Pelikan 400Nn Very Dry Nib

[WJM]

I have a problem. Again...

 

My 400nn is horribly dry. If this was a modern pen with a steel nib I would probably just try to adjust it, but I'm not sure what to do with this one.

 

First I filled the pen with Pelikan Blue Black and it barely wrote at all. Then I tried Waterman Serenity Blue and now it's possible to write, but only with pressure, and much more than should be required. It's dry, inconsistent and skips a lot, especially on horizontal strokes.

 

It's a semi-flex OM nib. One thing is that I do not have experience with obliques, and I thought that part of the problem may be that I don't hold the pen properly. Indeed under some angles the flow is a bit better, but it's still not a proper one anyone would expect.

 

Without any pressure there is hardly any ink flow. Flexing works very nice, the feed keeps up. So I guess the problem is rather the nib than the feder.

 

What should I do with this?

[Bo Bo Olson]

Take a rubber baby bulb, cut it so it fits the end of the nib/feed....fill a bowl with 10% non-sudsing house hold ammonia and or some commercial pen flush and flush your nib and feed ...could even leave the screw in section in a shot glass of it for a while.

 

Use a sonic bath...........................last, if those don't work, take the nib off feed....and scrub the top of the feed in it seems your feed is clogged.

 

An oblique nib must be held canted to the paper.

Hold it to the light to see if the grind is 15 or 30 degrees.

If 15 degrees, post the cap so the clip is aligned @ the middle between the slit and the right shoulder of the nib. Grip your pen while it is in the air....ignoring the nib but using only the clip to show you were to grip the pen. The nib will be placed canted properly on the paper................do nothing else.....don't twist your finger or hand or hang from a chandelier....just write regular.

 

If your nib is one of the rarer 30 degree grinds, align the clip to the outside right edge of the nib......then grip the pen...in the air. When you put the pen to paper you will have the proper angle of cant so you can write with no problems.

 

An OB is easiest to learn semi-flex oblique with, in the sweet spot is widest. If you make a mistake and hold it regular ...it's only a tad scratchy.

If an OM or OF the nib will be scratchy.

 

A while back, having inked my vintage Mercedes pen, had forgotten it was an oblique....it was OM and it was scratchy....I was even reaching for the micro-mesh before :doh:I realized it was oblique held wrong and not scratchy at all.

Edited January 6, 2018 by Bo Bo Olson

[sargetalon]

Sorry that you're having trouble. Is this pen new to you? Was it writing well previously? If you've done the basics like flushing repeatedly, then I might try to floss the slit. I use a thin brass shim. May have some old ink dried up in there fouling things up for you.

[WJM]

I gave the nib section a good cleaning, and the result is, unfortunately, rather dissapointing. While it is better than it was, the flow is still not very good, unless a pressure is put on the nib.

I found one spot on which I get a more satysfying ink flow, when I hold the nib on a very high angle to the paper. I thought perhaps I found how this pen is supposed to be held, but I think not. Unfortunately writing this way causes the tines of the nib to go slightly out of alignment and the writing gets scratchy.

Could it be the tines are joined to tightly?

[Tresconik]

 

Could it be the tines are joined to tightly?

 

This appears to be it. The fact that more ink flows when you press down indicates it's not a problem with the feed.

[WJM]

What I wonder is that what should I do with it? My standard method of dealing with problem like this is the nib on the nail method (as demonstrated by SBRE Brown), but I hesitate to meddle like this with a vintage semi-flex. Not to mention that it seems to me that a flexy gold nib would be much more resistant to such things than a stiff steel nib... so what would be the proper way to handle that?

Edited January 9, 2018 by WJM

[inkstainedruth]

That is really unusual for Pelikans. Most of mine are wet to super wet writers, especially the older/vintage ones.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[BlueJ]

Ruth, are you familiar with obliques? You need to pay attention not only to the angle of the pen to the vertical, but also rotation of the pen about its axis. The whole front edge of the tip needs to be in contact with the paper for smooth writing and proper ink flow. Bo Bo Olsen and others have a lot of posts about it.

 

Flexible nibs usual get wetter as you flex them. It may be that the feed channels are blocked, as others have said. This may be a case where a trip to a nibmeister is in order.

[WJM]

Flexible nibs usual get wetter as you flex them. It may be that the feed channels are blocked, as others have said. This may be a case where a trip to a nibmeister is in order.

 

Yes, I get the flow when I flex, or in general press on the nib.

[Bo Bo Olson]

There is no difference in taking your thumb nails putting them under the shoulders and spreading the tines in semi/maxi-semi-flex nibs than steel..................done as little as possible....the thought...'did I actually spread the tines some???? Test.........try again, and again, just a little, tiny bit. Test.

It only takes a touch or so.... Just a wee bit.

 

The 14 K Pelikan nib is robust....they be they semi or maxi have survived my writing with them.

I've only tried that perhaps once......and it would have been a semi-flex nib in I'd not discovered maxi-semi-flex yet.

It must have worked in I don't remember having to do that again. (nor did I have to do that with another pen....If I did it was then no big deal....not enough to remember...but I could have..............might well have. But by then it was no big deal.................I do know I've not had to do that often...perhaps twice....pretty sure it was with two pens, but it was a long time ago.

Just a wee bit.

Edited January 10, 2018 by Bo Bo Olson

[Tweel]

There is no difference in taking your thumb nails putting them under the shoulders and spreading the tines in semi/maxi-semi-flex nibs than steel..................done as little as possible....the thought...'did I actually spread the tines some???? Test.........try again, and again, just a little, tiny bit. Test.

It only takes a touch or so.... Just a wee bit.

 

Here I think you're referring to John Mottishaw's technique, item # 5 ("Wet Nibs Write Smoothly") on the following web page:

 

https://www.nibs.com/blog/nibster-writes/smoothing-scratchy-nibs

 

That's how I do it, too.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Great link, explained by someone who does it often, and not back in the last ice age, like me....with picture.

[Burtbricker]

 

I gave the nib section a good cleaning, and the result is, unfortunately, rather dissapointing. While it is better than it was, the flow is still not very good, unless a pressure is put on the nib.

I found one spot on which I get a more satysfying ink flow, when I hold the nib on a very high angle to the paper. I thought perhaps I found how this pen is supposed to be held, but I think not. Unfortunately writing this way causes the tines of the nib to go slightly out of alignment and the writing gets scratchy.

Could it be the tines are joined to tightly?

 

I just had to open up the tines on a pen. This help the flow a lot. I did clean the pen fist before doing this. Cleaning did help some but in the end only adjusting the nib gave me a good result.

[WJM]

I'm getting really confused with this pen...

 

I tried spreading the tines. It improved the ink flow, just a little bit. Enough to make the pen usable with a wetter ink (Waterman Serenity Blue again), but with drier Pelikan 4001 inks it was still too dry to write comfortably.

 

Since I happen to own a spare Pelikan 120/140 feder I decided to try changing the feder.

 

I still wouldn't call this pen a gusher but I definitely get a better ink flow than before. Especially while flexing it's clearly visible that the line is much wetter. Even the sound the nib makes when writing has changed.

 

So I think it was the feder all along... or was it? I can also see that I positioned the nib a bit differently on the new feder than it was on the previous one. A tiny bit longer part of the nib sticks out above it... it's like a 1 mm difference or less. Could this impact the ink flow?

 

Now I wonder whether there was something wrong with the original feder and what should I do with it....

Edited January 29, 2018 by WJM

[AL01]

Oh yeah it can!

 

But I believe a pen writes wetter if the feed is closer to the nib.

 

Is the original feed the EXACT SAME as the replacement feed?

 

Maybe it's damaged or clogged?

 

And BTW: having a Pelikan dry is like having a gusher Pelikan ink. That just doesn't compute in my head.

Edited January 30, 2018 by AL01

[WJM]

No, the replacement is a few mm shorter, but this can be seen only when it's removed from the pen. It's a Pelikan 120/140 type feder.

Edited January 30, 2018 by WJM

[Oobly]

Sounds like you may have a bit of a blockage in the original feed. Could be from old ink that dried in the feed. I'd soak the feed in water for a few days, shaking it around now and then to loosen up any debris, then dry it on a paper towel and reinstall it. For good measure you could also heat set it with hot water, but I've found most Pelikan feeds don't need this.

 

For adjusting the flow, feed out towards tip = wetter, feed in towards body = drier.

 

Also, are you rotating the pen to match the oblique angle of the nib? This takes a little practice to get right and can result in poor flow if it meets the paper at the wrong angle. The amount you need to rotate the pen depends on the obliqueness angle (either 15 or 30 degrees) and the wear on the nib. Easiest with broader oblique nibs, but not too hard on OM with some practice, and the line variation you get is lovely.

[inkstainedruth]

Ruth, are you familiar with obliques? You need to pay attention not only to the angle of the pen to the vertical, but also rotation of the pen about its axis. The whole front edge of the tip needs to be in contact with the paper for smooth writing and proper ink flow. Bo Bo Olsen and others have a lot of posts about it.

 

Flexible nibs usual get wetter as you flex them. It may be that the feed channels are blocked, as others have said. This may be a case where a trip to a nibmeister is in order.

 

I have a 1950s era 400 with an OB nib, but I haven't used it much. I've only run 4001 Brilliant Black through the pen, IIRC, and while it wasn't as juicy a nib as my 1990s era M400, it was nowhere as dry as the nib on my Platinum Plaisir, and 4001 BB behaved very well in the pen.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[WJM]

My struggle with this pen continues. Hopefully, it's at its end.

 

First I thought it was the nib, then I thought it was the feed, now I suspect it could have beet neither of them, but rather their alingement.

 

I noticed that there definitely is one problem with the nib - one of the tines is a bit higher than the other. I made a few unsuccesfull tries to align them using my fingernails and then I took a bit different approach.

 

I got back to the original feed (after a bit of flushing with just warm water, now more out of habit than hope it would do something) and experimented with how the tines align, depending on how the feed is positioned. The best result turned out when the feed is set up as much thowards the tip of the nib as possible.

 

And accordingly to Oobly's explanation - this also helped the ink flow. A lot. I don't know whether the reason of bad flow was bad alingment of the tines of the nib, or bad alingment of the nib against the feed, or whatever else, but now it seems to write well, not just tolerably, but how I expected it to write from the beggining. I have it filled with Pelikan 4001 Blue-Black (so a really dry ink) at the moment and the flow is just normal, not dry, not overly wet, it is just how it should be.

 

How it looks:

 

Edited February 3, 2018 by WJM