Twsbi Experience From A New Owner

[msolok]

So, after deliberating about getting a TWSBI or not, I took the plunge and picked up 2 580's (one with a M nib and the other a 1.1 stub) and a Vac 700 with M nib.

 

Shipping was in a standard FedEx bag. This is OK, and shipping was quick, but realistically it provided no protection at all to the items in the bag. The bag came to me obviously thrown around, ripped and with things thrown on top of it.

Luckily everything in the bag was OK and not damaged. But large potential there for damage. I think the bag would be fine if the item was only being sent within the US, but international it's getting a bit dicy.

 

The items were packaged well, if a bit wasteful. I personally think that packaging for pens should be minimal and only what is needed. I think Lamy does the packaging well (cardboard boxes, so easily recycled) but hate large bulky and wasteful packaging. The packaging on the TWSBI is of a reasonable size, but still a bit big. The main detractor I think with the packaging is the fact it is all clear plastic. 1 of 2 things will usually be done with a pens packaging. The first is it is simply thrown out as it isn't needed and won't be used (and lets be honest, this is not a muti-hundred dollar Montblanc pen where the packaging significantly increases the resale price, so little reason to keep it). Or the packaging is put away somewhere and likely not ever looked at again (until the storage area is cleaned and it is thrown out). So, I am not a huge fan of the packaging. Yes, it looks pretty good for the first few seconds after you take it out of the outer cardboard box, but it is such a waste.

 

Once unbox the pens feel pretty substantial in the hand. They feel solid and reasonably sturdy. But at the same time they also feel plasticy and slippery (I'm not saying this is a negative, but that's just the way it feels to me). I am happy with the heft of the pens as I have large hands and heavy pens suit them best. Size is just about perfect. They are the right length and width to fit comfortably. The Vac700 feels much better in my hand than the 580's.

 

Filling systems on they are a bit hit and miss IMHO. I find the filling system on the 580 to be better than that on the VAC700. The 580 is a standard piston fill so the standard filling practices with it apply. You simply undo the piston blind cap, submerge the nib (up to the section) in ink, and wind it back up. To get a full fill you then need to dispel the air and suck more ink up. Pretty standard piston filling with a reasonable capacity (around 1.8ml from what I can tell, so around the same capacity you can get in a Noodlers Ahab plunger capacity and about .4ml more than the Noodlers Konrad piston fill capacity). So the 580 has a good system in place for filling, which is on equal terms with some other cheap pens out there.

 

The VAC700, though, I find to be a bit more of a miss. I love the concept of the Vacumaticfilling system. Unscrew piston, submerge the nib in ink, and push down the plunger and leave nib in ink for a few seconds while it fills. However, in reality the way this works is far from ideal. With a standard ink bottle The most you can hope for is a half full pen. There simply is not enough of a vacuum for the ink to overcome gravity and completely fill the pen. No matter how many times you repeat the filling procedure, it will only be half full. While this half full capacity decent (around 1.5ml), it is negating the space benefits of using the vacumatic system. In reality it would have been better to go the Piston fill route and get a slightly larger capacity in the pen and the ability to fill completely easily.

There is a method for filling the pen completely with a normal ink bottle. This involves filling the pen normally once. You then take the pen out of the ink, hold the nib facing up and slowly pull out the piston again. You then SLOWLY depress the piston to expel the air which was still in the pen. Once at the point where all the air is expel you put the nib back in the ink and push the piston the rest of the pay in. You should now get a reasonably full fill. But this is a pain to do at each filling, takes longer and more effort than a piston fill and has the potential to make a huge mess. Far from the best!

At this point the Vac 20 bottle comes into its own and really helps the VAC700'd filling system. Basically the VAC 20 ink bottle is designed for the Vac 700 pens to screw into the lid. You then invert the bottle and pen (with ink in the bottle of course) and cycle the piston. Usually 2 pumps will have you sitting at around 95% fill and is realistically the most you will get in the pen. This is clearly the best method for filling the pen, however it too has its negatives. The first is the price. The VAC 20 bottle costs $12.99. While this is not a lot of money, it does push up the price of the pen (as I would consider it an important part of the filling system). The VAC 700 now costs close to $100.

The second drawback of filling using the VAC 20 bottle is bubbles. While the pen appears to be mostly full with ink, the ink has a lot of bubbles mixed through it. Not only does this make it look aesthetically unpleasing (frothy and bubbly ink in a demonstrator is NOT a good look), but if these bubbles don't dispute (and after over a day now I still have a lot of bubbles in my VAC700's ink) and they start going through the feed it can result in problems with ink flow and hard starts and stopping. Having to unscrew the piston slightly to allow the ink to flow to the feed is a bit of an annoyance, but not the end of the world.

 

Writing with the pens is both a pleasure and a frustration.

Starting with the Diamond 580, the grip section has been redesigned since the 540. In a nutshell, the Nib feed holder still screws in directly to the pen barrel. Around this is basically a grip 'sleeve'. This grip sleeve does not serve any function other than to give you a wider section to grip and write with. However this sleeve is in 2 separate components. The first part is a metal collar that fits onto some grooves on the feed holder which holds it firmly in place. The second part is a plastic tube which fits freely over the feed holder and is held in place via friction from screwing down the nib holder to the barrel. The problems with this setup are:

1) The plastic grip moves. In fact you can feel it spinning while trying to write. You can mostly get rid of this by screwing down the nib section harder, but this leads to issue 2:

2) It is clamped in place between 2 much harder pieces of the pen (the metal collar ring and the thicker plastic pen barrel). Clamp down too hard and there is the possibility that this plastic sleeve will crack. This piece, I would imagine, is also subject to various different force factors from writing. Hate to say it, but I see this plastic sleeve as a weakness of the pen.

3) And the 3rd potential issue also has to do with clamping down too hard. The feed unit screws directly into the pen's barrel. Clamp down too hard, or from constant screwing of this area (say if you swap the nib unit fairly frequently, as you would expect to be able to do with the pen) and I can see the nib unit threads wearing out or the unit cracking.

I could be wrong with those issues, but that's what I can see.

 

Moving onto the VAC700, the section is totally different. On the VAC700 the section screws onto the barrel directly, not the nib holder. There are no other parts to the section which are friction fit or which need to be clamped down to stay sturdy. The section on the VAC700 is FAR better than the 580's.

 

Moving onto the nibs, it is far from a happy experience (with my pens at least).

Starting with the nib on the VAC700, it is slightly bigger than the ones on the 580. Not that it makes much difference. The M nib is a typical European M, so slightly thicker than Asian M, but not the thickest. The nib is smooth on the page, but ink flow is sporadic. Sometimes it works well, other times it has a lot of hard starts and no ink flow. Most of the time it is fine, but the times when it doesn't 'just work' are often enough to annoy. I have no idea if it is still manufacturing junk which hasn't cleaned out (I did thoroughly flush the pen though) but it shouldn't happen. Considering I can pick up a $30 Lamy Safari and it just works, a pen worth 3 times that CERTAINLY should write well.

 

The 580 nibs, as I said above, are slightly smaller than the VAC700's, but the line widths for the sizes should be pretty much the same.

The M nib on my 580 also has some annoyances. Right after the first fill with this nib it gushed ink. It was basically unusable for most writing. The amount of ink which would flow from the ink was huge, and even Rhodia paper was feathering. However, the gushing was not universal. As with the VAC700, ink flow was sporadic. At times it was gushing and then other times it was writing dry. So, I have attempted to slow the flow by adjusting the nib slits so the 2 sides are closer together. this has helped a fair amount, but the ink flow issue remains.

The Stub 1.1 was, at first, perfect. It writes nice lush lines and had perfect ink flow. However this quickly started to change. I quickly found that the 1.1 nib was as temperamental as the other nibs. Soon, I noticed that even when writing at the same angles, that one time the line would be nice and thick and lots of ink, and the next time it would be so dry the flow was constantly stopping.

Again, both these pens were flushed really well (and as good, if not better than what I have done with my Noodlers pens) so I am not sure if this is just junk in the pen. It's, in all honesty, very frustrating. Of the 10 Lamy pens I own, none have had this issue.

 

Comparing the nibs to those on a Kaweco Sport (a $20-$25 pen) it is no contest. The Kaweco's win hands down. All that I own (around 8) have worked smoothly with perfect flow and reliability right out of the box. For pens worth $50 and $93 (considering the price of the VAC 20 bottle as well) they should simply work out of the box, and no excuse after a flush.

But with the TWSBI's it's like I pick up a different pen each time. Each time I put down the pen and pick it up it seems to write differently. It's unbelievable. I can't TELL you how frustrating it is to be in a meeting and have a need to start taking some notes, only to find the pen that is totally full of ink will not write a single word. Luckily I had my Sailor 1911's on hand to save the day.

 

All up, my impressions of the pen were good, but far overshadow by the nib performance issues. The pens feel fairly well constructed in the hand and are hefty but they also have their own design issues. The nibs and feeds, from what I have experienced, leave a lot to be desired performance wise. I might have just gotten unlucky with my nibs but for all 3 to be having issues is not a good sign.

I'm going to keep having a go with the pens for the next couple of days and see how I go. If I continue to have troubles I will have to contact TWSBI to organise replacement nibs.

 

Here's a scan of some writing down with the TWSBI's. They were relatively well behaved during this sample, although you can see the skipping and low flow at times.

http://i1129.photobucket.com/albums/m510/msolok/TWSBI/TWSBI_zps248f5021.jpg

[drwright]

Did you flush the pens with soapy water, or simply water?

[msolok]

Soapy water as well as pulling the nib and feed and scrubbing with a soft toothbrush. I then replaced the nib and feed and made sure both are fully seated and aligned correctly. I have done this twice now in the hopes it will get better.

[ToySoldier]

What ink is the blue?

[icevic]

I like your testing commitment: you bought three all at once!

[amberleadavis]

I found my pens wrote much better after I had used them for a while. The one I've had the longest and used the most, also writes the best. Also, sometimes, you have to have a talk with them and tell them that bad behavior won't be tolerated but you will pay attention to their inky tastes. Thankfully, the pens haven't spoken back to me..... but they do work differently depending on the ink.

[EricTheRed]

Thanks for the throrough review, For what its worth, I own a Twsbi 530 and two 540s. All three wrote and continue to write perfectly right out of the box and I did not need to flush any of them. I do not agree with you that TWSBs feel "plasticky and slippery" but find them to grip and look like quality writing instruments, much better in appearance than my drab, pedestrian (but equally well writing Lamys) and priced better than Top Tier(TT) pens such as Sailors, Pelikans,Pilots, Mont Blanc, Aurora, etc (though not quite as well constructed as these more expensive TT pens and no gold nib is offered by TWSBI - I find that most times in life you get what you pay for). Twsbi has obviously positioned itself in the moderate priced market niche, and it is an outstanding competitor offering great bang for the buck along with an innovative product in that niche. I enjoy using Demonstrators so am an admitted fan of TWSBI...

 

That is just my opinion and taste is subjective. I am not sure why you are having writing problems with your pens. I believe your problems with the similar 580 (I have never tried a TWSBI Vac) may be related to your thorough flushing and cleaning of the pens. Try writing with them frequently for several days, refill them at least once to let the ink fully saturate the feed and let us know if their writing qualites improve as they should...

[tguk911]

I don't own a Vac 700 but I'm pretty sure when the blind cap is screwed down the chamber is sealed and you need to unscrew it again after the feed get's dry, I know some people unscrew it everytime they have long writing sessions so this never happens. I'm not sure if this is your problem but if it is it's probably normal and the design of the pen. I guess you can unscrew the blind cap every time you write and if it never happens then you'll know.

 

As for the grip section of the 580, mine does not free spin and will only spin if I spin it and since I have a light grip I've never experienced this but I have heard this mentioned a number of times but I guess it's better than people cracking them.

 

I originally bought the 580 with a 1.1mm stub but it would have really hard starts and skip every other sentence so I sent it back and got a fine instead which was a little dry at first but after a little tinkering it is perfect. I'm sure TWSBI will go above and beyond your expectations with their customer service and I hope everything works out for you in the end. If not I'm sure someone will take them off your hands.

[msolok]

ToySoldier: The blue is Noodlers Midway Blue, part of Noodlers VMail range (inks from the war years). It's a fantastic blue and one of my favorites.

 

 

amberleadavis: My issue is at the moment they aren't useable enough to be able to use for a while to get better. I can't trust them for any sort of writing. Ohh, and I tend to speak to my pens too, but these ones seem to ignore me

 

EricTheRed: I'm not saying they are poor quality or don't look great, but to me they feel more plasticy than a lot of pother pens. I also tend to have slightly sweaty and slippery hands, and too me they do feel slippery. Just how I feel about them.

The cleaning is far from the source of the issues. The cleaning will not cause the pens to write poorly (unless of course I did something stupid and loaded them with soap, which I didn't. Only a single drop of soap in the original water to clean all the pens, and then thoroughly flushed with clean water).

 

tguk911: That's correct. With the blind cap full screwed down on the pen of the pen, the ink reservoir is sealed off from the feed. There is still ink in the feed (usually at least enough for a full page of writing) but no more ink will flow to the feed. During all my tests I have had the blind cap slightly unscrewed from the back of the pen so the ink will flow to the feed. So ink starvation will not be the cause of the issues with my VAC700.

The grip section on the 580 does move slightly when writing, and that's simply down to the design. There is nothing but the squashing force of the metal ring to the pens body holding it in place. The harder you screw down the nib section, the less it will spin, but the higher the chance you will crack the grip.

 

 

I contacted TWSBI on Thursday last week with the problems. The advice I got was to simply try and widen the tines on the nibs to solve the issue. To do this they asked that I squeeze the wings of the nibs with my thumb and Forefinger, which will bend the tines up and away from each other (but also move the tines away from the feed, which will cause issues), and then get the nib and force it down on some paper to spread the nibs tines (which I had concerns about considering this can lead to misaligned tines. In fact TWSBI have a video out on how to do this, and at one part in the video the tines have clearly become very misaligned). SO I tried this with all 3 pens.

The 1.1 nib is the same as before, sometimes dry, sometimes perfect but with a lot of skipping and hard starts.

The 580's M nib is back to flooding the page with ink. Not as bad as at the start, but pretty unusable again. And yet it still suffers from some hard starts and skipping.

The VAC700's M nib is a bit better. It lays down a better line now and is wetter. But the hard starts and skipping are still present.

 

I have sent an email back to TWSBI and I am waiting on a response. I have raised my concerns about having to send the nibs back to them, due to the costs of doing so. Unfortunately shipping anything from Australia is an expensive matter. Basic shipping of something back to the US from Aus via air mail is about $30 (I can send it back via Sea Mail, but not interested in it taking a few months to get there to save $10), but that does not include insurance, confirmed delivery or tracking. To get confirmed delivery and tracking the cost is around $62. This, obviously, is REALLY pushing up the price of the pens (increasing their costs by $20 each) and there are much better pens out there for that price.

I am hoping that TWSBI won't ask me to return the pens for reapir, but I have a feeling I am going to have to. Sigh.....

 

[raging.dragon]

Excessive ink flow immediately after filling suggest that the feed is overloaded with ink, wiping the nib a few times with a paper towel (or similar) after filling should resolve that problem. The skipping issues suggest that either your nib and feed aren't properly aligned, or that the nib should be adjusted to make it wetter.

 

I generally do this by firmly grasping the shoulders of the nib and pulling the tines apart; however, this can be rather difficult with steel nibs. Carefully running brass shims or a utility knife blade between the tines is another way to spread them. I don't like pressing the nib against paper to spread the tines as it risks bending the nib up and away from the feed.

[msolok]

Raging.dragon: The ink is not just flooding the page after filling but at all times. And with the 580 it is being filled from the TWSBI 50 ink bottle using the nipple without the nib attached.

As for spreading the tines, I have tried that and still no joy. They just aren't writing well.

 

The really annoying thing is there is problems with all the pens. If it was only 1 which was having issues then it wouldn't be so bad, but all 3 is a huge concern.

[Nick T]

I have had similar experiences with 2 TWISBI pens; a 540 and a 580. The 580 is better but the consistency is really lacking between the pens. I bought one of the new stubs that they are making for the 580 and put it on my 540 hoping to improve things there. It did write a bit better but is not as good as the 580. The 540 piston started to get sticky too - so sticky that the plunger and arm seperated from one another when flushing with ink. I dissasembled with the tools provided and lubed the plunger with the supplied silicone grease. No more twisbi's for me... sorry to say.

[Edwaroth]

Everytime I fill my Mini,it womits one gob of ink. Now I just use an absorbent towel to wipe and suck up the little goober before it hits the paper. A minor annoyance from a super li'l pen. I lives wit it.

[TMac]

Sorry to hear of your problems. I now have 4 TWSBIs and all have been great right out of the box after a quick soapy water flush. Ip do find the nibs improve as you use them, almost a break in.

If you don't see improvement, contact TWSBI, they are now for great customer service.

[msolok]

Just a bit of an update of what I have been through with these pens in the 3ish weeks I have had them.

Ater what I had been through above I tr cleaning and scrubbing the pens again with soapy water and fresh water. I also ran a bit of wire down the ink channel in the feed to make sure that there was nothing stuck there. I then refilled the pens with different inks (to make sure the ink is not an issue) and tested again. All the same issues were still present.

So I contacted TWSBI and they replied within 24 hours to say that I should try squeezing the wings of the nib, and pressing down the nibs of paper to spread the tines and widen the gap. This, obviously, is a pretty barbaric way of doing nib adjustment (and in the video that TWSBI has released even results in the tines becoming misaligned), and would result in the 580 with the flooding nib to become even more unusable.

But, I gave it a try on the other 2 anyway, and made some adjustments on the nib that was flooding the page.

I have now spent HOURS trying to get these nibs to write perfectly, and they just won't. They all still suffer from constant hard starts (and we are talking if the nib is off the page for more than a second or 2 it will have troubles starting again, whether the cap was on or off) and stop writing mid sentence for a stroke or 2. It's also easy to see the feed struggling with the ink flow with longer stroke, as the ink starts to get very thin.

So, after having 0 luck with the nib adjustments myself (which is a concern, as I have set up and have over 20 Noodlers pens, working perfectly with flexing, and I have spent FAR less time tweaking and adjusting all those together than I have these 3 TWSBI's) I decided it was time to contact TWSBI again. Their response was simply to tell me to send the pens back to them in the US and they will adjust them for me. Now, this presents a real issue for me. I am in Australia so I would need to foot the bill for shipping to them. I have 2 real options for this; $30 for shipping which will take a couple of weeks and has no confirmed delivery or tracking or insurance, or $60 for shipping which will take a week and has confirmed delivery and insurance. Obviously the first option is not an acceptable option, as the package will simply go missing (as is Common with AusPost here in Aus), so shipping back to TWSBI will cost me $60. This means each of the pens would have cost me an additional $20 each (so $70 for the 580, $75 for the 580 1.1 Stub, and $108 for the VAC 700 (as you really need the VAC20 bottle to make full use of the pen)) and in all honesty the pens are NOT worth that much. Plus I could get new nib units for close to that price anyway.

So I emailed TWSBI again, saying these additional shipping costs really aren't acceptable for pens which were faulty out of the box. I have said they simply aren't worth the additional cost of sending the pens back to them. I then only got silence from TWSBI. They have not replied back to apologize (in fact there was no apology in ANY of the emails from TWSBI for the pens being defective. That in itself is pretty poor) or to say they can't do any more, they have simply started ignoring me.

So I am left with 3 pens which write very poorly and clearly have issues. My experience with TWSBI's customer service was, if I am totally honest, average at best. They haven't gone out of their way to fix a quality issue I had, nor have they apologized for the issues. Yes, I have the option to send the pens back to them for them to tweak the nibs, but at a huge cost to myself (not to mention I think the nibs are only part of the issue. The other part appears to be the feeds are poorly designed and can't supply a steady and consistent ink supply). That, in my book, is pretty poor customer service. If it was just one pen with an issue, I could MAYBE understand, but with 3 pens I would expect them to do a bit more for their customer.

I have had better support from Lamy when I accidentally clogged one of my Safari's with some sludgy J Herbin ink. Lamy replaced the nib and feed for it, and sent me a bunch of inks to go with the pen. That's good customer service, but what TWSBI offer is not.

All up I would not buy a TWSBI pen again. They really need to cut down on the excessive packaging and spend the savings on some sort of QC which they currently seem to lack. There are, very simply, better pens out there for the price. Kaweco Sports trump the TWSBI's in just about every way other than ink capacity (however Kaweco ink carts are fairly inexpensive and are GREAT colours), and cost a fraction of what the TWSBI's do. The Noodlers pens are piston fillers with good ink capacities, flex nibs and variety of colours. And they are far easier to get writing well (if they don't out of the box) than TWSBI's, and are a fraction of the cost of the TWSBI's. You can get Sailor 1911m's from Japan for around the same price as a TWSBI VAC700, and the nibs blow the TWSBI's away. Sure, the converters have a smaller capacity than the TWSBI pens, but it's really a small price to pay for far greater pens.

The ink bottles, on the other hand, seem to be great. They look good, function really well and are nicely priced. I love the ink bottles and I will be buying some more of them in the future.

[Unky]

I have both the 580 Diamond and the Vac 700 and have had zero problems. I have used Noodler's , Private Reserve, and De Atramentis inks without issue. It makes me wonder if the retailer checks the product for quality control purposes. This way the customer does not have issues and/or is happy with the purchase. My TWSBI's are second only to my Edison as far as my favorites.

[lurker]

I'm disappointed to hear about the quality of the pens and the customer service. I have a 540 and it has become my workhorse pen. I've had the cracking issue that many people have experience and TWSBI's customer service was quick and rectified the problem. I can only assume, living in Australia, the shipping becomes an issue, like you've previously mentioned. Sorry to hear about all of this.

 

Have you considered selling your pens to another Aussie for a slight price reduction to recoup most of your investment?

[Pelikan Vera]

Hello there,

this is an interesting thread.....as I had a problem with the VAC700 and taking out the shut off seal solved it and now it has good ink supply and writes really well. it is also clear that not all ink is doing equally well in the pen. Waterman brown is great, but Pelikan is not. so maybe some more experiments are in order? The mini was dry and I looked at doc browns video to waverley it and that has worked. after that they write just fine. only the stub nib is too soft in my hands and got immediately misaligned tines, which ruined it for me. anyhow maybe a little more tweaking will help you to get the vac going, as it is actually quite a nice pen in my opinion. It even does not leak on a flight which I recently tested. Give it another go....

Hope this might help.

Vera

[msolok]

Lurker: Honestly, I haven't. I'm not a big fan of onselling my stuff (too much hassle usually). I'm not sure what I will do with these pens yet.

 

Pelikan Vera: Thanks for the advice. I will look into disabling the shutoff valve on my VAC700. I doubt that this is causing the issues (as I am unscrewing the blind cap slightly before writing, and leaving it unscrewed when I expect to do little bits of writing here and there for the next few hours) with it though. I will also still have the issues with the Diamond 580's though.

 

Such a pity. These pens could have been great, but without nice working nibs they are useless.

[cybaea]

tguk911: That's correct. With the blind cap full screwed down on the pen of the pen, the ink reservoir is sealed off from the feed. There is still ink in the feed (usually at least enough for a full page of writing) but no more ink will flow to the feed. During all my tests I have had the blind cap slightly unscrewed from the back of the pen so the ink will flow to the feed. So ink starvation will not be the cause of the issues with my VAC700.

 

I find that I really have to unscrew it quite a bit to make it flow well. When I first got the pen that's what I did, and I couldn't figure out why people were calling the nib dry and skippy. Then one day by accident I didn't unscrew it much and I have felt your pain.

 

Try really unscrewing it and also note that the stub nibs have quite a small sweet-spot on both pens.

 

Hope this helps.