Feed Capacity

[dayrow]

Has anyone made a study of the ink capacities of two or more feeds?

 

I should probably say nib + feed units.

 

A forum search only turned up statements in the abstract, as when one poster asks about the ink capacity of a certain piston converter, and another is quick (and right) to remind them that the feed of the pen will make a difference in how much ink you can get from one fill. I have found no information, however, on which feeds are greediest.

This is more than idle curiosity. I only have one fountain pen now, and I like to use it as a high-capacity dipper. (Rather like the old Esterbrook Dip-less.) I'm curious how my dear little Sailor Lecoule stacks up, and whether I might like another pen better.

Intuitions and size/fin comparisons are fine, but if anyone has really looked into it that would be the jackpot.

Thank you!

Edited April 13, 2018 by dayrow

[Bo Bo Olson]

Feed buffering....not feed capacity, has to do with how many combs/rills are placed how....on the sides, half way around the bottom........and how deep or wide the slits/ ink channels on the top of the nib, matched with how the feed it's self is fed.

Plus how dry, wet or lubricated ink the nib and feed were designed for is. And how much flex a nib has.

A nail/manifold nib requires less ink, semi-nail, perhaps a tad more. Regular flex more than that. Semi-flex due to ease of tine flex is wetter than the same companies regular flex.

 

The old '20-30's superflex nibs needed to feed lots of ink to the nib so were slick....buffering done with ink channels or how the feed was fed, like the Parker Lucky S.

 

In the mid to late '30's Parker went over to stiffer nibs that needed buffering....combs/rills to slow down ink flow; in the nib was stiffer, so ink couldn't be slowed by a more flexible nib 'needing' more ink. The flow of the ink had to be slowed by buffering.

Sooner or later you are going to see off fat combs on the side of the nib, in attempt at buffering.

Soon there were more and thinner combs, to buffer with.

 

@1940 Parker wanted to do two things, sell a super fast drying ink, so needed a real complicated hidden from air collector that was nothing but lots of combs, to slow down the ink so it would dry fast.

The ink was a failure, in it ate older Parker feeds, and all other companies feeds too.

Maybe that was three things....I think but am not sure of exactly when Parker went over to plastic feeds...but I 'assume' during the P-51 era.

 

With the move to stiffer nibs and grinding factory stubs, the move away from nibs with more flex for line variation, demanded more buffering......that nibs with more flex and a faster feed for line variation.

 

Back then major companies made their own inks.....Pelikan made a dry ink, so a wetter nib and a simple 3 and then 4 comb....roughly sawn feed. To meet in the middle. (With all or all most all companies going over to many thin combs....looking at it from today's point of view, that is odd.....but it worked with the dry ink and an ebonite feed.****

 

Other folks did other wise matching their inks to their feed, Waterman had a wetter ink, and narrower nibs..to meet in the middle. I don't know how the late '30's -40's Waterman feeds were, in I don't collect them.

 

I tried to date exactly an early '50's MB......and there were so many tiny adjustments made to the feeds....I could date pens by that.............how much better it must have been I don't know....but had to have worked better with the ink, or they wouldn't have changed it just to keep up with the Jones.

They stayed with a slick middle with a couple ink channels and many more side combs buffering (instead of the later '30's few) for quite a long time, '50's-80's, 90s ? My 2006 Woolf has the many horizontal combs that is so common.

There were so many tiny improvements....only with Max's pictures of the years of the change, could someone 'normal', like me even notice there were tiny changes....how the inside of the feed looked I don't know.

 

Could be there were slight adjustments of ink....at the time of new feed development. The ink couldn't get too far in advance, in there were still a hell of a lot of older pens, and older feeds out there.

 

All that stuff with combs.....I've not looked at my P-75's guts in a long time, but my impression was there were very few combs,,,done more with the ink chnnels....hidden away, in the bottom of that feed is flat.

As flat as the feed of the Lamy Persona or Safari.

There is a great blog, where a Lamy feed engineer, explained the problems they had making plastic feed like ebonite.....and by chemically roughing up the feed....matched ebonite.

 

So Lamy went away from combs to buffer.....Pelikan went from 4 longitudinal comb buffering to regular like everyone else, many horizontal thin combs.

Edited April 15, 2018 by Bo Bo Olson

[minddance]

Please pardon my ignorance, do feeds have considerable capacities? Or is it the section that can contain considerable amount of ink?

 

In my experience, after priming the feed to saturate it with ink, the section (and feed?) empty themselves after writing very wet for about a line or two. And then the ink flow defaults back to the unprimed state, which is alot lighter and dryer, and stays this way.

 

If the feed and section have good capacity, would the pen always write very wet, like when they are fully saturated with ink? (In fact I am looking for a pen like this)

 

My pens, by default without manually twisting the piston/convertor, always only allow inks to pass through in controlled amounts and rate.

 

But I am sure there is 'capacity' in feeds, probably very tiny amount? There is always ink in the feed, isn't there? Would this qualify as 'capacity'?

 

Or does capacity mean a considerable 0.5ml to 1ml kind of reservoir capacity?

Edited April 19, 2018 by minddance

[Bo Bo Olson]

I have no real idea how much a feed itself will hold, but the more fin/combs the more ink is out of the barrel but the feed has combs to slow the flow of ink, in nails and other less than superflex nibs were slower needing less ink, needing more buffering.

The P-51 had a huge, huge collector....perhaps the most of any feed ever made. It was designed for a super fast drying ink, that failed horribly in it ate other feeds.

 

Having only one 100n; which is superflex, don't know what percentage of the '30's Pelikan nibs were superflex. That 100n and other older Pelikans had a thick combed rough ebonite feed, with three comb/rills.

The semi-flex nibs of the '50-65 era had four combs/rills, in semi-flex is a wet nib, but less demanding of ink flow than regular flex which was more buffered in US pens.

The '82-97 400's had the 'regular' many combs of the normal regular flex.

 

All that and then Lamy through chemical treatment has a nib for a nail (which needs less flow), like the Safari, or Persona, CPM-1 that is as smooth as the '30's and before fast feeds..........I don't see that on any other modern pen, but I'm not really up to date on modern, much.

Edited April 20, 2018 by Bo Bo Olson

[Karmachanic]

This does not answer your question, but you may find it helpful. A dip pens with feed that takes a #6 nib and give one the ability to write for a page or so on one dip.

 

https://pensivepens.com.au/products/serendipity-hybrid-pen

Ranga makes similar pens in two models

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/265884-a-dip-pen-with-a-difference/

[Fuellerfuehrerschein]

In a JoWo #6 nib unit the approximately 17.7 mm long 6 mm diameter cylindrical ink buffering part of the feed (Volume of a cylinder = π * r² * h) has about 0.5 ml capacity if there were no internal structures like fins involved. Assuming 50 to 40% of the volume is occupied with structures that leaves 0.25 to 0.3 ml volume for ink and air. That is a considerable ink buffering/expansion volume when compared to an international standard converter which has about 3 times that volume or even a large international standard ink cartridge which has about 1.5 ml volume.

 

 

For other feeds similar measurements, assumptions and calculations can be made.

Edited April 21, 2018 by Fuellerfuehrerschein

[ReadyFireAim]

To borrow from an aviation saying...

 

Ink in the pen is money in the bank.

Ink in the feed is money in your pocket.

 

Especially true for nibs that require quick bursts of ink.

I've found that there is no such thing as a feed with too much capacity.

 

The nib, feed & filling mechanism must work in perfect harmony for whatever type of writing they were designed for.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Ink in the pen is money in the bank.

Ink in the feed is money in your pocket.""""""

 

Solid post.

 

 

 

If the rest of the combo....feed buffer amount & material, nib and the flow needed for it, are balanced, there is nothing to worry about.

 

In fact up to this thread, I'd never even really thought about how much ink does a feed hold.......outside the fabled P-51. But I don't change nibs on my pens, unless it is broken, then it's only does it fit....not if the nib a match for feed flow..........been lucky with my used pens.

[max dog]

I dont know about volume capacity numbers, but from a practical perspective by dipping the nib in ink, I got about half a page on a standard letter size page with my #10 size Pilot FA nib while flexing it for maximum line variation. Under normal writing I could probably go a whole page. With my vintage Waterman 52 #2 nib, I have no choice but to dip it as it has no sac at the moment. I get about a quarter page (8 lines) while flexing for maximum line variation. Hope this helps.

[praxim]

I noticed recently with both a Montblanc and an old Pelikan that after I could no longer see ink in the window, rocking the pen, I was still able to write at least an A5 page.