Ebonite Does Make A Difference

[altair]

I recently got to do a direct comparison of an ebonite and a plastic feed, with all other conditions equal. The pen in question was a modern Pelikan M200 with a Binder XXF full flex nib.

 

I had been unhappy because my favorite iron gall ink, Registrar's, wasn't flowing well through the flex nib. Looking for a solution, I found several FPN posts recommending hard rubber feeds with iron gall inks, so I decided to give it a shot. After a bit of searching, I found a spare Pelikan 120 EF nib, with plating loss, for $12.

 

I had never reset a nib before, but the Pelikans proved to be surprisingly easy. I used a 1/4 inch drill bit on a scrap of hard wood to make a perfectly serviceable knockout block. I removed and reset the 120 nib once, for practice, before I knocked out the Binder nib and set it on the vintage ebonite feed.

 

What a difference! It isn't simply an ink flow issue as I would have thought. The hard rubber feed is actually drier and more metered than the plastic. The hairlines are a bit lighter and the swells are less juicy and more shaded. Consequently, the nib is a tiny bit toothier. However, the ebonite recharges much faster than plastic. It simply doesn't railroad track in normal writing at any speed I am capable of. A long, rapid swell (nearly the length of a page) will induce a railroad track, but the nib is ready to flex as soon as the point touches paper again. Amazing.

 

The plastic feed was unusable on very smooth paper, like Clairefontaine, because the bead would break almost immediately upon flexing. More textured paper would work for a few lines, but eventually railroad tracking set in. There was nothing to do then except recap the pen and wait a few minutes or twist the piston to push more ink into the feed.

 

I didn't think to do a comparison with a more conventional ink. I doubt I ever will now, because I am too happy with this combination to ever switch back. If I had any machining skills I'd try to make more of these feeds.

[Leftytoo]

Interesting. I have an Aurora "88" with ebonite feed, and ink flow is just perfect and the way you describe it. My Parker 51 is also perfect in ink flow - is it ebonite or just a super well designed accumulator? My Omas Milord appears to have an ebonite feed (I'm not sure) but it feeds somewhat poorly.

 

And I have a modern Parker Duofold with plastic feed. I tuned up this nib to buttery perfection. One thing I did was to take about 2 swipes with 1000 grit paper on the plastic surface that touches the bottom of the nib. This broke the gloss, and the pen was noticably better feeding, with very nice shading. A handy little trick.

 

Bob

[piembi]

 

That's the reason why I have a significant number of vintage Pelikans and Pelikan nibs!

If the nib looks ok, I don't worry much about the body. My bid is for the nib.

 

Vintage 400 nibs are my daily users. Sometimes I try to use a M400 nib but after 1-2 days I am back to the vintage nib/feed. The ebonite feed makes a difference and the vintage nib even more so.

[Bo Bo Olson]

That could perhaps explain why '50s nibs are so good.

With Pelikan then it will be easy, long is Ebonite...I hope, and cross is plastic.

 

I am now in a delima....I have a slew of Wearevers....and some were from the late '30's so now I need to take those flat feeds some day and check them out for what is ebonite and what is plastic.

Ok...it was stupid to do that...but I was real, real Noobie...to take all the pens apart like that....ignorance is no excuse in the court of law...nor with a scatter of unmarked feeds. And I thought, the ones with ridges had to be the better ones; being more modern....Thinking with out knowledge is plumb dumb stupid. Guilty as charged. :embarrassed_smile:

 

Any help on telling the difference?

[eric47]

My Omas Milord appears to have an ebonite feed (I'm not sure) but it feeds somewhat poorly.

 

Omas uses ebonite feeds, unless something drastic changed with the new models. You might want to increase the flow or have the nib looked at.

[altair]

Any help on telling the difference?

 

Use the sniff test. Hard rubber has an unmistakable sulfur odor.

[Mickey]

Interesting. I have an Aurora "88" with ebonite feed, and ink flow is just perfect and the way you describe it. My Parker 51 is also perfect in ink flow - is it ebonite or just a super well designed accumulator? My Omas Milord appears to have an ebonite feed (I'm not sure) but it feeds somewhat poorly.

 

And I have a modern Parker Duofold with plastic feed. I tuned up this nib to buttery perfection. One thing I did was to take about 2 swipes with 1000 grit paper on the plastic surface that touches the bottom of the nib. This broke the gloss, and the pen was noticably better feeding, with very nice shading. A handy little trick.

 

Bob

 

Your experience seems to support my first impression, i.e., that it is a surface tension issue, and that ebonite feeds often work better not because they are ebonite, per se, but because the material is inherently or typically less smooth than the plastic used in other feeds. (Dewetting?) Any fluid dynamics experts out there?

[gregamckinney]

Any help on telling the difference?

 

Use the sniff test. Hard rubber has an unmistakable sulfur odor.

 

Particularly if you rub it rapidly with your thumb. I've had HR pens that didn't smell much "at rest," but had a very strong sulphur odor when rubbed.

 

Regards, greg

[Possum Hill]

Interesting. I have an Aurora "88" with ebonite feed, and ink flow is just perfect and the way you describe it. My Parker 51 is also perfect in ink flow - is it ebonite or just a super well designed accumulator? My Omas Milord appears to have an ebonite feed (I'm not sure) but it feeds somewhat poorly.

 

And I have a modern Parker Duofold with plastic feed. I tuned up this nib to buttery perfection. One thing I did was to take about 2 swipes with 1000 grit paper on the plastic surface that touches the bottom of the nib. This broke the gloss, and the pen was noticably better feeding, with very nice shading. A handy little trick.

 

Bob

 

Your experience seems to support my first impression, i.e., that it is a surface tension issue, and that ebonite feeds often work better not because they are ebonite, per se, but because the material is inherently or typically less smooth than the plastic used in other feeds. (Dewetting?) Any fluid dynamics experts out there?

Different materials are inherently more or less prone to wetting by a given liquid, regardless of surface finish. After you've selected a particular material, surface finish and geometry may have some effect.

 

Materials have a property called surface energy that in liquids is the same thing as surface tension. A liquid with a given surface energy (surface tension) will tend to wet a solid surface of a material of higher surface energy. At least that's the way I remember it.

[Mickey]

Interesting. I have an Aurora "88" with ebonite feed, and ink flow is just perfect and the way you describe it. My Parker 51 is also perfect in ink flow - is it ebonite or just a super well designed accumulator? My Omas Milord appears to have an ebonite feed (I'm not sure) but it feeds somewhat poorly.

 

And I have a modern Parker Duofold with plastic feed. I tuned up this nib to buttery perfection. One thing I did was to take about 2 swipes with 1000 grit paper on the plastic surface that touches the bottom of the nib. This broke the gloss, and the pen was noticably better feeding, with very nice shading. A handy little trick.

 

Bob

 

Your experience seems to support my first impression, i.e., that it is a surface tension issue, and that ebonite feeds often work better not because they are ebonite, per se, but because the material is inherently or typically less smooth than the plastic used in other feeds. (Dewetting?) Any fluid dynamics experts out there?

Different materials are inherently more or less prone to wetting by a given liquid, regardless of surface finish. After you've selected a particular material, surface finish and geometry may have some effect.

 

Materials have a property called surface energy that in liquids is the same thing as surface tension. A liquid with a given surface energy (surface tension) will tend to wet a solid surface of a material of higher surface energy. At least that's the way I remember it.

 

If I'm following you correctly (my memory on this is past its expiration date, so please bear with me), you are saying that the dominant factor is the relative hydrophobic vs hydrophilic nature of the materials. If so, how do we explain the observation (Bob's) to which I originally responded? (I do see your point, though. I may have just dropped a red herring mentioning dewetting.)

[Possum Hill]

Interesting. I have an Aurora "88" with ebonite feed, and ink flow is just perfect and the way you describe it. My Parker 51 is also perfect in ink flow - is it ebonite or just a super well designed accumulator? My Omas Milord appears to have an ebonite feed (I'm not sure) but it feeds somewhat poorly.

 

And I have a modern Parker Duofold with plastic feed. I tuned up this nib to buttery perfection. One thing I did was to take about 2 swipes with 1000 grit paper on the plastic surface that touches the bottom of the nib. This broke the gloss, and the pen was noticably better feeding, with very nice shading. A handy little trick.

 

Bob

 

Your experience seems to support my first impression, i.e., that it is a surface tension issue, and that ebonite feeds often work better not because they are ebonite, per se, but because the material is inherently or typically less smooth than the plastic used in other feeds. (Dewetting?) Any fluid dynamics experts out there?

Different materials are inherently more or less prone to wetting by a given liquid, regardless of surface finish. After you've selected a particular material, surface finish and geometry may have some effect.

 

Materials have a property called surface energy that in liquids is the same thing as surface tension. A liquid with a given surface energy (surface tension) will tend to wet a solid surface of a material of higher surface energy. At least that's the way I remember it.

 

If I'm following you correctly (my memory on this is past its expiration date, so please bear with me), you are saying that the dominant factor is the relative hydrophobic vs hydrophilic nature of the materials. If so, how do we explain the observation (Bob's) to which I originally responded? (I do see your point, though. I may have just dropped a red herring mentioning dewetting.)

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are different. That's the difference between theory and practice.

 

But seriously, how the section/feed/nib of a pen works depends on more than just the feed material. Ink flows over the feed and also has to flow over the nib to some extent, on the underside of the nib and in the slit between the tines.

 

For a specific application, like ink flow adjustment of pens, it's often best to pay more attention to what people with experience do than to what simple theory predicts. A good professor once told my class not to waste time explaining why something that does work shouldn't work.

[Silvermink]

A couple of my most-consistent pens as far as flow - my Aurora 88 and my Wality 71JT - both have ebonite feeds. I'm officially a believer.

[Leftytoo]

Interesting. I have an Aurora "88" with ebonite feed, and ink flow is just perfect and the way you describe it. My Parker 51 is also perfect in ink flow - is it ebonite or just a super well designed accumulator? My Omas Milord appears to have an ebonite feed (I'm not sure) but it feeds somewhat poorly.

 

And I have a modern Parker Duofold with plastic feed. I tuned up this nib to buttery perfection. One thing I did was to take about 2 swipes with 1000 grit paper on the plastic surface that touches the bottom of the nib. This broke the gloss, and the pen was noticably better feeding, with very nice shading. A handy little trick.

 

Bob

 

Your experience seems to support my first impression, i.e., that it is a surface tension issue, and that ebonite feeds often work better not because they are ebonite, per se, but because the material is inherently or typically less smooth than the plastic used in other feeds. (Dewetting?) Any fluid dynamics experts out there?

Different materials are inherently more or less prone to wetting by a given liquid, regardless of surface finish. After you've selected a particular material, surface finish and geometry may have some effect.

 

Materials have a property called surface energy that in liquids is the same thing as surface tension. A liquid with a given surface energy (surface tension) will tend to wet a solid surface of a material of higher surface energy. At least that's the way I remember it.

 

If I'm following you correctly (my memory on this is past its expiration date, so please bear with me), you are saying that the dominant factor is the relative hydrophobic vs hydrophilic nature of the materials. If so, how do we explain the observation (Bob's) to which I originally responded? (I do see your point, though. I may have just dropped a red herring mentioning dewetting.)

Wow, what a group of scientists (nerds?) we are. Yes, solids vary in terms of surface tension (we use this property to separate hydrophobic diamonds from hydroscopic silicates). But surface roughness is a second factor: water beads on polished glass but will spread out on frosted glass. So that is why killing the gloss on a plastic feed seems to improve flow.

Bob

[Possum Hill]

Wow, what a group of scientists (nerds?) we are. Yes, solids vary in terms of surface tension (we use this property to separate hydrophobic diamonds from hydroscopic silicates). But surface roughness is a second factor: water beads on polished glass but will spread out on frosted glass. So that is why killing the gloss on a plastic feed seems to improve flow.

Bob

It's not the sort of thing we can generally display in public -- eyes glaze, spouses sigh. FPN is about our only outlet.

[Bo Bo Olson]

I stumbled across this on a dead com. The German version is still alive. Seven people signed up in January, none since. I wanted to sign up to say good article to a couple, but never got an answer.

I do got to go to the German Com some time.

 

"""""Author: Sammy

 

Hello dear filler friends

I stumbled over this forum a few days ago.

Sifting through I read a few assumptions why pens sometimes don’t write right, or why they leak.

As the production of writing equipment is a part of my job (ball point pens, pencils, pencil extensions, fountain pens, and much more) and as I helped develop ink pen systems, I know that some of the assumptions are wrong.

That’s why I wrote up a short essay on the function system of a fountain pen, a few main problems and their solutions:

 

For a (good) functioning pen, you need (good) ink. Without it the best fountain pen won’t work. That is why I put ink at the beginning of my essay.

 

Every ink type, brand, color, has its own properties. These differ in the quality of the used ingredients and in the quality of the production. There are also great differences in the consistency of the ink. Besides that, the coarse ingredients need to be fine and not lumpy. These lumps can congest the ink feed.

 

The ink feed is the heart piece of a pen, as it bridges the gap between the ink cartridge and the converter or nib. The right amount of ink from the cartridge to the nib is essential. At the same time the right amount of air needs to be let into the cartridge.

 

The principle of the ink feed is based on the capillary reaction. It sucks the ink out of the cartridge. That is why you can write upside down for a longer time using a fountain pen, than you can using a ball point pen. If the feed lets too much air into the cartridge, the ink is sucked out without resistance and the pen drips.

 

If the feed lets too little air into the cartridge, the suction of the capillary does not suffice and this leads to interruptions in writing or even to a total stand-still of ink flow. This can be fixed by turning the converter farther in to balance the under-pressure of the cartridge. This is a short term solution that does not fix the core of the problem. Of course it can also be that the air hole of the feed is full of ink and dries, which narrows the flow passage of the air channel. This also leads to writing interruptions.

 

When the capillary channel gets too narrow, not enough ink can flow through and this again leads to writing interruptions. When it is too large, the suction strength is reduced and this leads to the same effect. There is also a big difference in the material choice for the ink feed. The two most common materials are hard rubber and plastic. The feed made of hard rubber is the first choice, but also the more expensive one. Hard rubber is pressed, so a fine forming such as a capillary channel is not possible. Therefore each must be made separately in a difficult process. (Modern CNC machines do this work today, but still need several minutes per part.) The cheaper solution is the plastic feed, where each part takes mere seconds to make. The exact shaping of the capillary channel is no big problem. Also a larger amount of plastic feeds is produced at once.

 

The hard rubber feed, on the other hand, has better surface material than the plastic feed. It is much better for the capillary effect. This difference can best be explained by the lotus effect. Here the ink pearls off the surface, and cannot stick. The surface itself is not wetted. This deficiency is often met with a wetter. Herein lays the problem: the wetter is washed off by the ink after a while, and the writing quality weakens.

For the hard rubber feed, no wetter is needed, and a constant writing quality is guaranteed. As long as two factors are obeyed: The constant quality and texture of the ink, as described earlier. And the good position of the nib and no deformation of it.

Another function of the ink feed (not by all) is the collecting of the ink. The more the ink cartridge gets empty, the larger the air bubble in the cartridge gets. This bubble can play a role in the leakage of the pen. The bubble expands in higher temperature or air pressure differences, or may decrease. If it gets warmer or the air pressure sinks (e.g. in an airplane), the bubble expands and ink flows out. This ink is saved in the nib section until it is used up (through writing) or the temperature sinks again resp. the air pressure rises, so the bubble decreases again and sucks the ink back in.

 

The nib also plays a vital role hereby. It also bases on the capillary function. If the nib is bent, the function of the capillaries is disrupted. Another possibility is that a bent nib no longer lies on the feed and the transmission of ink from the feed to the nib is interrupted. The nib might not lie on the feed from the very beginning.

 

By the way: the capillary channel of the feed ends at the hole in the nib. The nib, depending on its surface, can have a better or worse wetting, which influences the writing quality.

Another important point is the width of the nib. A fine nib needs a lot less ink than an extra wide nib does. This stands in a not unimportant connection to the amount of ink the capillaries of the feed transport. This again stands in connection to the size of the air channel. The ink consistency should also be kept in mind.

 

This leads one to the conclusion that only a perfect harmony of the single components results in perfect writing.

 

Concluding I want to assure you that slight malfunctions of one component do not necessarily result in a complete malfunction of the pen. This only happens when severe malfunctions appear. In my description of possible pen failures I assumed the worst cases possible.

 

These experiences and results derive from my cooperation in designing ink feeds. I can therefore not guarantee for completeness.

 

I hope you like what you read.

Many greetings

 

"""""""""""

 

Thank you Sammy