"International" converters, how interchangeable are they really?

[awa54]

I posted a similar question on the MB forum, but crickets must have drowned out all of the learned answers that were posted there

 

I recently acquired a Montblanc 32p cartridge fill pen and tried using a 1980s era converter in it (looks like any Schmidt metal ring converter, but branded as Paper Mate), however this converter seems to be a bit too long for that pen to comfortably screw closed on... The pen closes on a pair of cartridges with just a hint of resistance at the last quarter turn (as expected for a system that's intended to pierce a cart on close).

 

Any folks know if the "standard" has changed since the 1960s, or if this might be a simple case of an out of spec. converter?

 

The pen that this converter came with is a mid 1980s slim stainless Paper Mate (made in W. Germany).

 

Thanks!

 

 

[inkstainedruth]

In my experience "Standard International" is something of a misnomer.  I bought a pen that was a Cross sub brand, and was told it took international Standard.  Well, yes and no.... 

It took a Pelikan cartridge but the cartridge was a long International standard and it was too long for the barrel to fit over it.  So I went trailing around to pretty much every table at a pen show, to get a converter and NONE of the International Standard converters I tried fit right.  But a CROSS converter worked just fine....

[PithyProlix]

I wonder if the so-called 'standard' has anything to do with converter length? I always thought it was about the dimensions of the cartridge & converter mouth and diameter only. I have no basis for that assumption and it may be a bad one! 

 

A friend just got a Montblanc 300 - circa late 1970s - and asked me to recommend a converter (BTW, they are called "ink pumps" here) to buy and now I am a little hesitant to do so. What is the length of your Paper Mate converter, please? 

[awa54]

That's odd, since Cross carts are totally different from International.

 

The long cartridges with an International interface/"nipple" are often seen as a Waterman branded product, in my experience, they're usually too long (or too wide at the base) for other manufacturers pens to accept. And by extension, the Waterman pens designed for the long carts won't self pierce a back-to-back pair of "standard" International cartridges, which leaves your spare cart rattling around in the barrel, if you choose to load your Waterman that way

 

 

 

[awa54]

The new Schmidt converter and the old Paper Mate are 75.5mm (approximate), width above the cartridge mouth and maximum width of the metal retaining ring are identical between the two.

A pair of Pelikan cartridges back to back with each other is at least 1mm longer than either converter.

Both converters protrude from the 32p barrel by the exact same amount, both converters drop in and can be removed from the barrel with no force or interference with the inside of the barrel...

 

The new production Schmidt K5 works perfectly with the old MB, with no barrel interference whatsoever, which means that the older converter must have an out of spec feed interface, or quite possibly, the 40 year old polymer has just hardened enough that it won't go down all the way on the feed.

 

Either way, it seems that the 1980s Paper Mate converter is the issue, not a quirk of the 32p.  🤷‍♂️

[inkstainedruth]

4 hours ago, awa54 said:

That's odd, since Cross carts are totally different from International.

Well the long International standard/Pelikan cartridges fit the back of the Penetia just fine -- but they were too long for the barrel (writing with that pen without the barrel got awkward).  Now that I have a Cross converter in it, it's no longer an issue.

But now I'm trying to find converters that fit a set of pens that a friend got me as a joke Christmas gift from Five Below -- they're fountain pens on one end and felt tip on the other, and came with a set of highlighter ink cartridges in various colors.  The person on their website's chat window told me that they (supposedly) take Kaweco (short) converters, but I have not been able to confirm that.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[PithyProlix]

Thanks much. 

[A Smug Dill]

7 hours ago, PithyProlix said:

I wonder if the so-called 'standard' has anything to do with converter length?

 

I don't think any converter manufacturers, or fountain pen brands that rebrand OEM converters to put them in their own product catalogues, use “standard international” to describe the converters, either of a specific model or generally as a physical specification for the entire class of such products. Schmidt K1, K2, K5, and K6 converters all have 2.4mm-bore ports with the identically shaped ‘mouth’ and rotary-driven pistons, and of course are all manufactured by the same company, but that's where the similarity or strict equivalence ends. A Schmidt K5 will not fit inside a Faber-Castell Grip (because the interior of the pen barrel is designed to fit only piston driver handles with particular striations) or a Faber-Castell Ambition (because the metal collar on the K5 will get jammed against the narrow interior of the pen barrel), even though both of those F-C fountain pen models use/accept “standard international” ink cartridges. Needless to say, none of those Schmidt converters will fit inside a Kaweco Sport which also use/accept “standard international” ink cartridges.

 

Aside: I just looked on the websites of Diamine, Herbin, De Atramentis, Graf von Faber-Castell, and Caran d'Ache, and none of them describes their (short) ink cartridges as “standard international” either.

[Mercian]

On 5/1/2024 at 9:49 PM, awa54 said:

I recently acquired a Montblanc 32p cartridge fill pen…

Doesn’t the ‘3’ at the start of the model number mean that the 32 is a model from Montblanc’s line of ‘third tier’ pens? I know that the ‘P’ means ‘Patronen’ (i.e. ‘cartridges’), presumably to distinguish it from a piston-fill pen.

 

Your pen may have been designed to only accept cartridges, and to be incompatible with converters.

E.g. I have an inexpensive ‘WH Smith’ (a UK High Street retail chain) branded pen that has an ‘Iridium Point Germany’ nib on it. It takes ‘international standard’ cartridges, and one can load one of the short ones of those onto its feed nipple and store a second one, reversed, inside its barrel.

That pen won’t accept converters though, and for the same reason that you cited - they are too long, and they foul the end of the barrel before one can screw it back on to the pen fully. I actually ruined a Pelikan converter by trying to fit it into that pen 😠

 

Furthermore, isn’t the current Montblanc ‘Mozart’ pen only fillable with cartridges, and incompatible with converters?

The 32P would therefore not be the only Montblanc pen that doesn’t accept converters.

[AceNinja]

On 5/2/2024 at 4:49 AM, awa54 said:

Any folks know if the "standard" has changed since the 1960s,

I think there's no 'standard' to begin with.  Everyone looked at pelikan's cartridge, and say "well, ain't it better if we all make cartridge all the same shape and dimension, across all brands?  agree? it's beneficial for us all, yes? okay AGREED!".  Then everyone begin to make the cartridge following that format, and along the way, some say, "I'll just add a little bit of this, change a little bit of that, just tiny bit, it shouldn't matter."

 

And we arrived today, a cartridge format (and by extension the converter) that are mostly same, but still can have different, case by case, model by model basis.

[A Smug Dill]

31 minutes ago, AceNinja said:

Everyone looked at pelikan's cartridge, and say "well, ain't it better if we all make cartridge all the same shape and dimension, across all brands?  agree? it's beneficial for us all, yes? okay AGREED!".  Then everyone begin to make the cartridge following that format,

 

I don't think Parker was ever party to that. Or Aurora (which celebrated the company's 100th anniversary in 2019). Or Lamy. Not to mention the Japanese ‘Big Three’ brands (all having celebrated their 100th anniversaries), and various Chinese fountain pen brands/manufacturers.

[AceNinja]

1 hour ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

I don't think Parker was ever party to that. Or Aurora (which celebrated the company's 100th anniversary in 2019). Or Lamy. Not to mention the Japanese ‘Big Three’ brands (all having celebrated their 100th anniversaries), and various Chinese fountain pen brands/manufacturers.

true that.  Should reword the "everyone" to "a few in Europe", or "a few western brand"

[awa54]

On 5/2/2024 at 11:01 PM, Mercian said:

Doesn’t the ‘3’ at the start of the model number mean that the 32 is a model from Montblanc’s line of ‘third tier’ pens? I know that the ‘P’ means ‘Patronen’ (i.e. ‘cartridges’), presumably to distinguish it from a piston-fill pen.

 

Your pen may have been designed to only accept cartridges, and to be incompatible with converters.

E.g. I have an inexpensive ‘WH Smith’ (a UK High Street retail chain) branded pen that has an ‘Iridium Point Germany’ nib on it. It takes ‘international standard’ cartridges, and one can load one of the short ones of those onto its feed nipple and store a second one, reversed, inside its barrel.

That pen won’t accept converters though, and for the same reason that you cited - they are too long, and they foul the end of the barrel before one can screw it back on to the pen fully. I actually ruined a Pelikan converter by trying to fit it into that pen 😠

 

Furthermore, isn’t the current Montblanc ‘Mozart’ pen only fillable with cartridges, and incompatible with converters?

The 32P would therefore not be the only Montblanc pen that doesn’t accept converters.

 

 

I don't know MB nomenclature, so I have no idea if this is a "third tier" pen, but I gather that these were student/utility oriented pens, rather than the prestige targeted pocket jewelry that's typical of modern MB.

 

If a pen can accept *two cartridges, back to back* as is quite common in full sized pens that are designed for these cartridges (including the MB 32p), then the overall length of a typical converter is going to be almost 1mm *shorter* than the pair of cartridges is...

Pens that are only intended to accept a single cartridge are unlikely to have sufficient length and/or inside diameter to accommodate a converter that's designed to occupy the space of two cartridges.

Long International cartridges rarely fit pens that aren't specifically intended to accept them.

 

As mentioned above, the issue with my pen/converter pairing was due to the converter not seating fully in the section.

[awa54]

23 hours ago, AceNinja said:

I think there's no 'standard' to begin with.  Everyone looked at pelikan's cartridge, and say "well, ain't it better if we all make cartridge all the same shape and dimension, across all brands?  agree? it's beneficial for us all, yes? okay AGREED!".  Then everyone begin to make the cartridge following that format, and along the way, some say, "I'll just add a little bit of this, change a little bit of that, just tiny bit, it shouldn't matter."

 

And we arrived today, a cartridge format (and by extension the converter) that are mostly same, but still can have different, case by case, model by model basis.

 

 

Can we just agree that cartridges intended to be compatible with brands such as Pelikan and Montblanc, as well as a host of other European (and more recently Chinese) makers are accurately referred to as "International" type cartridges? 

 

 

 

 

[A Smug Dill]

1 hour ago, awa54 said:

as well as a host of other European (and more recently Chinese) makers are accurately referred to as "International" type cartridges? 

 

Which Chinese fountain pen makers? Chinese fountain pen models that use German-made (by Bock or Schmidt) nib units typically use 2.4mm-bore — as opposed to the two quasi-standards of 2.6mm-bore and (slightly less commonly) 3.4mm-bore — ink cartridges, but:

• even though the Kaco Edge fountain pen uses a rebranded Schmidt #5 nib unit and 2.4mm-bore ink cartridges, the Kaco Retro fountain pen does not; and
• a Moonman 800 of the variant tapped for and factory-fitted with a Bock type 250 nib unit uses 2.4mm-bore ink cartridges, while a Moonman 800 that is factory-fitted with a Chinese-made, Moonman-branded nib (unit) uses 2.6mm-bore ink cartridges,

so neither Kaco nor Moonman (now rebranded Majohn) as fountain pen makers and/or brands have adopted the 2.4mm-bore format as their ‘standard’ or default format going forward. (I'll also note that the Majohn A1 and A2, which are models in current product, do not use 2.4mm-, 2.6mm-, or 3.4mm-bore ink cartridges and converters, but what is essentially Pilot's proprietary format.)

 

Jinhao c/c-filled pen models use 2.6mm- and 3.4mm-bore. HongDian, 3.4mm-bore. PenBBS, 3.4mm-bore. Asvine, I'll have to check, but its pens that aren't fitted with Bock nibs will be using one of the two Chinese quasi standards. Wing Sung uses 2.6mm-bore, I'm pretty sure. Hero? Duke?

 

No, the Chinese fountain pen industry is not “coming to the party” slowly but surely. Neither is the Japanese fountain pen industry.

 

If you want to refer to 2.4mm-bore short ink cartridges as “international”, that's fine; we can understand what you're talking about, just like we could understand someone speaking with a pronounced accent or uses SMS-speak. But that doesn't mean it's “accurately referred to” as such; otherwise, with Chinese-made Majohn A1 and A2 models using Pilot's format, and Moonman 80s and 80mini-e models using Parker's format, both of those formats would be just as accurately referred to as “international”.

 

Edited to add:

• Diamine calls its ink cartridges “standard European Fountain Pen Ink Cartridges”.
• Herbin, “universal snap-in cartridges”.
• De Atramentis does not actually declare or describe the format of its ink cartridges.
• Graf von Faber-Castell, “standard ink cartridges”.
• Caran d'Ache, “small cartridges in international format”. 
• Pelikan, “ink cartridge for all Pelikan and many other cartridge fillers”.
• Montblanc, “ink cartridges, … for all Montblanc Fountain Pens with cartridge system”.

 

Edited May 4, 2024 by A Smug Dill

[AceNinja]

4 hours ago, awa54 said:

 

 

Can we just agree that cartridges intended to be compatible with brands such as Pelikan and Montblanc, as well as a host of other European (and more recently Chinese) makers are accurately referred to as "International" type cartridges? 

 

 

 

 

Not the Chinese pens.  Reason as stated by @A Smug Dill.

 

It is possible to jam the 2.4mm standard international into Chinese 2.6mm (commonly found) pen, but that will slowly enlarge that cartridge/converter 's mouth, making it loose, leaky, and crack at the mouth.

 

Because that's what happened to me.

[Mercian]

9 hours ago, awa54 said:

If a pen can accept *two cartridges, back to back* as is quite common in full sized pens that are designed for these cartridges (including the MB 32p), then the overall length of a typical converter is going to be almost 1mm *shorter* than the pair of cartridges is...

Pens that are only intended to accept a single cartridge are unlikely to have sufficient length and/or inside diameter to accommodate a converter that's designed to occupy the space of two cartridges.

Long International cartridges rarely fit pens that aren't specifically intended to accept them.

 

Yes, I know that about the length comparison. And, because of the length, I assumed that any pen that could hold two ‘SICs’ would be able to take a ‘standard international’ converter.

But, like I said, I own an inexpensive/student pen that can hold two ‘SICs’ (one in-use, one behind it), but which won’t hold a converter.

I assume that the reason why this is the case on my pen this is something to do with the internal geometry of the end of its barrel but, ultimately, the reason why the barrel won’t close with a converter loaded in the pen doesn’t actually matter - only the fact that converters won’t fit inside the pen ☹️ 

 

 

On 5/1/2024 at 9:49 PM, awa54 said:

however this converter seems to be a bit too long for that pen to comfortably screw closed on...

 

9 hours ago, awa54 said:

As mentioned above, the issue with my pen/converter pairing was due to the converter not seating fully in the section.

Sorry, I was responding to your first description of the problem that was presenting when you tried a converter in your pen.

 

If your second statement is actually the correct one, then might you try another brand of converter?
After all, if the mouth of your Papermate converter won’t seat on/engage with the pen’s feed-nipple, doesn’t that suggest that the Papermate converter isn’t actually compatible with pens that take ‘standard international’ cartridges?

[awa54]

On 5/4/2024 at 5:29 AM, AceNinja said:

Not the Chinese pens.  Reason as stated by @A Smug Dill.

 

It is possible to jam the 2.4mm standard international into Chinese 2.6mm (commonly found) pen, but that will slowly enlarge that cartridge/converter 's mouth, making it loose, leaky, and crack at the mouth.

 

Because that's what happened to me.

 

 

Where in my post did I say *all* Chinese pens accept the cartridge format under discussion here?

I'm well aware that several Chinese makers use cartridges or converters that appear similar to International carts but are dimensionally slightly different. That is not the cartridge system of which I speak, so please let's leave the straw men out of this discussion.

 

As for the different nomenclature of European makers, which of the short format cartridges mentioned by @A Smug Dill *don't* work in the other makers' pens?

My past experience tells me that Pelikan, MB, Herebin, Diamine and Caran d'Ache cartridges are completely inter-compatible with my Pelikan, MB, Paper Mate, Caran d'Ache, Rotring, Retro 51, vintage Lamy and unbranded German made school pens.

 

As stated, my strong suspicion is that the Paper Mate branded converter who's failure to play nice with my vintage MB, started this line of questioning has suffered degradation of the black plastic interface "nipple" which in turn requires excessive force to press in to the section of *any* pen, so it's not an incompatible converter, just one that has failed over time. (yes, I forced it in to the section of a less valuable and more robust "International" type pen and it works perfectly).

[awa54]

So I guess a summary of this thread is that the simplest converters, those which are dimensionally similar to two back to back "short" cartridges (as Schmidt K5 etc.) are very likely to fit pens designed to accommodate a pair of back to back short cartridges.

 

Past that all bets are off, since there are so many modifications of the type, including short, threaded, extended......

 

Thanks for all the input!

[awa54]

On 5/3/2024 at 2:02 AM, A Smug Dill said:

 

I don't think Parker was ever party to that. Or Aurora (which celebrated the company's 100th anniversary in 2019). Or Lamy. Not to mention the Japanese ‘Big Three’ brands (all having celebrated their 100th anniversaries), and various Chinese fountain pen brands/manufacturers.

 

 

I own two Lamy 26p pens that take short International cartridges, rather than the current Lamy carts (which are perilously close dimensionally to Parker carts). 

 

Interestingly, the 26p adds yet another twist to the (in)compatibility question, in that the feed/cart interface is so short that it won't reliably retain a single cartridge, so you need to either swap your empty back into the barrel, with potential ink leakage issues, or have a fresh second on hand at all times ...which *almost* defeats the purpose of having a "spare" already on hand, as most early pens using this cartridge type implemented.

I've never tried using a converter in these pens, as I assume the weak retention would end in an inky mess some day.