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Hongdian 960


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On 3/13/2021 at 6:26 AM, mke said:

@sansenri

I have never experienced a difficult to close/open pen from Hongdian - but I am not yet using them so long.

Btw., I am more and more using this pen - I am very much satisfied with it. So much that I also ordered the dark-red and the dark-green model.

From time to time, I have to adjust the ink level. I am using a dry ink - Waterman Serenity Blue. I think this adjusting will not be necessary with wetter ink.

 

Moonman should learn from Hongdian how to do quality control. A bit unfair as Hongdian has a lot of experience, being an OEM in the pen business. I guess the 1997 on the nib means the start of Hongdian.

 

 

 

Thank you that is useful info, if the threading is done badly you immediately notice, even when used infrequently.
 

If you have to adjust ink in the converter it might be the converter that causes a bit too much surface tension. Try giving it - just the converter -  a wash with a grease remover (Cillit Bang sort of thing), often does the trick.

Useful to know that as an OEM the manufacture is experienced.

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8 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

My criterion is for a full converter of ink not to lose half or more of its volume through evaporation in six weeks, and not completely dry out in three months. Whether the pen hard-starts after a few days of not being used have a lot to do with the solvents in the particular ink. My HongDian model 1850 (Black Forest and Birch Forest pens) don't dry out or hard-start in two weeks, neither do my Kaigelu 316 pens, nor my Moonman 800 pens; but none of them will still be ‘writable’ after nine weeks from filling. (As in, in my first-hand experience, they were all >98% dried out in that time. Some of them would still write about four words with very dark and thick ink before ceasing.)

 

Your criteria are always very demanding ASD :) fortunately I'm reasonably happy with a pen that does not dry out during two weeks of infrequent use. I usually have 5-6 pens inked at the same time and tend to use them in rotation within a few weeks.
Often I use one of them more, for note taking (I prefer not to swap too many pens when taking notes), to the point that I sometimes refill the same pen for consistency of results.

In general within those couple of weeks I use up all the ink in the pens, and the pens go in the "pen to wash " container...

The pens that really do withold the 9 weeks limit and go beyond are usually my Ranga ED pens.

I keep them in horizontal position so the ebonite feed is always wet. They are sort of desk pens.

 

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I've had two of these pens on order since the start of February.  I had my order cancelled today because the seller said there is a bad batch.  Said they will let me know when they can get good pens again and promised me a good price.  Anyone else hear of problems with the Hongdian 960? 

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Many chinese online stores do not stock pens, they just advertise in internet then the get supplyied when they sell.

Nobody will known this for sure, but it could be the seller cannot be supplyied quickly with the model you ordered, and the bad batch motivation is more reasonable for the Customer.

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> Many chinese online stores do not stock pens, they just advertise in internet then they get supplied when they sell.

Yes, unfortunately true. If you don't order when a new model comes out, chances are high you might not get it.

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I ordered on from another vender and it is already shipped.   I was going to get two but I'll see how the first one works out.  

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@fabri00

> The Orange 960 is also nice, if you like that color.

I like the orange - but not with a black end.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Received my 960 in orange.  It is beautiful.  So I inked it up with Monteverde Mandarin Orange ink (I'm having a lot of luck with my Monteverde inks - I now have 22 colors.  But that's for another thread).   This pen and ink combination is great!   Among my Duofold style pens, this is the best.  And I have almost every Chinese clone (Not the Wingsung because I cannot justify the cost).

This pen is smooth as soon as the nib touches paper.  It is wet and the feed keeps up with everything I do, even when I try to stress it.  I've used the pen with good paper (Rhodia) and a variety of horrible papers.   Handled them all.   Of course it was better on quality paper.  

 

I'm am going to get another one.  

 

So my list of Chinese pens that worked first time - every time includes this Hongdian 960, Moonman M600 with the Fude nib, Wingsung 3008, Wingsung 699, Jinhao 500, and Jinhao 777.  There are plenty of real good pens in my collection but these have surprised me with their performance. 

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I just inked my blue 960 EF for the first time. I'm finding it to be comfortable and a good writer so far. It's not going to replace my more expensive Pilot and Lamy pens (like the Custom 823 and the Imporium), but I think I would rather have had this than the Vista I used in college years ago.

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  • 3 months later...

I received two HongDian 960 pens, and I must say this is the first time I've been somewhat dissatisfied with HongDian's product or quality control.

 

Before use, I unscrewed the nib units to give them a through flushing with dilute detergent and ammonia solution. That's when I noticed the metal inside the gripping section on one of them was deeply scored, as if miniature Zorro made an atypical ‘A’ mark with his sword on the interior wall.

 

Out-of-the-box, the tipping on both nibs were ground unevenly, such that the right tine was ever-so-slightly longer than the left tine. One was finished slightly more smoothly than the other, such that the two halves of the tipping touched to form a single rounded shape, but still exhibited something of an oblique angle on the pointy end (looking straight down at it from above the nib face); the other showed more of a twin-peaks profile, with one peak higher than the other. Both wrote mostly too wet for my tastes, but exhibited dry strokes going from right to left, especially when going from top right to bottom left. I've had to work on both nibs to reshape them and remedy the problem.

 

The black plastic rims of the mouths of both converters have irregularities on what should be a flat surface on an O-shaped ring, as if there were tiny craters, and on one of them an arc on the rim has been ‘eroded’ (not smoothly at that, and looks more like damage from hard impact). The function on the latter one may be slightly compromised; I'm not entirely sure yet, but I don't feel comfortable with it and don't trust it, and my experience of trying to fill the pen to which that converter was attached seemed to suggest there is some microscopic air leak (which may be a contributor to the excessive wetness).

 

The experience made me far less inclined to try other HongDian models with larger nibs than those found on models 1850, 6013, 517D, etc.

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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  • 1 year later...

I find the shape and size of these pens almost perfect for comfort, but the threads are sharp and the nib is quite boring. The nib to its credit is nice and precise but it is quite scratchy and a total nail. I will test it with a wetter ink. 

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