Hero's in China...

[ZeissIkon]

Is it worth buying a loupe from ebay? Because I have a magnifying glass.

 

I got my loupe at the local camera store (but good luck finding one of those, most of them have vanished in the almost five years since I got mine). Any science store or various other places can sell you a Hastings Triplet pocket magnifier that will do the job and should cost under $10. If you own a telescope, a 10 mm focal length eyepiece will also do a fine job. You will almost certainly want more magnification than the "Sherlock Holmes" style hand lens will give; those are usually no better than 4x, while 6x is about the minimum that will work (with your young eyes), and 10x is a lot better for tip aligning and grinding.

 

Failing anything else, look up "van Leeuwenhoek" on Wikipedia and see how he invented something every science student takes for granted -- it's something you can make in ten minutes in most kitchens (using a drop of water in place of his glass)...

[rwilsonedn]

...

If you make a million of something and don't test any of them, you could easily turn out a million pieces of scrap metal in little boxes labeled as "Nib, Fountain Pen, 24 Each" (or Russian equivalent) -- and not know it until they get assembled into pens and the end users (since the pen factory doesn't do any more QC than the nib factory did) find out that 99.9% of them write about like a rusty nail. Something Chinese industry has learned in the last couple decades that Soviet industry apparently never did before the fall of the Communist government is that it doesn't matter how much you produce if it's all useless junk -- they're starting to get the hang of producing decent stuff in places like Shanghai and Hangchow (or however they prefer to spell those names these days), and doing the QC to be sure it really is decent stuff. And you can still do this cheaply when your worker wages are on the order of a few dollars a day...

 

I think the Soviet question must have been more complicated than that. In some cases--optics, for instance--Soviet manufacturing was superb. In other cases--camera bodies, for instance--it was far cruder than the German originals but still quite serviceable. In yet other cases it seems to have been dreadful. But I'm not sure how much of the latter was just US propaganda--I've never personally owned a dreadful manufactured product from the Soviet Union. And they did have successful nuclear and space programs, neither of which could have been done without precision manufacturing.

I suspect beyond just the political system, there are other variables, including the availability and rationing of materials. Special alloys and precision machines are expensive, and if your foreign policy is based on the idea that your neighbors are trying to destroy you, you allocate those resources carefully. Also conscious choice. If there is no large middle class with big chunks of disposable income, maybe you design things to be cheap but serviceable, rather than premium-priced.

Which would all be off-topic, except that I think we can see the same factors at work in China now. Fountain pens were never a strategic commodity or a luxury good for the Communists, I suspect, looking at my very serviceable but definitely non-luxury Wing Sung here. They are becoming a source of wealth. But I think that what most Chinese manufacturers are missing is not the desire to make good products--they have pride too. It's the critical middle-management with the technical skills to put in place a proper quality program with sampling, measurements, and records-keeping. Statistical controls shouldn't be a large labor cost, since they are based on sampling. But they are skills-intensive, especially in management.

This may be changing quickly, though. Of late from what I've been reading, and what I've seen from a very few samples, the higher-end Jinhao and especially Hero pens (the real ones) have had very good workmanship. This is going to be interesting to watch.

ron

[ZeissIkon]

Fountain pens were never a strategic commodity or a luxury good for the Communists, I suspect, looking at my very serviceable but definitely non-luxury Wing Sung here. They are becoming a source of wealth. But I think that what most Chinese manufacturers are missing is not the desire to make good products--they have pride too. It's the critical middle-management with the technical skills to put in place a proper quality program with sampling, measurements, and records-keeping. Statistical controls shouldn't be a large labor cost, since they are based on sampling. But they are skills-intensive, especially in management.

This may be changing quickly, though. Of late from what I've been reading, and what I've seen from a very few samples, the higher-end Jinhao and especially Hero pens (the real ones) have had very good workmanship. This is going to be interesting to watch.

ron

 

The Chinese have been, in effect, buying the expertise to implement good QC from us (America) over the past decade or two. Every time an American company wants to enter the (way beyond huge -- five times the population of the United States!) Chinese market, they're required to do so (from what I hear) by forming a subsidiary company that's partly owned by Chinese citizens or the Chinese government. And every Chinese subsidiary company so formed trains a lot of Chinese nationals to run things, because that's required, too. Kodak did it (even though that plant has long since closed); either Ford or GM did it (I forget which); Boeing has done it. The end result is that Chinese QC has improved by orders of magnitude -- the very same design cheap Chinese mini-lathes that were basically a lathe kit twenty years ago are now usable as soon as you clean the shipping grease off the ways, just to pick one example.

 

End result, China's competition is India, now, not the United States...

[HenryLouis]

Nice! I just grinded my own nib! I got about 1 and 1/2 or 2 : 1 ratio of line difference! My first attempt took off the tip, so I threw out that hero, and I took another one and got the awesome results!

[txinsk]

Nice! I just grinded my own nib! I got about 1 and 1/2 or 2 : 1 ratio of line difference! My first attempt took off the tip, so I threw out that hero, and I took another one and got the awesome results!

 

Cheaps pens are nice that way. 2:1 is my initial result with a very precise sweet spot. I will do more when I have the time. Glad you are enjoying another aspect of your pens.

[jbaumann]

By the way, what is the "pecking order" in the Hero lineup? Is the 616 supposed to be a better pen than the 329, or is it the other way round, or are they about the same?

 

[ZeissIkon]

By the way, what is the "pecking order" in the Hero lineup? Is the 616 supposed to be a better pen than the 329, or is it the other way round, or are they about the same?

 

Among the pens that are considered "Parker clones", the heirarchy runs pretty closely with the prices -- the 616 is the bottom of the line, 329/330 higher up, and the 100 is the best made in this sequence. From what I've read, there have been other Parker clones from Hero, but they've generally held to "pay more, get more"; Hero appears to actually sell pens for what they cost (plus reasonable markup, plus middlemen markups, of course).

 

That said, you can sometimes get Hero pens for less than they'd normally cost; there are a couple eBay sellers, for instance, who sell Hero pens with free shipping and a starting bid of 99 cents, and these can't possibly be more cheaply made than the 616 -- for a start, they're metal, chrome, and some color coating (powder coat, most likely) with silkscreening; even in China, these can't be selling for (say) thirty cents equivalent...

[jbaumann]

Yes, I was also under the impression that the 329 was supposed to be higher quality than the 616 - but on ebay, the same seller (speerbob) is selling a ten pack of 329 for $20, while a ten pack of 616 goes for $30 o.O

 

 

[ZeissIkon]

Yes, I was also under the impression that the 329 was supposed to be higher quality than the 616 - but on ebay, the same seller (speerbob) is selling a ten pack of 329 for $20, while a ten pack of 616 goes for $30 o.O

 

Wow...

[JulT]

I have a couple of Parker 51s, one Parker 21, and one Parker 61. Parker 61 is my favorite, but not to risk cracking the nib shell on my Parker 61 from intense use, I decided to buy some cheap Hero 336's which many reports say that they look like Parker 61 (albeit without the feather clip cap). I paid US90cents/each during my recent trip to Singapore. These Heros are very light. One burgundy color writes immediately and smoothly fine-medium; the other forest green writes a bit scratchily extra fine-fine. With a loupe, I found that the nib's tines were misaligned so I dismantled the nib assembly and reset it. Now, it writes very smoothly. I use the home-mixed Thristle ink in these pens. I don't know how long these Hero 336s will stand under my daily use comparing to my Parker hooded nibs as I take good care of all my pens regardless of the prices I have paid for them.

 

As for the pleasure of writing, I am not crazy about my Parker 51 and Parker 21, but I love my Parker 61. These Heros' nibs have the feel between 51 and the 61.

 

I have 2 higher end Hero Doctor Gold Pens with 14kt nibs. In appearance, these look like copies of Stipula Iris (but with CC filler). These are heavy big and quite beautiful pens. The barrels may be celluloid although I am not sure. They cost around US$30 each (bought in Shanghai, China a few years back). I don't know how these compare to the Stipula Iris as I don't own any Stipula. In themselves, they write out of the boxes. The nibs write true medium with a slight spring, a hint of flex. I initially filled them with Hero black ink, which was pitch black in hues (the blackest that I have seen). Then I didn't use the pens for a couple weeks, and the ink clogged the feeds. After that, I only use either Parker Quink Blue or Waterman Florida Blue in them.

[HenryLouis]

I wasn't too lucky with this bunch, 4/10 were good writers after doing a test of the ones I didn't ink.