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Which To Buy? Waterman Carène? Or Modern Parker Sonnet?


Mercian

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Did the designers of these things ever test the design before releasing it for production?

 

Something has just occurred to me about the Sonnet drying-out issue.

 

Many of us lament the withdrawal of the Parker ‘Penman’ series of saturated inks.

This occurred because Parker were getting many clogged pens returned to them under warranty, so they pulled the inks.

 

The consensus on here has always been that modern, ballpoint-habituated, pen owners were just not cleaning their pens often enough, and so those of us who did clean our pens ‘lost’ our beloved inks because of other, ‘stupid’ pen owners.

 

The introduction of the Penman inks is nearly contemporaneous with the introduction of the Sonnet.

The early Sonnets were notorious for drying out.

The Sonnet is expensive to manufacture (compared to the Jotter, Vector, Frontier etc), and so the cost to replace clogged sections under warranty would be relatively large.

Highly-saturated Penman inks would be far more likely to gunk-up a dried-out Sonnet then they would a non-drying Jotter, Vector, or Frontier.

 

So, I am now beginning to suspect that the demise of the Penman inks might in fact have been triggered by the Sonnet drying-out issue.

After all, how much would it cost to re-design the manufacture of the Sonnet, and to then re-tool and re-train for that new design & method?

How much profit were the Penman inks generating?

At the time (turn of the century) Parker were struggling commercially, e.g. the company changed ownership a couple of times in that decade and the Newhaven factory was shut down.

 

It might well, in those difficult trading circumstances, have made more commercial sense for Parker to just discontinue the Penman inks instead of re-designing the Sonnet & paying to re-tool etc.

Foul in clear conditions, but handsome in the fog.

mini-postcard-exc.png

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I'm a pilot and have come across stop drilling many times in my career, as when stress fractures occur in the engine cowlings, etc, the only way to stop the crack from spreading is to stop drill it or put a *mouse hole in place.

 

Very few metals, besides very good steel or some exotic alloys are immune to fatigue due to continual flexing. The nib of this pen is made of 18K gold, so the nib material isn't much different from that used in most other nibs.

 

Every high end pen that I own, including all of my Waterman's (except maybe for the Expert II) have a *mouse hole in place.

 

It writes terribly, period! Even my Waterman Expert II, with it's stainless steel nib would run circles around it!

 

By the way, I wrote all of my aviation exams with the Expert II back in the day, and it didn't skip a beat! :) (Hours and hours of continuous writing, sometimes requiring cartridge changes while writing my exams!)

 

This is a great pity as the Sonnet's a beautiful looking pen. (I wouldn't have ordered it if I didn't like it's looks) It just needs some serious re-engineering!

I know the Expert 3 has a stainless nib but was not aware the 2 had. Can you confirm 100% with a magnet that it is st/st. thanks

 

Carene's don't have a very large mouse hole and some don't have one at all. Most probably because they don't flex.

 

post-42786-0-00628600-1579974231_thumb.jpg

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It's definitely a stainless steel nib.

 

Here's a link to a site which compares the Expert II to the Expert III: https://goldspot.com/blogs/magazine/whats-the-difference-between-a-waterman-expert-ii-and-expert-iii

 

 

That's a lovely collection of Carène's, by the way! :)

Edited by Nick_Green
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Interesting,

 

I have had a few V2's and both had corrosion on their nibs. Both sold now.

 

Here's one where the corrosion is deep at the base.

 

post-42786-0-47651400-1579976624_thumb.jpg

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Definitely the Carene!

 

This is a beautiful pen. It fits well in the hand, and writes very smoothly. I have a medium nib and it is one of my favorite pens. I can not say enough good things about it. It rates right up there with my Montblanc!

 

I do not have the Sonnet, but from everything I have read, it isn't the pen for me.

"Today will be gone in less than 24 hours. When it is gone, it is gone. Be wise, but enjoy! - anonymous today

 

 

 

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"Interesting,

I have had a few V2's and both had corrosion on their nibs. Both sold now.

Here's one where the corrosion is deep at the base."

 

 

 

That's pretty awful!

 

I don't have mine on hand at the moment, I will take a picture of the nib once I do.

 

I used it for two years straight without issue.

Edited by Nick_Green
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I still think that the Carène's definitely the better choice here, but I do feel that I've been a bit unfair to the sonnet, as I've never tried to run it in, and will thus try to run it in over the next few weeks, to see if there's any great improvement in its writing performance.

8vtYFa4.jpg

 

The breather hole problem still stands though. I figure that I could insert a section of an eraser into the top of the cap, to block the hole, as there is enough clearance. (The type found on the tops of pencils.) As I don't want to damage the cap with epoxy. (I want the modification to be removable.)

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The breather hole problem still stands though. I figure that I could insert a section of an eraser into the top of the cap, to block the hole, as there is enough clearance. (The type found on the tops of pencils.) As I don't want to damage the cap with epoxy. (I want the modification to be removable.)

 

This thread reminded me of how badly I would like the Sonnet to be a reliable pen. A while ago I got a lot of 4 for only $100. Someone at the Philly pen show said that they're fakes, but I'm not sure, because two of those have B nibs and I doubt that the Chinese would counterfeit those.

 

Anyway, this seems like the little push I needed to carve some time to tinker. The clearance between the nib and the deepest part of the cap seems to be about 5mm, but remember that the inner cap tappers, so I'm not sure exactly how much clearance there actually is.

 

I removed the black plastic decorative button from the top of the cap (I actually broke it, and marred the gold-plated ring around it a bit in the process) and am waiting for some black epoxy putty to dry (want to see how hard it really is) before I go that route and apply some epoxy on the cavity at the top of the cap (sealing the part where the button was) and a little bit right under the point where the clip meets the cap (air escapes there too).

 

Plan B, which I like better because it's less prone to cause destruction, is to drop a little ball of epoxy putty into the cap and squish it against the rivet to seal it.

 

If this fails, I'll drill through the rivet, which will let me take the whole thing apart. Plan C is to completely fill the space between the top of the inner cap and the outer cap with epoxy.

 

I'll start another thread once my experiments are under way.

 

alex

---------------------------------------------------------

We use our phones more than our pens.....

and the world is a worse place for it. - markh

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This thread reminded me of how badly I would like the Sonnet to be a reliable pen. A while ago I got a lot of 4 for only $100. Someone at the Philly pen show said that they're fakes, but I'm not sure, because two of those have B nibs and I doubt that the Chinese would counterfeit those.

 

Anyway, this seems like the little push I needed to carve some time to tinker. The clearance between the nib and the deepest part of the cap seems to be about 5mm, but remember that the inner cap tappers, so I'm not sure exactly how much clearance there actually is.

 

I removed the black plastic decorative button from the top of the cap (I actually broke it, and marred the gold-plated ring around it a bit in the process) and am waiting for some black epoxy putty to dry (want to see how hard it really is) before I go that route and apply some epoxy on the cavity at the top of the cap (sealing the part where the button was) and a little bit right under the point where the clip meets the cap (air escapes there too).

 

Plan B, which I like better because it's less prone to cause destruction, is to drop a little ball of epoxy putty into the cap and squish it against the rivet to seal it.

 

If this fails, I'll drill through the rivet, which will let me take the whole thing apart. Plan C is to completely fill the space between the top of the inner cap and the outer cap with epoxy.

 

I'll start another thread once my experiments are under way.

 

alex

 

Did you look up any of the old threads? Ron Zorn and Chrissy had been working in those. They felt they had figured it out. I wasn't very satisfied with my attempts to effect this fix conservatively. Four of mine seem to have worked, dripping five minute set time epoxy into the cap. Two others probably not enough epoxy.

 

Ron Zorn had put forth a very good explanation of how to do it--epoxy into the cap.

Edited by pajaro

"Don't hurry, don't worry. It's better to be late at the Golden Gate than to arrive in Hell on time."
--Sign in a bar and grill, Ormond Beach, Florida, 1960.

 

 

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The breather hole problem still stands though. I figure that I could insert a section of an eraser into the top of the cap, to block the hole, as there is enough clearance. (The type found on the tops of pencils.) As I don't want to damage the cap with epoxy. (I want the modification to be removable.)

 

For a reversible ‘fix’, I have seen posters on other threads recommend that Sonnet owners try melting some candle wax, allowing it cool a bit until it becomes mouldable, and then plugging the hole(s) with that.

If you can see cracks around the rivet(?) at the top of the inside of your pen’s inner cap, you could drip molten wax in to them, wipe off any excess, and then let the wax set in order to seal them up.

 

For obvious reasons, I personally have no idea how effective either scheme would be ;)

 

[Edit to add links]

For the sealing-with-wax idea, see e.g.

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/2498-plugging-holes-in-a-sonnet/?p=22011

 

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/2498-plugging-holes-in-a-sonnet/?p=22080

 

But...

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/2498-plugging-holes-in-a-sonnet/?p=23621

 

Edited by Mercian

Foul in clear conditions, but handsome in the fog.

mini-postcard-exc.png

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Can you imagine the mess wax would make if you have to melt it out? Or scraqpe it out?

 

If you use shellac, you can wash it out with alcohol.

 

Or you can melt and scrape it out for the next eon. Been there and regrettably done that with wax. Never got it out.

 

I am still wondering it I should have packed all the Sonnets into a potato gun with a sonnet written for the occasion and launched them all into the woods behind the house.

"Don't hurry, don't worry. It's better to be late at the Golden Gate than to arrive in Hell on time."
--Sign in a bar and grill, Ormond Beach, Florida, 1960.

 

 

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If someone made a Sonnet cap replica that didn't evaporate at a reasonable price I would jump on it. As things stand my two Sonnets can never leave the house and I had to find other pens for Perle Noire and Ambre de Baltique, which I just wasn't using. I don't see how Parker managed to get into this mess when my 75 from possibly the 70's doesn't have this problem, and neither does my recent 1940's Vacumatic (which sports two breather holes in the cap).

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."

 

B. Russell

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  • 3 weeks later...

90%+ of the content of this thread is about the Sonnet. In summary, not much to say about the Carene... it just works. But that is not necessarily a good thing. I have a lot of time and passion invested in my pens that arrived not quite right. Meanwhile, my Carene worked like a charm from day 1. Unfortunatly I have a few pens that I never had to put my special touch on to get them to work like I like, they were already that way... and for the most part, in hindsight, I find myself less emotionally attached to my pens that were perfect out of the box. The Carene is great, but I don't ink it often because I never had to overcome a struggle with it... missing that emotional attachment. I didn't even have a 3 week wait from Europe to dream about the possibilities... on sale through a domestic online retailer and I had it in 24 hours.

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90%+ of the content of this thread is about the Sonnet. In summary, not much to say about the Carene... it just works. But that is not necessarily a good thing. I have a lot of time and passion invested in my pens that arrived not quite right. Meanwhile, my Carene worked like a charm from day 1. Unfortunatly I have a few pens that I never had to put my special touch on to get them to work like I like, they were already that way... and for the most part, in hindsight, I find myself less emotionally attached to my pens that were perfect out of the box. The Carene is great, but I don't ink it often because I never had to overcome a struggle with it... missing that emotional attachment. I didn't even have a 3 week wait from Europe to dream about the possibilities... on sale through a domestic online retailer and I had it in 24 hours.

 

Hmmm.... sounds similar to our relationships with wives and children ;-)

---------------------------------------------------------

We use our phones more than our pens.....

and the world is a worse place for it. - markh

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The Carene is like....

 

GD9Skrb.jpg

 

I love them both.

 

I have bought and sold many Carenes but only bought Marmite....I would not sell it.

 

I agree about the Carene but marmite? Vegemite is the only correct yeast based topping for toast.

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