I Want To Love My New Safari...but It Isn't Making It Easy.

[drandall01]

so i bought a safari fine off amazon and it arrived without any of the normally included paperwork. it also was scratchy and dry. probably used or worse, counterfeit. lesson learned i thought...so i returned the pen and bought another one from gouet...this time in medium.

 

the second one was better, but till scratchy, still dry. i flushed the pen, tried a bit of alignment, separated the tines a bit and did some brown paper scribbling.

 

now it writes better. decently even...but not as well as my TWSBI Eco or or even my Pilot Metro.

 

i like the design. i like the toughness of the ABS plastic. i even kinda like the triangular grip...but why does it take so much effort to get a pen that doesnt disappoint? i know there are people who love their safaris...and I'd love to be one of them...but that $15 it will take to send the pen back to Lamy gets me 30% of the way to a faber-castell loom. Should i hang in there or cut my losses and run?

 

thoughts?

Edited March 31, 2017 by drandall01

[DrDebG]

I have several Lamys - Safaris (3), Al-Stars (2), Studio and Lamy 2000. I love them all. I have also purchased additional nibs for the Safari and Al-Stars. Out of all of them, I have only had one scratchy nib - it is a stub nib. All of the others are wonderful.

 

But, with that said, you must clean them thoroughly before using the first time. I have also found that it takes some time for the steel nibs to get "broken in" - usually several pages. But after that, they are great writers.

 

I have a couple of Pilot Metros, two TWSBIs and one Faber Castell Loom. I prefer the Lamys over all of these, and the Pilot Metros I prefer the least.

[Astronymus]

Lamy's fine nibs are often on the scratchy side. It is possible that you have to tune the tines a little bit. There are several threads about that around with explanations how to do this gently and fruitfully.

[Mike 59]

Hi, With new fountain pens, I see them as a good starting point, which will be better with some time and effort.

I've found with new pens that they are always better writers following a good clean, especially the feed and the underside of the nib, using warm water with a (one) drop of dish washing up detergent added.

First remove the barrel and refill.

Using an old toothbrush kept just for this, I would pull the nib from the Safari/AL-star/Nexx, and working over a newspaper, (not the kitchen sink), I scrub the underside of the nib, and the part of the feed that now shows without the nib being there.

I also put the whole grip section into the water and let it flow through a dozen times.

Fit the nib again and stand the section with nib upside down on a folded up paper towel for 20 minutes, to wick out the water.

Look at the nib under a magnifier if possible, check that the two sides of the nib are level.

It's possible to adjust the level using a fingernail, but care is needed, and less than 1mm at a time, several attempts may be needed.

Refit the refill, give the pen a minute for the ink to flow through, then test on paper.

I have charcoal Safari in medium nib, which I bought in 2012, used it often, I'm not sure it could be any more reliable or smoother, but it did take some time, and several dozen pages of writing.

Edited March 31, 2017 by Mike 59

[Astronymus]

I recently readjusted a fine nib on an Al-Star and it writes like a charm now.

[drandall01]

ive examined the nib under a loupe and the tines seem straight to me. ive flushed the pen with some pen cleaner and tried to smooth the nib with some brown paper.

 

the pen still starts hard, is a bit scratchy with mediocre flow. i suspect the feed. ive ordered a new nib since ive tampered with the original one. if that doesn't solve the problem, it will be going badk to lamy for servicing. seems like an absurd series of events to get the most from a $25 pen.

 

i really want to have a good lamy experience but like so many others, i must report my experiences as hit and miss. : (

[Astronymus]

Straight. Did you check if the tines are parallel? Mine were too close together towards the tip. The pen needed some pressure to start.

Too far apart is also possible. The the pen most likely wouldn't write at all.

[Selous]

I love Safaris; the style, efficiency, effectiveness, the lot. But I can't write with them, because I just don't hold a pen the way the chamfered front end dictates I should. If I hold it like that the nib just doesn't meet the paper right and it scratches and splutters across the page. I have to hold it uncomfortably with my fingers on the raised bits rather than the sculpted bits. Works then, but of course that misses the point, literally and figuratively. And I would just love to make it work; cocking a snook at pens many times more expensive and fussy, but it just doesn't do it for me. If Mr Lamy would just produce a model with a tapered circular cross section I for one would beat a path to his door. Ho, hum. You may be experiencing the same problem, perhaps? Regards

[synerr]

so i bought a safari fine off amazon and it arrived without any of the normally included paperwork. it also was scratchy and dry. probably used or worse, counterfeit. lesson learned i thought...so i returned the pen and bought another one from gouet...this time in medium.

 

I currently have 3 Lamys, a Charcoal Safari F, a Vista EF and a Studio F. I also had two other Safaris that I passed along and two others that I returned on receipt as the nibs were totally rubbish.

 

All three pens needed a thorough flush to work well. That's a fair bit of time flushing warm water through the section with a bulb syringe. And the Safari and the Vista nibs needed a bit of work.

 

Read somewhere that Studio nibs are better QAed or tuned. Despite my experience I am not convinced.

 

 

 

Would I recommend a Safari? Definitely, but, my 2c:

1) seems that only the charcoal maintains a reasonable level of finish after a few months of use

2) don't buy it online. Pick one up at a store where you may have the option to try out the nib. There seems to be a lot of hit and miss in the nib QA.

 

 

Would I recommend the Studio? I find the section and the weight very comfortable for long writing sessions. But, despite all my efforts to keep my pen pristine the finish seems to scratch and 'shine' quite easily.

 

 

Conclusion is that if I had to start all over I would stick to a couple of Safari charcoals with carefully picked nibs.

 

 

I've got an F-C loom too in Medium. I think it's a great pen but comparable to a decently tuned Safari nib in performance.

[FOUR X FOUR]

Hey drandall, keep playing with the tines. You'll get it right. Even though you can't see it, it's the tines.

[drandall01]

Hey drandall, keep playing with the tines. You'll get it right. Even though you can't see it, it's the tines.

how right you were! i kept adjusting the tines, even after i thought they were straight. i got to a place where th scratch disappeared and the flow appears much improved. i'm not quite ready to call it fixed yet, but i think it may be. i intend to write with it tonight wnd hopefully all will go well. i'd be grateful not to have to send it bsck to lamy.

 

there is something and about spending $15 to send a brand new $25 pen in for servicing that i find irrationally annoying.

[MuddyWaters]

I was also disappointed with the flow of these pens. They are too dry, whether the medium or fine, and the nibs are the most rigid I have ever tried, making adjustment really difficult (in fact I couldn't make my Lamy Al-Star wetter unlike my Kaweco Sport, which also came way too dry)

[ink-syringe]

Weird. Have had dozens and dozens of Safari/joy/vista/alstar pens and they have been the most consistently good out of the box modern cheap/mid level pens I have owned not made by Pilot (which is w/o peer imo).

[Astronymus]

I've never got a dry Lamy Safari or AL-Star. Only my Joy wouldn't write good with Pelikan Black. But writes like a charm with J.Herbin Perle Noir.

[MuddyWaters]

wet/dry is a subjective measure. let's just say i was not satisfied with the saturation of the ink that was left on the page by the pen. pilot metropolitan's flow is the gold standard for cheap pens imo, and it's unaffected by the finer nib

[btb01]

My first fountain pen (purchased several years ago) was a Lamy Safari. I bought it with the converter, and a bottle of Noodler's #41 Brown. I used it a little when I first bought it, then sat it aside, and eventually gave it a thorough cleaning and put it away for several years. I recently decided that I wanted to give fountain pens another go, so I got the Safari back out and inked it up again. The issue that I've had with the pen (when I first purchased it, and again recently) is that the ink would skip pretty regularly on certain pen strokes. For example, when I write a lower-case "f" I make an upstroke followed quickly by a longer downstroke. With the Safari, the ink would skip on that downstroke more often than not. I also had skipping trouble with a large, looping capital B in my signature, where the ink would skip on the second loop.

 

I did a little online research, tried widening the channel between the tines a little, did my best to make sure the tines were even, and thoroughly flushed the pen using warm water and a drop of dish soap, but when I inked it up again, I still had the same problem. (I also tried a different ink, Noodler's Bad Green Gator, and experienced the same skipping as with the #41 Brown.). Finally I decided to buy a new nib in the same size to see if it made a difference. That arrived this afternoon, and I inked the pen up (having, again, thoroughly flushed it and allowed it to dry a couple days while waiting on the new nib). It's definitely better. The upstroke-downstroke skipping is pretty much gone. On the loops, the line still thins a little where it used to skip, but at least there's ink on the paper.

 

I'll have to write with it a little more -- I only did a little today, because I had ordered a TWSBI 580 that showed up in the mail at the same time, and my desire to use the new pen trumped fiddling with the old one. I also got a bottle of Noodler's Air Corp blue-black, which I'm using in the TWSBI, but I stuck with the #41 Brown in the Safari so that the comparison from old nib to replacement nib was an apples-to-apples comparison.