Adjusting Flow On Pilot Varsity

[lurcho]

There have always been great comments on the Varsity (or V-Pen in Europe), and I once had an astoundingly beautiful nib on one until I ruined it. The flow was wet, the point exceptionaly smooth.

 

But I may have bought a bad batch, as I have three or four of these pens that barely emit any ink. I'm not bad at adjusting nibs and feeds for increased flow, alignment, etc., but I've never got very far with tine-gapping on the Varsity, nor with any other tweak.

 

Can anyone advise?

 

Thanks in advance.

[sodul]

The only V-Pen in my possession is 20 years old, so I don't know how the current ones are made. On mine there is felt going all the way from the ink reservoir to the tip of the nib which means the flow is actually regulated by the felt more so than by the traditional gap between the tines. If your pens are just plain unusable, maybe you could very carefully pull the nib out and check that ink is actually flowing under it and then if so adjust the nib by itself. I've always had much much better result adjusting nibs outside of the pen.

[mhguda]

Sometimes it's dried out; you could try opening from the back (the little plastic plug) and adding a few drops of water.

[sodul]

If the problem is "drying up", just adding water to the tip might be enough. I have a red ink that's tend to dry on the tip after a few days, I used to twist the converter to get wet ink to the nib, but now I just add a drop of water to the nib, let it 'drink' it for a few seconds and the pen just writes.