them fully functional out of the box. Nevertheless, if you inked up a dozen new pens from the major pen companies and then, without trying to write with them, tossed them along with a Pilot Varsity into a drawer for a month, my money would be on the Varsity to write when the nib touched the paper.

I suppose that is the power of modern mass production. When a manufacturer can produce many widgets for pennies using robots and machines, with no QC in the process, they rely on probability. There will be a large number of widgets that work well. And for the ones that didn't, who cares, not many people would be bothered enough to report or return a $3 pen. I think with disposable pens, the ink is sealed and pressurized from the factory so it can do nothing but flow out of the nib reliably.

Edited May 23, 2015 by max dog

[jar]

Nevertheless, if you inked up a dozen new pens from the major pen companies and then, without trying to write with them, tossed them along with a Pilot Varsity into a drawer for a month, my money would be on the Varsity to write when the nib touched the paper.

 

I would never even consider inking up a pen and then setting it aside for a month. That is simply asking for problems.

 

 

 

[Dronak]

This thread is starting to remind me of my experiences doing computer repair. Many of the problems my customers encountered would have been easily solved if they had had more computer experience and knowledge. ... Perhaps those of you with years of experience with fountain pens would so easily solve "problems" such as hard starts, skipping, or dry writers that they wouldn't even consider them problems?

 

That's probably true for most things and areas. But in another sense, I think that's why we have pros and people who specialize in specific areas of work. It's hard to know enough about everything to take care of all the relatively minor problems that might pop up in life. I suspect that most people learn something about the areas of most interest or use to them, so that they can solve some things themselves, but leave the rest (and things beyond their level in what they studied) to pros. DIY is great to a point, but eventually you need the specialists, IMO. Whether that's sooner or later depends on the individual and the problem though.

 

 

I suppose that is the power of modern mass production. When a manufacturer can produce many widgets for pennies using robots and machines, with no QC in the process, they rely on probability. There will be a large number of widgets that work well. And for the ones that didn't, who cares, not many people would be bothered enough to report or return a $3 pen. I think with disposable pens, the ink is sealed and pressurized from the factory so it can do nothing but flow out of the nib reliably.

 

I'm not sure about disposable pens, but I suspect you're right on the mass-production part. Especially for less expensive items, as you noted, the quality control may not be as demanding. I have two Jinhao 250 fountain pens that cost around $5 each, and one wrote well but the other didn't. The one that didn't is a little better now after doing a rather hard (pressure), short (length) pull stroke to try to force the tines to spread a little, but still tends to be hard to start if it sits for a while; even from last night to this afternoon, it didn't start up smoothly right away. My guess is that on such a cheap pen, quality control is more lax and they let through more problem nibs than they would on a more expensive pen. And there probably aren't a lot of people who are going to make a big fuss over a $5 pen, as you noted.