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Wing Sung 699 nib issues


BambinoFortunato

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I recently bought a medium brown Wing Sung 699 that was a very hard starter. It would also only write rotated at a weird angle, like the tipping material wasn’t applied evenly or something.
 

I exchanged it for a replacement, same brown color, medium. It’s much better but runs on the dry side and can sometimes have hard starts. 
 

I bought the medium blue version as a gift for my dad and that one is totally amazing. Never hard starts. Extremely wet and smooth. 
 

Any suggestions as to what I could do to make my brown one a wetter writer?

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Did you open the valve when you write with your brown Wing Sung 699?

 

If you've opened the valve, can you see (through the translucent barrel) whether ink is actually flowing down past the plug at the end of the rod, to supply the feed when writing?

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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7 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

Did you open the valve when you write with your brown Wing Sung 699?

 

If you've opened the valve, can you see (through the translucent barrel) whether ink is actually flowing down past the plug at the end of the rod, to supply the feed when writing?

Yes, I did and it is. Thanks.

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OK then. Did you flush the nib and feed with a dilute cleaning solution (of a suitable dishwashing detergent, with or even without aqueous ammonia) prior to filling and/or first use of your replacement brown pen?

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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18 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

OK then. Did you flush the nib and feed with a dilute cleaning solution (of a suitable dishwashing detergent, with or even without aqueous ammonia) prior to filling and/or first use of your replacement brown pen?

Yes I did that as well. Interesting...today I wrote with it for the longest I ever have today, with it filled with my wettest most lubricated ink (Iroshizuku Kiri-Same) using slightly more than normal pressure. Over the course of the day it’s gotten much wetter and smoother. When I get to the end of this fill I’ll clean it and soak the nib again before refilling. I’m guessing the blue pen just happened to be cleaner coming out of the factory while my brown one must have had some machine residues or whatever that have been harder to clear out and/or the tines were tighter or what have you. Wing Sung seems like they make a solid product, but their QC is clearly nowhere near that of, say, Pelikan or Sailor; I chalk this up as having to do with that. At this rate it’s improved so much over the course of a day of heavy writing I think further use and cleaning with flush it out and break it in and it’ll be all good. 

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There is a QC difference between a $20 pen vs a $125-$250+ pen.  For my Brown

Wing Sung 699 I shimmed the nib a bit, causing the nib to become a wet writer.

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Just like majority of Chinese fountain pen nib OOB , they just need a run-in period , usually a full fill or two of writing and as typical for their intended usage they typically are tuned constraint or some would put it dry. Users who want to use them for wetter continuous cursive or Latin language style writing can better their experience by tuning the nib ( flossing , smoothing etc ) ..

 

I had the 699 but they all had their nib pulled to allow home for my collection of vintage Chinese nibs and those new nibs end up in vintage Chinese fountain pen I had that just had bad nibs originally. 

 

I did find the nib working just fine on those old pens. Would like broader grind though

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8 hours ago, Helen350 said:

There is a QC difference between a $20 pen vs a $125-$250+ pen. 

 

I wish that were true, but it isn't.  Some of the worst writers that I and my clients have encountered, right out of the box, have also been very expensive pens.  I expect to do nib work on a new pen before I settle down to using it.

 

Stipulas for many years were notorious for having flow problems.  The modern Conway Stewart pens, Duros in particular, were balky.  Search FPN and you'll find recommendations to flush any new pen (fill in the blank) with a good pen cleaner before trying to use it, even really expensive ones.

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Sad to hear that QC concerns are not necessarily different between an inexpensive

Wing Sung 699 and a more costly brand name pen.   One my favorite pens in my small

collection is the Picasso Avignon.  The nib is like writing with butter.  Some would say I

was fortunate, for the Picasso is manufactured in China.  One of the most common

complaints with Chinese made pens has been lack of consistent QC.  Truly, as many on

FPN know, making sure manufacturing oils, etc have been cleansed from a new nib is mandatory.  Thanks for sharing your QC pen experiences.

 

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Sad to say the pen started writing like garbage again. :( The blue one has been consistently amazing, but it’s a gift so I’m sending that off to someone. Just going to exchange the brown one. If the replacement doesn’t work I’m going to throw in the towel, and perhaps even just splurge on a Pilot Custom 823. 

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Even the 823 has problems.  Take a look at this current thread.     It could be just that feed.  Even the Sheaffer had a bad batch of feeds years ago.  We're still cleaning up the mess on some today.

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Bad nib down pen drop.  Learned a hard lesson when I had to spend money to get the nib unit replaced

in my vintage Waterman Phileas back in 2005.  

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My replacement 699 came, another blue one and it’s great. At this point I’ve had two blue ones write perfectly out of the box and two brown ones have flow and nib issues. I’m giving one blue as a gift and wanted a brown one for myself so I just swapped in the nib and feed from the second blue pen into my brown one. The browns must’ve just been from a bad production batch and the blues from a good one. Now that I’ve swapped in the new nib and feed the brown one works perfectly. It’s a really wet and smooth writer. I love it. 

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On 3/25/2021 at 7:55 PM, Greg Miller said:

 

I don't see anything but user error in that thread.

well, the OP started the post about the pen not writing, even with ink in the reservoir, then he dropped the pen afterwards....

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I went ahead and got a Pilot Custom 823. It worked great, then a few days later became very dry. I dismantled it, cleaned everything and put it back together. Now it writes perfectly and I absolutely love it. 

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On 4/3/2021 at 10:24 PM, lovemy51 said:

well, the OP started the post about the pen not writing, even with ink in the reservoir, then he dropped the pen afterwards....

 

Right, two user errors: he turned off the flow of ink to the nib and then dropped it on the nib.

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On 4/6/2021 at 4:20 AM, Greg Miller said:

 

Right, two user errors: he turned off the flow of ink to the nib and then dropped it on the nib.

aaaaaaaahhhhh, right......... well, glad you got your 6th post

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