Still Baby's Bottom In Kaweco Nibs

[Rudolf]

Yesterday I bought a new Kaweco Sport Navy fountain pen with a fine nib and I found that the nib had a baby's bottom. It skipped and hard started a lot.

A few years ago I emailed Kaweco and Bock about this issue. Kaweco send me a new nib for free, nice service, but that nib sufferd from the same issue too. Bock, who makes these nibs, even didn't answer me, shame!!

Those two old companies have not learned anything from there faults, unbelieveable. I spend the whole afternoon making my fountain pen write. Fountain pens should write well out of the box!!!! Kaweco, Bock and all other fountain pen/nib makers: just listen to us and give us nibs that write perfectly out of the box!!

Edited March 29, 2020 by Rudolf

[TheDutchGuy]

The problem occurs all over the market, with the possible exception of the Japanese big-3 (personally I’ve never held a Sailor, Pilot or Platinum with baby’s bottom... yet). I ordered an expensive 14k gold nib from a quality brand this week and it’s got so much baby’s bottom that it is unusable. So I have to send it back. I’ve seen the problem in pens including Pelikan M800, various Kawecos (including their aftermarket gold nibs), various Viscontis, various Leonardos...

 

With nibs at least as wide as Western F, the problem is usually not so difficult to solve and I usually fix such nibs myself (unless they are under warranty). But with EF nibs it can be challenging because of the small amount of tipping material present.

 

Rarely, if ever, did I see it in a vintage pen.

[dan in montreal]

TheDutchGuy is right, it doesn't seem to pe a problem for the Japanese makers.

 

On the subject of Kaweco / Bock nibs, I find they are hit or miss. I always expect to have to work on them in order to get them to write. This is true for all the Kaweco ss nibs that I've used. I can't speak to the gold nibs. The one exception was a medium nib I got on a AL Sport raw, which wrote well out of the box - I was actually surprised it DID work at once, not the other way around.

[Honeybadgers]

I've had some 3776's be misaligned or too tight to write properly, and I've seen one sailor with baby's bottom (annoyingly it was a 1911 large realo of all things, so not inexpensive)

 

But yeah, Japan does it right.

[Rudolf]

Maybe S.B.R.B. (Stephen) BROWN could/would make a video on his website to emphatically encourage the makers of nibs/pens making perfect writing nibs/fountain pens.

Please, Stephen, woud you do this for the sake of all the fountain pen enthusiasts? 😉

[Beechwood]

Yesterday I bought a new Kaweco Sport Navy fountain pen with a fine nib and I found that the nib had a baby's bottom. It skipped and hard started a lot.

A few years ago I emailed Kaweco and Bock about this issue. Kaweco send me a new nib for free, nice service, but that nib sufferd from the same issue too. Bock, who makes these nibs, even didn't answer me, shame!!

Those two old companies have not learned anything from there faults, unbelieveable. I spend the whole afternoon making my fountain pen write. Fountain pens should write well out of the box!!!! Kaweco, Bock and all other fountain pen/nib makers: just listen to us and give us nibs that write perfectly out of the box!!

 

 

I agree with you, pens should write perfectly right out of the box, personally I would send a new pen back, life is too short to faff with a new pen that should be perfect.

 

However, if you want to persevere elimate the easy things first. Fill the pen with a well behaved ink such as Parker or Waterman.

 

Find some good paper, and try the pen again.

 

If it doesnt work with better ink and paper, take some kitchen towel, make it damp, stand the pen nib down onto the paper and leave it for 10 minutes, you are looking to see how well the ink flows, another test is to take a paper towel and stroke the top of the pen, section to the tip and see how well the ink is flowing down the slit.

 

If the pen still has hard starts then you really need to decide for yourself if you want to continue, it should not be this way. It ought to go back to the seller.

 

One of the best troubleshooting guides that I have found comes from Jetpens.

 

https://www.jetpens.com/blog/guide-to-fountain-pen-nibs-troubleshooting-tips-and-tricks/pt/777

[TheDutchGuy]

BB really is an obnoxious malady. A nib may _feel_ great to me, I might _love_ its line width and other writing characteristics, and then the whole experience is completely brought down by BB. Contrary to lack of smoothness (which is rather subjective and personal), BB is a defect due to too much tipping material being removed... and the only way to fix it is to remove even more. More serious cases require measures not far removed from a re-grind.

[Flounder]

I don't if my experience of either is enough for a representative sample, but my experience of 5 out of the box Kaweco Sport nibs has been all over the place, the first being perfect and the others either scratchy or with BB.

 

WIth my Japanese pens, EF and F are perfect nibs, but anything broader skips from BB.

[DonM]

I always find these baby's bottom complaints interesting. Although I have had plenty of challenges with every brand of fountain pen, including Japanese, I have never had a pen with baby's bottom. The problem has always been either with the feed or with the tines being too tight together. Both are easily fixed.

 

I do understand the sentiment that all pens should write perfectly out of the box. But the reality is that every pen sold by a major manufacturer is a commodity item for them. There is no real individual testing or adjustment, even by the companies that claim it. For example, I've seen the videos of Pelikcan's "individual testing" of their nibs. It's nothing more than a quick dip and then dragging the pen across paper a few times. Hardly a test of proper ink delivery or nib adjustment.

 

Yes, it is sad that a $4 Platinum Preppy almost always writes well immediately while a $1000 Visconti takes three trips back to the factory just to make it write. But that's not going to change. The world is not the same as it was 100, 50 or even 25 years ago, and I suspect it never will be.

[Astronymus]

Are Kaweco nibs still produced by Bock? Didn't they change to another manufacturer? I kind of remember to have read something...

[Jamerelbe]

Are Kaweco nibs still produced by Bock? Didn't they change to another manufacturer? I kind of remember to have read something...

 

The last I heard on this (from a Goulet video, I think!) was that Kaweco now source their nibs from Bock and JoWo - roughly equal quantities, made to the exact same specifications. All their nibs are supposed to then go through QC process on the Kaweco end, to ensure that they work correctly no matter the origin.

 

So if you're having a problem with a Kaweco nib there's no point complaining to Bock - or to JoWo for that matter - the responsibility for rectifying any problems lies with the pen manufacturer, i.e. Kaweco, who were supposed to vet the nib before selling it in one of their pens!

[Ink Stained Wretch]

Some years ago Rotring used to market a fountain pen called the Core. I bought some of those, they were not expensive, and nearly every one of them had a baby bottom. If only they'd had better tipping material .

 

And a number of years ago here on FPN a member posted about his visit to one of the big nib makers in, I believe, Germany. There was an interview with a woman in charge of some part of their process and she talked about how they made the tipping material to look somewhat like a baby's bottom! They were trying to make baby bottom nibs !

 

So for some companies I think that complaining about a nib with baby bottomed tipping material may confuse them. They may think that it's a good thing .

[Astronymus]

Maybe she reffered how smooth it is supposed to be. "Glatt wie ein Babypopo", "smooth as a baby's butt" is a common phase in Germany. So, basicly, for them you would be complaining about how smooth their nibs are...

Edited April 11, 2020 by Astron

[Christopher Godfrey]

That Jetpens link is really useful: thank you so much (Beechwood)! Although I did have it book-marked, I had not researched the trouble-shooting page deeply enough until now!

 

I I had a case of the dreaded baby-buttocks with my Pelikan M1000 -- unreliable ink flow and dry-starting were symptomatic of this pen; but now I have detected -- using Jetpens link -- that there was a perceptible gap between nib tips and feed which I had not noticed previously. Some little work later and the pen seems to be performing perfectly! (Finally!)

 

Excuse the short hijack, all: the Jetpens link is a great help!

Edited April 11, 2020 by Christopher Godfrey