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End of the road for Pelikan?


rochester21

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While the first time I saw an ink window on a cartridge/converter pen I felt somewhat deceived (I had learned to associate ink windows with piston fillers), I have to recognize that once I got over it, an ink window is actually very practical in most situations and I would also miss it in the pens that do have it.

 

Not all pens render aesthetically themselves to one, but many would. It is a practical gadget of great use, even if it is a narrow bilateral one like the one on the Lamy Joy. Specially when laying out loads of ink (like with a 1.5mm+ italic nib).

 

Whether removing it is enough justification to dash off a brand remains to be seen and will be actually consumers who will decide by continuing buying their products.

If you are to be ephemeral, leave a good scent.

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31 minutes ago, txomsy said:

<snip>

Whether removing it is enough justification to dash off a brand remains to be seen and will be actually consumers who will decide by continuing buying their products.

 

Time will tell.  As for me, I'm sorry to see it go.

 

IMG_2756 1024.jpg

 LINK <-- my Ink and Paper tests

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23 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

I'm not sure about that. Undoubtedly, the design intent of the fountain pen is to avoid having to dip one's pen into an inkwell every few words to continue writing, but I don't believe it necessarily extends to carrying enough ink in the pen's internal reservoir to support a whole day's writing whatever that means for the random individual user. Having enough ink from a single fill of the pen for several pages of writing would already be an improvement in function and user convenience by orders of magnitude, and hardly “defeats the purpose” even it still limits and inconveniences the user who writes a lot everyday, or makes someone feel that it's “so close yet so far”.

 

Besides, who would reasonably and wholeheartedly claim that carrying spare ink cartridges in one's pocket, bag, or briefcase defeats the purpose of having and using a fountain pen?

 

 

Oh, I am pretty sure about that. A cursory reading of the old patents are fairly clear.

 

As quite rightly stated, the point is indeed to avoid having to continually dip a pen in ink to keep writing.
 

I think the main rub lies in what one considers to be an adequate internal reservoir, which is, as pointed out, quite subjective.

 

In this context, my contention would be that when away from one’s desk, the ability to estimate remaining ink volume, and better yet also the rate of use during a given writing exercise, puts one in a better position to judge how many extra pens, cartridges, or other ink sources might be required to support the day’s writing, or if the current pen has sufficient capacity to support the anticipated writing need.

 

What I was quibbling with, at least a little, was the implication that an acceptable substitute for the lack of an ink window is to simply always have an ink supply handy, just in case the pen runs dry. Minimizing the need to access an external ink supply, is indeed cited as an advantage of numerous fountain pen designs. If I know a given pen is roughly full, half-full, or nearly empty, I am in a much better position to decide whether or not to take the pen as-is or not, given anticipated writing needs. If I further know how much writing a given ink level will support, so much the better.

 

Maybe stated another way: if I were presented two similar pens, one with the ability to visually judge ink level and one without, I would prefer the pen with the ability to visually judge ink level, to include paying a premium for such a feature.

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15 hours ago, Mike B said:

Well.

 

When I hit that awkward age a while back, I had a couple of major decisions to make.

 

I opted to stay married.

 

And instead of a sports car, I elected to pick up a snazzy red and black Pelikan 600 (translucent stripes).

 

So far, at least, both choices have remained cost-effective.

🤣😂 Judicious decision-making…

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+1 to what N1003U said.  Of course my husband's midlife crisis -- instead of buying a Camaro or a vintage Mustang (he's not really a car guy) -- was to start a sideline business (which, while up until  COVID hit, did take in slightly more in profit than the expenses), but which was a LOT of work and I mostly got tired of doing all this stuff for it but not really seeing *MY* share of the profits for the most part (and have NEVER really been reimbursed for one of the propane-powered convection ovens, which got paid for with money inherited from my dad's estate... :angry:).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

"It's very nice, but frankly, when I signed that list for a P-51, what I had in mind was a fountain pen."

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Dear Pelikan managers,
Please read this trustful comments, you're in time to fix and correct this wrongful, mistaken determination.
Thanks

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On 10/3/2022 at 10:43 PM, Ron Z said:

 

Not always the case.  Far from it.  You haven't seen the damage to acrylics, and other plastics that I and other repair people have, caused by some of the inks on the market.  Pelikan repair people were convinced that some of the damage that they saw was caused by some of the non-Pelikan inks.

Well it is not like they have changed to a more robust material...  The reason they quoted was ascetic, not about robustness.

 

If something can cause significant damage to acrylics then it will cause damage to most pen plastics commonly used.  Only Ebonite is known to be chemically more inert.  PVC, another one of the more chemically resistant plastics, is too soft (and doesn't look and feel good) to be used as pen body, and is not necessary more chemically resistant against acids and alkaline than PMMA (acrylic).

 

Thus, other than staining, which with the striped pattern is a minimal issue even if the ink stains, there is nothing to suggest their opaque stuff won't suffer the same or even worse damages from the same "inks".  Worse, because you cannot see inside, you have no idea if the ink is causing damage until it is far too late.

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Hushhhh! Don't give ideas to the marketing people... something that can increase goods turnover? Tsk, tsk... :)

If you are to be ephemeral, leave a good scent.

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Oner day, one of these threads will tell us how inks are eating through glass bottles and melting them. First it was sacs, then it was feeds, then it was metal corrosion that the ink provided by somehow just looking at a metal pen and now it's acrylics*. Glass seems to be the last barrier against these highly corrosive substances we call 'ink' that seem to have a greater ability to eat through things than sulfuric acid. Maybe Noodler's will bring out a special limited edition range of Fluoroantimonic Inks where you can watch your hands dissolve at the same rate as your pen as you fill. Fun for the whole family!

 

*because it couldn't ever be possible that it's a manufacturing fault in the pen.

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If inks damage pens, how come there are so many intact vintage pens floating around? 

 

If you would argue that they made theb better 80 years ago than they do today- i agree! 

 

I don't usually use my vintage pens but i am amazed every time i look at them, they're so well made. 

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10 minutes ago, rochester21 said:

If inks damage pens, how come there are so many intact vintage pens floating around? 

 

If you would argue that they made theb better 80 years ago than they do today- i agree! 

 

I don't usually use my vintage pens but i am amazed every time i look at them, they're so well made. 

 

The pens were probably as good if not better back then in a time when things were made to last. The same cannot be said of old inks though. Many old iron gal inks were seriously problematic and those who have used them recently (by finding old bottles, powders or tablets) have discovered an awful truth. I have occasion to work with old documents from time to time and old iron gal inks from the Victorian era and through into the early twentieth century (as far, perhaps, as the 1930's/40's) were often so acidic that they ate through the paper - and remember, paper back then was good and not the rubbish we have to put up with today. I've even seen the same thing on vellum. You can still read it and it looks fine, but it's when you lift the page that you notice the chinks of light through the actual writing. In most of these cases it was with a dip pen, so it didn't matter - you just threw away the nib and put in a new one, but there are still many examples where it has been written with a fountain pen with the same effect. Maybe they did change the rubber sacs every few weeks, I don't know, but inks of the past were likely far more volatile than inks today. Even older inks specifically made for fountain pens could be a problem; such as Parker's Superchrome (I think that's what it was called) which was corrosive, Penman Sapphire (stubborn staining and persistent dryout on the nib) and a host of iron gal inks made by manufacturers that are no longer with us that made for corrosive substances. Yet oddly, there doesn't seem to be much documented about problem inks in the past.

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Parker's Superchrome is supposed to be a less corrosive version of the Parker 51 ink!

 

Yet, Park 51s (pens) which were designed for using these super alkaline inks were made out of acrylic (aka Plexiglas) with a PVC sac.  Sadly these two inks still did their damage, but that was to the early sterling silver breather tubes. They were so corrosive that they corroded silver. The acrylic section, collector and the PVC sac were immune.  Granted the collector often gets clogged up by dried up ink, but that is not the same as chemical damage.

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5 hours ago, Uncial said:

Yet oddly, there doesn't seem to be much documented about problem inks in the past.

Maybe because the use model was different as well.

 

When most of your communications/recordings are hand made you eat up ink very quickly, refill the pen very often and then ink doesn't sit in there as well.

 

Plus when pens are available by the score in the shop next corner (or even closer) you do not care that much. Plus when there is no info and hand repair was common, it wasn't such  big issue.

 

I went through many pens in my primary/secondary/high school student times. In some cases, the metal flap thingies inside the metal cap of Parker pens would come out and the cap wouldn't get stuck. Which led me to prefer screw caps. Some times it was ink leaks at the junction of section and body or section and ink window. Some times, the section or the cap would break.... Some times it was as simple as asking the person at the shop for a quick fix. Others it was cheaper to just get a new one. And others you wouldn't care because it had a life-time warranty and you'd simply send it back for a replacement.

 

It is now that pens are supposed to be guaranteed for a short time (if any), that many models are no longer any easy to come by, and pens can be discontinued at a whim, that repairing is overly expensive (if available), and that we can communicate an learn, that we start to worry.

 

It was my experience with many broken pens that led me to search for sturdy metal pens, and if possible from a maker with lifetime warranty and, ultimately, to the Montblanc Slimline that became my ultimate only pen for decades... until I decided to start a new search, which led me here and, the rest -as they say- is history.

 

Seeing as to how after decades of careless abuse, I have never had to consider making use of the lifetime warranty of the MB, it looks like I made the right decision. And I've been using preferentially IG inks on it.

If you are to be ephemeral, leave a good scent.

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8 hours ago, rochester21 said:

If inks damage pens, how come there are so many intact vintage pens floating around? 

 

If you would argue that they made theb better 80 years ago than they do today- i agree! 

 

I don't usually use my vintage pens but i am amazed every time i look at them, they're so well made. 

As opposed to me, who use vintage pens way more than modern ones -- not only are they often better made (especially the first and second tier level brands) but they often have nicer nibs on them.  AND often cost a fraction of what a "good" modern pen might be priced at.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

ETA: And of course, part of the reason for that is that they were designed to be WRITING INSTRUMENTS.  Not as tchotchkes to put in a display case to show how much disposable income one has....

"It's very nice, but frankly, when I signed that list for a P-51, what I had in mind was a fountain pen."

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On 10/8/2022 at 5:37 PM, txomsy said:

Plus when pens are available by the score in the shop next corner (or even closer) you do not care that much.

 

It's true that fountain pens were available in peculiar places such as garages/gas stations, but they weren't always cheap, disposable items. If you look at what a Parker 51 cost and work out what that would be in today's money, it aint cheap. The basic model in 1941 would have cost a week's wages while the better models would have cost half of a monthly wage. Parker were considered good, reliable pens back then, but not fancy, luxury pens. I'd waver you'd care a lot in the 1940s if something went wrong with your fountain pen.

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4 hours ago, Uncial said:

 

It's true that fountain pens were available in peculiar places such as garages/gas stations, but they weren't always cheap, disposable items. If you look at what a Parker 51 cost and work out what that would be in today's money, it aint cheap. The basic model in 1941 would have cost a week's wages while the better models would have cost half of a monthly wage. Parker were considered good, reliable pens back then, but not fancy, luxury pens. I'd waver you'd care a lot in the 1940s if something went wrong with your fountain pen.

That wasn't exactly his point. 

Fountain pens were tools and spare parts and repairs were a lot more common than they are today. You could order spare parts from the company itself, like caps and what not. Generally speaking neither the spare parts or the repairs were expensive because the capitalist notion of maximizing profits wasn't fully implemented yet. At least that was the case in Europe. 

 

Imagine doing this today. I can barely find entire sections for sale on parker shop.eu, let alone caps, nibs or replacement sections for example. They don't sell them! Why? So you'd have to throw the entire pen away or pay 80% of the initial price to have it repaired by them(and not others). 

 

That repair and reuse culture is long gone, spare parts are problematic in all fields not just fountain pens, and this simply wasn't the case in the past. 

 

It's no wonder we create mountains of waste since there are no more parts or repair people to fix stuff, and everything is so poorly made that repairs are just not worth it anymore. It's a different world, people have forgotten that it didn't used to be this way. 

 

 

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9 minutes ago, rochester21 said:

Fountain pens were tools and spare parts and repairs were a lot more common than they are today. You could order spare parts from the company itself, like caps and what not. 

 

Imagine doing this today. I can barely find entire sections for sale on parker shop.eu, let alone caps, nibs or replacement sections for example. They don't sell them! Why?

 

Try servicing your modern, mostly computerised automobile in the garage attached to your house. That cultural norm is losing relevance to use-and-dispose consumerism globally, and has been on that trajectory for a long time now. Not even ‘green‘ or ‘woke’ sensibilities are going to save that, certainly not with motivations from a home economics perspective.

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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21 hours ago, rochester21 said:

If inks damage pens, how come there are so many intact vintage pens floating around?

Yes, some inks had negative properties (being too alkaline, like the Parker Superchrome, etc.), especially if not used correctly (dried up iron gall ink is a pain to remove, often times impossible). That wasn't all of the inks though. Dye-based water soluble inks, aka. fountain pen inks, were the norm and vintage ink lines are still produced today, for example, Waterman's, Pelikan 4001, Parker Quink, etc. and those are most often the recommended inks for vintage pens.

But why so many vintage pens are still around? They were daily use tools, produced in great numbers. Newer models replaced "out of style/antiquated" or more finicky older models and they were often just retired. Also, as ballpoints started to gain ground due to their higher perceived and actual utilitarian value, fountain pens kept on being retired and falling out of favor. As a result, there are loads of vintage pens out there "in the wild" so it is not that surprising that in this day and age you can still find even NOS or mint vintage pens, especially with more and more people becoming aware of their value.

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10 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Try servicing your modern, mostly computerised automobile in the garage attached to your house. That cultural norm is losing relevance to use-and-dispose consumerism globally, and has been on that trajectory for a long time now. Not even ‘green‘ or ‘woke’ sensibilities are going to save that, certainly not with motivations from a home economics perspective.

I agree, but for a different reason.

 

Many Fountain Pen people are different than the general public. They like physical objects, are curious about them and are willing to and even sometimes enthusiastic about learning about them, including possibly and sometimes actually repairing them.

 

The average person has neither the interest nor skills to do this and never has. 
 

The difference is in places where the economy is such that one with the skills and temperament to do repair work can make more money doing something else, they do so. The result is a limited number of repair professionals in many places and they focus on those fields which pay the best.

 

I say this because I actually have a nephew who is paid very well to do repairs, repairs of large diesel trucks and farm machinery.

 

And, most of the people who I have worked with, studied with and in general interacted with aren’t capable of repairing anything. They also can’t build anything, assemble anything or follow complicated instructions regarding physical objects.

 

I have very good skills in this area, it is referred to as Spatial Reasoning abilities, testing at one point at the 85%. 
 

I did not become a repair person. In a different age, or a different culture I might well have.

 

And, if I had the hand eye coordination and speed that my brother has, I might have developed the butchering skills he has and used professionally. His wife was also trained as a Chef, but she was never as fast not as precise as he was and so she left the field to become a teacher which better matched her verbal skills.

 

 I see the disposable society as largely a reaction to the reality that most people irrespective of IQ do not have and never will be able to have the ability to complete basic mechanical tasks independently, insightfully or with good speed and skill.

 

For most of them it’s best to keep things simple and let them do what they do and hope they find something useful to do with their lives so they can either pay someone else for new things or to repair the big things in the world which can’t be efficiently mass produced.

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1 hour ago, Parker51 said:

I agree, but for a different reason.

 

Many Fountain Pen people are different than the general public. They like physical objects, are curious about them and are willing to and even sometimes enthusiastic about learning about them, including possibly and sometimes actually repairing them.

 

The average person has neither the interest nor skills to do this and never has. 
 

The difference is in places where the economy is such that one with the skills and temperament to do repair work can make more money doing something else, they do so. The result is a limited number of repair professionals in many places and they focus on those fields which pay the best.

 

I say this because I actually have a nephew who is paid very well to do repairs, repairs of large diesel trucks and farm machinery.

 

And, most of the people who I have worked with, studied with and in general interacted with aren’t capable of repairing anything. They also can’t build anything, assemble anything or follow complicated instructions regarding physical objects.

 

I have very good skills in this area, it is referred to as Spatial Reasoning abilities, testing at one point at the 85%. 
 

I did not become a repair person. In a different age, or a different culture I might well have.

 

And, if I had the hand eye coordination and speed that my brother has, I might have developed the butchering skills he has and used professionally. His wife was also trained as a Chef, but she was never as fast not as precise as he was and so she left the field to become a teacher which better matched her verbal skills.

 

 I see the disposable society as largely a reaction to the reality that most people irrespective of IQ do not have and never will be able to have the ability to complete basic mechanical tasks independently, insightfully or with good speed and skill.

 

For most of them it’s best to keep things simple and let them do what they do and hope they find something useful to do with their lives so they can either pay someone else for new things or to repair the big things in the world which can’t be efficiently mass produced.

You're missing the point, though. Even if you are capable and willing to do the repair(either for yourself or a customer), modern manufacturing makes it impossible to do the repair; often even the manufacturer can't repair the object because a primary consideration during the design stage is for the object to be unrepairable. This is not a matter of will or skill anymore, it's a matter of deliberately creating a world in which you do not get to decide what you want to do with the things you supposedly own, just so you have to keep coming back to buy more.

 

From manufacturers telling suppliers not to sell parts to third parties(this is supposed to be illegal), to using copyright law to stop people from writing replacement firmware/software, to pairing chips together so you can't swap out parts of a device when they break, to not honouring warranties for made up reasons(the burden is on the warrantor to prove that the warrantee caused the defect, but no-one ever sues them, so they keep getting away with it), the list goes on and on. At this point, you have to be a masochistic lunatic to voluntarily start a repair business outside of the few industries where repair is so ingrained in the culture that there is still some room to maneuver. Not because it's hard to do the actual repair, but because it's hard and potentially dangerous to navigate all the roadblocks erected by manufacturers and crony lawmakers.

 

We all seem to have strayed quite a long way off the original topic of this thread.

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