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Are the lengths and diameters of the Pilot Myu 701 and Pilot E95S similar while posted? Is the Myu shorter and thinner? The Myu has caught my eye, but I'm asking myself currently whether it'll be a pen that I would regularly use, or if I would just have it because it looks unique.

After 6 months of work, here is the new version of my retractable nib pen (V5). The external appearance of the pen is like a chimera of Pilot's MYU for its titanium body and Lamy 2000 for its overall shape and clip. On the inside of the pen, the nib retracts behind a spring loaded trap door, the nib mechanism is activated by rotating the section of 3/4 of turn, clockwise. The filling mechanism is a piston filler which acts similarly as FountainBell's Bulkfiller holding a large amount of ink. The nib is a cursive italic which was ground from a pelikan BB stainless steel nib, the feed is from an old french pen in ebonite. The pen now features a more discreet trap door for the nib: The piston system is basically the same than the other versions: The ink window is a minimalistic polycarbonate round window which makes the job well: This pen took so much time to design and build out of a single titanium rod: take a look at the titanium shavings! My micro 12kg lathe/milling machine made the job surprisingly well even on Grade 5 titanium. Some tricks had to be used, mainly for drilling procedures: slowing down spindle speed, only predrill holes at 2mm (drilling using progressively larger drillbits stucks them into the work), cooling the drill is also crucial (when you don't own special harware for this purpose you have to stop drilling and wait for it to cool which takes a long long time...). Here are some special setups: Once machined, the hard part was to assemble titanium parts together... Titanium parts don't glide on each others they get simply stucked. To allow free gliding of the titanium moving parts I Had to cover them with acetal caps which required additional extra work. Here you can see the part which allows the section to turn onto the barrel: an acetal ring serves as interface between the section and the barrel: I use this pen for 3 months now and I am very pleased with. Unlike the other versions in ebonite (V1,2,3) the inkflow is more consistent, nor too wet, nor to dry. The pen is much more robust than the other versions although it is heavier it did not broke or deform when falling from my shirt pocket on concrete for example: the grade 5 titanium made it simply bounce with a few minor scratches. Hope my journey to making this pen interested you. Jeremy Link to the other pens for comparison:

I just purchased a 1973 PILOT Myu 701 (Nib-F) however I'm unable to get the ink to flow for more than a few characters at a time. I found that if I cap the pen and store it nib down for 10 minutes I'm able to write about 5 characters before it dries up again. The eBay listing said the pen was in working order so maybe it has to do with being shipped from Japan? The ink does appear to flow fairly well, but I'm not expert. I've ordered new ink which I should receive early next week to try out. I'm new to vintage fountain pens so I'm hoping there is just some cleaning I need to do and it's user error on my part. I have tried cleaning it with water, however I have not been able to get any water to come out the nib of the pen even if I use an ear cleaner bulb syringe. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

My friend John is a photographer and asked me if he could borrow a few fountain pens to shoot for his portfolio. I think he did a great job. http://static.squarespace.com/static/51c300c1e4b034c963afc8b8/t/51c48c43e4b0c5a944a39daa/1371835461423/20%20-%20Pennor0564.jpg Pilot Capless, TWSBI Diamond 540, Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo ink, Pilot Custom, Pilot MYU BS-500. http://static.squarespace.com/static/51c300c1e4b034c963afc8b8/t/51c48c2ce4b09ee48eb671cd/1371835437733/20%20-%20Pennor0531.jpg Montblanc Meisterstück 149, Waterman Carène, custom Nakaya, Iroshizuku Chiku-rin and Tsutsuji ink. Photos taken from my blog post. (Translated with Google.)