Pilot Sf Nib Dry Upstrokes

[sapient]

Hello,

I recently got a Pilot Custom Heritage 91 with an SF nib. This nib has a great wetness variation between up and down strokes. Down strokes are wet and juicy, even with a light hand; upstrokes are extremely dry, to the point of skipping, even if I apply a little pressure (pressing harder on an upstroke with a soft nib is impossible, it will just get scratchy). Initial upstrokes (not following a downstroke) are especially problematic as you can see in the photo bellow.

The vertical lines are all upstrokes except the first and last. You can see the initial "h"s missing parts of the upstrokes, but the nib never left the paper. The ink is Noodler's El Lawrence.

My question is: Is this expected behavior?

If not, how can it be corrected?

[LizEF]

First, I have no idea, but while we're waiting for someone who does, have you tried different writing angles? I have vague memories of once encountering a similar problem (with a different brand) and discovering that it liked some angles and not others. If yours does this, it might help find the solution... Just a thought.

[Tas]

I have Sailor's Sei Boku in my F nibbed version. Yes, the vertical upstoke like you've shown is much less wet, however I think this lends itself to some beautiful handwriting for those that can acheive such things.

 

http://www.taskyprianou.com/fpn_pilot_custom_91_f_nib.jpeg

 

I would clean it out and try another ink, or two, in your pen. I can't recall an issue with mine.

Best of luck. Keep us posted.

[sapient]

First, I have no idea, but while we're waiting for someone who does, have you tried different writing angles? I have vague memories of once encountering a similar problem (with a different brand) and discovering that it liked some angles and not others. If yours does this, it might help find the solution... Just a thought.

 

Yep, I did. I was careful to do my sample with the best possible angle (at least for the vertical lines).

 

I have Sailor's Sei Boku in my F nibbed version. Yes, the vertical upstoke like you've shown is much less wet, however I think this lends itself to some beautiful handwriting for those that can acheive such things.

 

http://www.taskyprianou.com/fpn_pilot_custom_91_f_nib.jpeg

 

Although there is a definite difference between your up and down strokes, your upstrokes are a lot wetter than mine and you have no skipping. The difference with mine is huge in my mind - yours looks what I would like mine to look like.

 

I would clean it out and try another ink, or two, in your pen. I can't recall an issue with mine.

 

 

I have tried 4 different inks thus far (pilot blue, sheaffer green and apache sunset were the other 3); El Lawrence might be a bit drier on the upstrokes but it is definitely wetter on the down strokes than the others - kinda weird behavior. Still my upstrokes were way drier than yours with all inks. Of course my nib is a soft fine, so its not completely comparable. I am curious to hear from people that have SF nibs.

Edited November 2, 2018 by sapient

[Tas]

 

Yep, I did. I was careful to do my sample with the best possible angle (at least for the vertical lines).

 

 

Although there is a definite difference between your up and down strokes, your upstrokes are a lot wetter than mine and you have no skipping. The difference with mine is huge in my mind - yours looks what I would like mine to look like.

 

 

I have tried 4 different inks thus far (pilot blue, sheaffer green and apache sunset were the other 3); El Lawrence might be a bit drier on the upstrokes but it is definitely wetter on the down strokes than the others - kinda weird behavior. Still my upstrokes were way drier than yours with all inks. Of course my nib is a soft fine, so its not completely comparable. I am curious to hear from people that have SF nibs.

 

Pilot blue should not have given you any problems. I'm sorry. I know you'll get to the bottom of this and soon have a marvellous pen.

[JunkyardSam]

First test the pen with a Pilot ink like Pilot Black, Iroshizuku Yamabudo, etc... just to see if using a wetter ink helps. If not, then it's likely the tines are touching at the tip and the fix is as simple as reducing that tension or creating a very very very small gap (~.001 inch.)

 

Here's a photo of a Custom Heritage 91 I got that was unusably dry when I got it. The tines were touching rather tightly at the tip. Once I corrected that, as shown in the photo, it wrote perfectly in all directions.

 

https://imgur.com/a/owGN5mZ

 

The most common diagnosis for this is:

 

Drag the pen by its tail in all directions to see if it produces a line under its own weight. No pressure. Drag down, up, left, right. A correctly tuned pen should produce a moderate (but not overly wet) line in all directions.

 

If yours doesn't, now try some downstrokes with a little bit of pressure - just enough to open the tines a little bit. Do you suddenly get flow?

 

If so, it's time for the final test which requires a loupe.

 

Remove the nib and feed. Dry the nib. Hold it up to the light of your phone - do you see a VERY THIN sliver of light through the tip?

 

If not then you know your problem. Your tines are touching and restricting flow on upstrokes. Correct that issue and your pen will write beautifully.

 

Richard Binder has said the only time it's normal for tines to be touching is with a soft nib... But I believe he mainly means more of a truly soft vintage flex nib. Modern soft nibs like Pilot's SF tend to be firm enough that you'll have dry upstrokes if the tines are touching.

 

If the diagnosis is correct - you would probably benefit from at LEAST reducing the tension at the tip... I personally prefer a gap exactly like shown at my link: https://imgur.com/a/owGN5mZ

 

Below that you'll find links to resources explaining how to correct this issue.

 

I use a combination of the SBREBrown "make a nib wetter in seconds" technique, pulling the tines apart at the shoulders, and the brass shim method (though I prefer thin index cards rather than metal.) I use a combination of methods because the "nib wetter in seconds" can cause the nib to pull away from the feed if overapplied. Pulling the tines apart at the shoulders can result in canyon or inverted canyon issues if improperly done, and those aren't fun to correct. And the brass shim method is usually good on modern nibs but you have to be careful so at not to apply pressure to the tipping material, or do any motions that bend the tips of the tines outward left or right.

 

And finally -- this is probably obvious, but if you're not comfortable doing this sort of thing -- a nibmeister like nibgrinder.com will sort this out for you for a modest fee.

 

My 3776 Century SF and SM were both completely unusable on arrival. They wouldn't even produce much ink on a downstroke. I used these methods to get them writing well and they've been great ever since. No side effects -- the SF is still finer than my Falcon SEF... it just writes now, in all directions.

 

Good luck.

 

PS. If you've never done anything like this before - go through the process with a cheap steel nib first so you don't wreck your Pilot nib. This kind of work isn't hard if you're used to detailed work with your hands... but for someone impatient or heavy handed -- just send it to a nibmeister.

[sapient]

Thanks for your reply JunkyardSam.

It does seem that the tines are touching at the very tip (where the tipping material is) - though the tines of many of my pens are touching without such dryness. I have used the "press down" method on chinese steel nibs with great results. However the softness-springiness of the SF nib means that this method does not work here - I 've tried it and the tines just go back to where they were after I let go. I do not have brass shims and I would be afraid of damaging the nib using them; a sharp metal object does not seem safe to me around a soft gold nib. I will try the index card method you described on imgur and let you know. Is it necessary to remove the nib, though? The tip of the tines that need to be separated is not obstructed by the feed, so it seems I could insert a piece of paper or plastic between them without removing the nib. Is there some reason for removing the nib?

As for sending the pen to a nibmeister, that is not an option, for several reasons: there are no nibmeisters or any kind of fountain pen repairmen in my country at all. The cost of sending the pen abroad and having it worked on by a nibmeister would be more than the cost of the pen.

Edited November 12, 2018 by sapient

[sapient]

So, I tried inserting a plastic film between the tines, for hours at a time, but the result is the same as with the "press down" method: as soon as the film is removed, the tines snap back to their original position with an audible "click". The soft nib is just too springy. Pilot's soft nibs are springier than Platinum's, so I guess that is why these methods worked with jankyardsam's Platinum soft nibs, but do not seem to work on my Pilot SF.

I tried yet another ink, too, a diamine, but the problem persists.

I guess that just leaves removing the nib and trying to yank the tines apart by brute force... I am a bit hesitant, but I will try it when the ink runs out.

[A Smug Dill]

 

I am curious to hear from people that have SF nibs.

 

[minddance]

people want shading, Pilot heard it and answers.

 

nib work is usually required with Pilot gold nibs (medium and finer) unless one uses absorbent papers and/or wet inks and/or writes slowly and presses hard.

 

u need to constantly loosen the tension in the tines. nib yoga. but then even with a gap in the tip, ink still won't roar out of the pen. there will still an ink flow limit. and there's only so much gap in tines allowed before capillary action stops.

 

yes, these nibs are resilient and go back to their original form. good thing about it is tt they don't easily get sprung or misaligned. but adjustment is usually more tedious.

 

inks like diamine midnight and herbin rouge grenat helped me a lot. with such a dry pen, pilot blue and some lighter iroshizukus won't be legible. u can also forget about inks like scabiosa, alt goldgrun, diamine sepia, meadow, autumn oak.

 

it is begging for dark and flowy inks.

Edited November 18, 2018 by minddance

[A Smug Dill]

nib work is usually required with Pilot gold nibs (medium and finer) unless one uses absorbent papers and/or wet inks and/or writes slowly and presses hard.

We have eleven Pilot Capless fountain pens in our household, all with 18K gold Fine nibs, and we have written with ten of them (as well as two 'spare' Capless nib assemblies, in EF and M grades respectively). All of them wrote smoothly from the get-go, and the only problem I had with two of them was that the Medium nibs was too broad and one of the Fine nibs was too wet – because, as I later discovered, a particle of grit or some such was stuck in it, and it was eventually dislodged the nib then performed just fine.

 

I also have a Pilot Elite 95S with a 14K gold EF nib, a Pilot Custom 74 with a 14K gold SF nib (writing sample shown above), a Pilot Custom Heritage 91 with a 14K gold SFM nib, four Pilot 78G pens with plated steel F nibs, and a MR Metropolitan with a steel F nib, with which I've written. (For clarity, that means I'm not counting all the Pilot pens I have just received on Friday but yet to open.) They wrote fine out of the box.

 

So, I'm not sure what you meant by, "nib work is usually required". I mostly use Rhodia No.16 notepads with 80gsm paper, and that isn't exactly absorbent paper.

Edited November 18, 2018 by A Smug Dill

[JulieParadise]

Based on your experience it might be true for you that your Pilots gave you some trouble, minddance, but my experience was fairly different and more like A Smug Dill's.

 

The about 30 Pilot pens I have (had) mostly wrote perfectly out of the box, reliable and within a satifying range of moderate to wet.

 

My children (9 & 10 yo) and I use about a dozen Pilot Petit-1/3 regularly, these do never dry out and are amazingly great for their prize.

 

Pilot Kakünos make for awesome gifts to my children's friends, no complaints so far.

 

Penmanships and Plumixes work and work and work. I only sold these off because the shape of the pen is uncomfortable for me.

 

Two Pilot Preras were sold because their niche in my collection was filled with Pelikans of the M300 size and an OMAS Dama. The fine nibs on the Preras I had were perfect and are revered by their current owners.

 

My E95s is a perfectly reliable writer with one of my most pleasant gold F nibs out of the box, seals for ages and handles every dry and driest ink with bravour. Its vintage counterpart Elite does the same.

 

I had two Custom 74 with an SF nib, both I did like a lot nib-wise and only sold to have money for a Pilot Falcon.

 

Left in my collection is that Falcon with a super fine yet very pleasant and always reliable SEF nib, perfectly tuned and balanced. It works with almost every ink I put in it, not even heavy sheeners like Organics Studio Walden or Diamine November Rain can stop it, only shimmer inks will start clogging it after weeks.

 

So are my two CH 912 with FA nibs. Perfectly working and, despite reading it repeatedly, not running dry because of an insufficient feed. These can be flexed for pages and pages, although I do have to admit that you have to be delicate and surely also have to un-flex inbetween your writing having a rhythm of flexing for downstrokes and releasing all tension for upstrokes, of course. The feed on mine is perfectly sufficient to use these and comparable to my most beloved vintage pens, two safeties with flexible nibs. I see no need to upgrade the feeds to ebonite and I do even use these CH 912s with sheeners and shimmer inks.

 

Two of these needed nib work: The vintage Elite needed work because the tines were twisted from what I suspect was a nib accident, and one of the CH 912s, which nib tips were bent and split apart. It was bought used and surely abused. I pulled the nib and feed out, bent the tip back in shape and also cleaned the feed which had dried up ink in it. Now it works with whatever I throw at it, just like its brother which I bought new and did not even flush before first use.

 

To sum it up: The only 2 Pilot pens I came across that needed work were abused by previous owners, all others were bought new and worked/still work out of the box. Out of over 30 pens!

 

Edit: I even forgot to mention my two Décimo/Capless nibs. One M came with a pen and I only did not like it because it was to broad for my taste, objectively it was nice, the F I got as a spare nib is so nice and fine and a perfect example of Pilot's ability to make even pretty fine nibs so that their ink flow is balanced, both reliable and wet enough yet not broadening the line too much.

Edited November 18, 2018 by JulieParadise

[minddance]

to clarify, by "Pilot gold nibs", I meant the custom heritage 74/91 range.

 

elite and capless and vanishing point are different from custom heritage.

 

pilot custom heritage finer nibs are the problematic child.

 

steel nibs are different so there's no need for me to mention.

[minddance]

similar problems with Pilot Custom Heritage dry up stroke can be found easily on this forum, just search.

[A Smug Dill]

similar problems with Pilot Custom Heritage dry up stroke can be found easily on this forum, just search.

What would that establish, even if it turns up two, three, or several complaints of the sort on FPN? Even if you can point us to a hundred FPN members complaining about the gold nibs on their Pilot Custom fountain pens, that would be totally insufficient from establishing that "nib work is usually required with Pilot gold nibs (medium and finer)", considering the thousands of such nibs and pens Pilot sells every year.

[penzel_washinkton]

This is a common issue and I really believe that this should not be counted as a defect.

Japanese / Chinese letters don't really need an upstroke in their writing hence some of them has that tight tipped nib that causes the upstroke to be very dry.

 

I also have the CH 91 that have this "issue" and I just opened the tines a little bit

Edited November 19, 2018 by penzel_washinkton

[A Smug Dill]

Japanese / Chinese letters don't really need an upstroke in their writing

I can't think of anything in the English alphabet that requires a perfectly vertical upstroke either.

 

The bottom stroke in the radicals 冫 and 氵, which form part of many characters in kanji and hanzi, are upstrokes if you call the first part of the trajectory in a cursive minuscule ℓ an upstroke. Come to think of it, ひ, の, ゆ, etc. in hiragana also contain upstrokes.

Edited November 19, 2018 by A Smug Dill

[penzel_washinkton]

I can't think of anything in the English alphabet that requires a perfectly vertical upstroke either.

 

The bottom stroke in the radicals 冫 and 氵, which form part of many characters in kanji and hanzi, are upstrokes if you call the first part of the trajectory in a cursive minuscule ℓ an upstroke. Come to think of it, ひ, の, ゆ, etc. in hiragana also contain upstrokes.

 

Not when you are writing in cursive, it also depends on your writing style regarding perfectly vertical upstroke or slanted ones

 

Maybe I should reword then, instead not needing then not many require upstroke.

Edited November 19, 2018 by penzel_washinkton

[minddance]

this is a common problem with pilot - specifically the custom heritage series 74, 91, 92, 912, 742, 743, 823. and shipping their pens with tines vengefully squeezed tightly together doesn't help. I have come across similar problems with pilot custom heritage nibs of different widths, including broad. it was a terribly dry broad nib with very uneven amounts of ink onto paper. unusable, in my opinion. but if one enjoys very dramatic shading, that could be the pen for it.

 

the BB nib is another thing, it is everything I wanted: the nib tipping shape is very different and the flow splendid.

 

just open the tines carefully and conscientiously until the desired result is attained. it can take days or a few occasions.

 

and use darker (as shown in examples above, now you know why lighter inks aren't shown) and flow-ier inks for legibility at a distance.

 

opening tines using different methods can have downsides: misalignment of tines or inverted canyon syndrome. if you are unwilling to take the risk, a nibmeister is your best friend. or if you decide the pen is not worth the effort and money, return the pen.

 

always buy pens from vendors who have good exchange/return policy.

 

I am of the opinion that Asian characters need pens with decent ink flow. in Chinese writing, it is not always stroke-by-stroke print-like style; there is also the flowy, jointed, 行书 (xing shu) that would demand unrestricted and unhindered angles of laying of ink, up down left right, freely.

 

ink must flow - without hindrance in any direction, without blind spots.

Edited November 20, 2018 by minddance

[sapient]

 

 

That looks a lot like mine. So I take it this is typical for the nib.

 

I also have the CH 91 that have this "issue" and I just opened the tines a little bit

 

How?

 

just open the tines carefully and conscientiously until the desired result is attained. it can take days or a few occasions.

[...]

opening tines using different methods can have downsides: misalignment of tines or inverted canyon syndrome. if you are unwilling to take the risk, a nibmeister is your best friend. or if you decide the pen is not worth the effort and money, return the pen.

 

What is the recommended method?

Edited December 15, 2018 by sapient