An Inky Flood By Cerruti 1881 Whale

[Old_Inkyhand]

Hello everyone,

 

During a trip to Vienna I bought a new Cerruti 1881 Whale in an antique shop. It is a very nice pen, which leaves a thick, slightly watery broad line with decent shading. It is wonderful for signatures and fancy writing (or ink tests). Unfortunately, every now and then the flow increases rapidly and leaves a wooly, terribly wet line. Like the pen was um... vomiting with ink. I have to wipe the nib and the feed to avoid any unwanted ink drops. If I compare the tines to these shown here, I have a feeling that the pen has a 'decent tine spread'. The tines are relatively flexible, it is not a flex pen (not in a tiniest bit), but definitely not a nail. Well... it spreads like a plastic fork under some pressure.

 

It's a pity, because this is a very nice pen. Do you have any tips?

 

The inks used:

- Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Black

- Waterman Mysterious Blue

- Visconti Blue & Waterman Inspired Blue mix.

 

The problem occurs no matter what ink I use.

 

The pen doesn't take my standard converters, but is OK with cartridges (however it does skip sometimes). When used as a eyedropper (for a very short time, this is a metal pen), has a better flow and doesn't skip.

 

I will be really grateful for help!

Have a nice day

[Old_Inkyhand]

An update.

 

15 minutes of scrubbing my hands later, I am ready to say that the pen is practically unusable, as it spits the ink EVERYWHERE in a really wild manner. I wanted to make a few photographs, but it resulted in:

- two stained hands

- ink dots in the kitchen

- inky washbasin.

 

Should I just leave it inkless and follow the rule "cheap broken stuff is not worth the hassle"?

Pity, I don't like giving up.

[Old_Inkyhand]

Post Scriptum.

 

I don't like giving up, so I didn't give up. Well, I actually DID give up, but a few days ago I looked at the poor abandoned pen and realised how much I liked it. So I flushed it thoroughly, gave it a good overnight soak, disassembled, cleaned all the parts, blew a lot of air through the feed, made sure everything was dry, put every piece in a right place and installed a Waterman short cartridge. Works like a dream now. I hope it will stay this way.

[Flounder]

I'm not familiar with this pen, googling the name brings up a Jinhao 159. The 159 is an international cart pen with enough space inside for large international cartridges and standard size converters.

 

Your metering issues and inability to accept converters makes me think there is something wrong with the piercing nipple.

Edited July 19, 2016 by Flounder

[Old_Inkyhand]

Hi Flounder, thank you for your post. Yeah, it looks very similar to Jinhao 159. I've inspected the nipple under a loupe and it looks alright. I have a standard Waterman cartridge in it now and so far, so good. I may buy a 159 one day.