Wality for a Friend?

[Glenn-SC]

Heck, I the following Hero pen:

 

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j95/glenn-sc/Hero.jpg

 

email me your address and you can have it!

[blak000]

What a nice gesture by Glenn! If you decide not to take him up on that offer, though, then I would actually recommend that you look for deals on the Marketplace. There are some pretty cheap, good pens to be found there if you wait long enough, and you can trust most of the sellers on here. Another option could be to buy a Parker Vector or Sheaffer school pen. I think you can get those on Ebay for $10 (including shipping) or less.

 

If you do decide to go with the Sheaffer school pen, go with the older models. I bought a newer one recently and found it to be quite scratchy.

 

Vectors are pretty great pens for the money, but can be a mite thin for some.

 

Anyways, I hope you're able to get your friend a good pen!

[ConnallMac]

PM your address my way and I'll send you some ink. I'm pretty sure I've got a bottle of Pelikan Black around here somewhere that I would be happy to send your way.

[lovemy51]

i originally bought a wality eye-dropper and leaked majorly... after using candle wax on the barrel tread and between the section and point and using several and different types of inks... still leaked, so i gave up on it...

 

... then i went ahead and purchased a wallity piston filler and initially workd well, but later i begun to see what some of you were commenting about the pen leaking when transported.

 

at this point, since i knew i was not gonna use the eye-dropper anymore, i switched the feed and nib from the eye-dropper pen into the piston filler wallity, this gave me a more snug fit in the piston filler. well, it was working alright... for a while, but the leak came back... i'm giving up altogether on the wallity.

 

DON'T GET WALLITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ojars]

I have 3 Wality 69L fountain pens -- two piston fillers and 1 eyedropper. None leak at the section where the barrel screws on. The wax technique works very well; I take the trouble to clean the threads.

 

When the piston fillers are nearly empty and when the eyedropper is somewhere less than half full, these pens will express ink drops. I assume that air trapped in the barrel is heated by my hand and pushes the ink out, where I also assume the thermal coefficient of expansion is greater for air than for any other part of the system. pV=nRT, i.e., the change in air volume is directly proportional to the change in temperature. This is an incomplete picture of what is happening, but is in line with the accepted views of those who have offered same -- the informal fallacy vox populi. It would be interesting to develop this further, but I think it likely that this has already been done.

 

Send your unloved Wality pens to my fountain pen orphanage!

Edited January 3, 2008 by ojars

[slippy]

I had two Wality piston fillers, a 52 and a 69L. They both were excellent writers, with a true fine nib. However, after a while, both pistons developed leaks...what happened was that ink was leaking behind the piston into the blind cap. I tried fixing them, to no avail, and ended up throwing them out.

 

On the other hand, my Hero 100 flighter hasn't given me a lick of trouble...

[ojars]

Agree! -- Pump fillers are simple in design, forgiving in use, tough to break and last a relatively long time.

[Deirdre]

FYI, isellpens no longer sells Wality, perhaps because of the reasons mentioned in this thread.

[ericthered2004]

I like my Wality piston filler alot, but it's rather a wet writer for a novice and despite its charms (smooth nib, ridiculously cheap) I tend not to recommend it if someone asks for a good intro pen. Lamy Safari, and the Pelikano are the more obvious choices. Personally I go for a solid and realiable Parker Vector or Frontier (also ridiculously cheap) and of course the Pilot Varisty/V pen are marvels of modern fountain pen technology, like much else that Pilot puts out.

 

I believe there is a newer version of the Vector in UK/Europe, but I can't recall its name just at the moment.

 

Cheers,

Eric

 

Edited for: Parker Profile is the one I was thinking of. Parker IM elsewhere, if they are available. They look pretty nifty.

Edited January 3, 2008 by ericthered2004

[lovemy51]

I have 3 Wality 69L fountain pens -- two piston fillers and 1 eyedropper. None leak at the section where the barrel screws on. The wax technique works very well; I take the trouble to clean the threads.

 

When the piston fillers are nearly empty and when the eyedropper is somewhere less than half full, these pens will express ink drops. I assume that air trapped in the barrel is heated by my hand and pushes the ink out, where I also assume the thermal coefficient of expansion is greater for air than for any other part of the system. pV=nRT, i.e., the change in air volume is directly proportional to the change in temperature. This is an incomplete picture of what is happening, but is in line with the accepted views of those who have offered same -- the informal fallacy vox populi. It would be interesting to develop this further, but I think it likely that this has already been done.

 

Send your unloved Wality pens to my fountain pen orphanage!

 

say what???? physics (science in general) has never been my forte... very interesting info though

 

... i dunno if should agree with you (in mea vox)

[ojars]

Glad you like it!

 

Consider a Wality 69L with a given 4.5 ml capacity.

 

If the fountain pen starts at a room temperature of 20 deg C (68 deg F) and is warmed up to body temperature, i.e. 37 deg C (98.6 deg F), how much does the trapped volume of air change?

 

Using the ideal gas law -- pV=nRT -- that change is delta V = delta T * V/T, where T is absolute temperature. Remember absolute zero temperature is -273.15 deg C (-459.67 deg F).

 

For example, if the starting volume of trapped air is V=2 ml and the temperature change is delta T=17 deg C, then delta V=17*2/(273.15+20)=0.12 ml.

 

The table below shows several cases --

 

ml of air - volume change in ml

0.0 - 0.000

0.5 - 0.029

1.0 - 0.058

1.5 - 0.087

2.0 - 0.116

2.5 - 0.145

3.0 - 0.174

3.5 - 0.203

4.0 - 0.232

4.5 - 0.261

 

 

I used the pipette supplied with the Wality eyedropper to find 25 drops in 1 ml of Lamy Blue ink, i.e., one such drop is 0.040 ml. Such a drop is smaller than the drops typically expessed by my Wality 69L eyedropper when the ink volume gets low. It is easy to believe that such an expressed drop is at least 3 pipette drops, probably more. A look at the chart shows that a 2 ml trapped volume of air is about 3 pipette drops. Hence, I am safe from expressed drops to at least 2 ml of trapped air.

 

This rough model for expressed drops as a function of heated and expanding trapped air seems to hold together prettty well so far.

 

Now in India, room temperature is probably more than 68 deg F! Hence, a greater volume of trapped air is allowed before a drop of ink is expressed from the feed. By calculation, an ambient temperature of 30 deg C (86 deg F) means that at 4.5 ml of trapped air, the change in air volume would be 0.104 ml; perhaps no expressed drops at all!

Edited January 4, 2008 by ojars

[Goshzilla]

I have a friend who seems to have taken a slight interest in fountain pens. I even let him use my MB a few times. I think he likes them, so I want to push him over the edge and make my first convert! I was thinking about getting him a Wality 69L piston filler from Isellpens. Its ridiculously cheap, and the reviews are generally good, but I just have to ask once more: will this FP leave him with a bad taste about FPs? I'm worried about leakage in transport, writing quality, etc. Also, how would this Wality work when matted with some black ink from Lamy?

Thanks!

 

I know the Rotring Core gets werid looks. When I showed my dad the pen he thought it was a demonstration pen and not a real product, but it's reliable, cheap, and the Fine nib writes good enough for math and science formulas. I've carried mine in my pocket every now and then and lasted me over a year without any leaks.

[lovemy51]

i think the wality 69l might not be the only thing full of air!!!!!!

[ribbit]

My piston-filled Wality leaks. I've got ink splotches all over the house now, where there were none before. Other than that, it is a lovely pen-great size and writes very smoothly. But my carpet and furniture will never be the same...

[Ernst Bitterman]

Mustn't conduct the Wagner discs with a pen....