What's the difference between ebonite and plastic

[Blade Runner]

In terms of cost, durability and efficacy?

Why are do some pens have ebonite and others have plastic?

Are there feeds made of some other material?

Do ebonite feeds require a break in or soak in period, and if so, how best to accomplish this?

Soak nib/feed in ink for x minutes?

How can you identifiy an ebonite vs plastic feed?

What modern pen companies use ebonite feeds?

 

Thanks for help on any of the questions.

 

Regards,

J

[Dillo]

Hi,

 

Ebonite feeds are some of the best because they attract ink. They are also the most reliable and easy to use.

 

Dillon

[Richard]

Ebonite is naturally porous, and it is quite likely the best feed material ever discovered. Plastic is nonporous. Without a surface treatment of some kind, it is a poor feed material because it provides no inherent capillary buffering.

 

The difference in cost results from the fact that plastics can be molded in quantities of thousands for pennies apiece, while ebonite cannot be molded and must therefore be machined one piece at a time -- which obviously costs more.

 

Ebonite does not require a break-in period.

 

You can identify modern ebonite feeds by observing the roughly machined surface; no modern manufacturer takes the time and expense to finish ebonite smooth and shiny the way the old guys did. You can also scratch ebonite with a sharp object such as a sewing needle and see a brown color to the scratch. Plastic doesn't do this.

 

Ebonite is harder than plastic. It is also more brittle than most plastics, and it can therefore be broken more easily. Really cheap plastic feeds, like the ones in many Chinese pens, are so soft you can score them with a dull fingernail.

 

Among modern ebonite users are Aurora, Delta, Omas, and Montegrappa. The problem is that these companies are using "modern" design techniques to develop their feeds, and these feeds tend to exhibit the same sorts of flow problems one normally associates with plastic. My guess is that somebody, somewhere, developed a computer model for the way he thought ink/air flow works and then began designing feeds using this model. Unfortunately, it's clear to me that the model was wrong -- which means the feeds don't work the way they should. I really fail to understand why modern feeds aren't designed the way vintage feeds were, in terms of channel geometry. The penmakers of 50 years ago had worked out feed design, whether empirically or by other methods, until they had it down pat. Then most of them went out of business, and the ones that didn't go out of business forgot how to design feeds.

 

There's an article on feed design on my Web site: Feeds: Revolution, Evolution, and Devolution

[Titivillus]

well first off let's remember that ebonite is hard rubber which is a plastic!

 

 

 

In terms of cost, durability and efficacy? It can't be injection modled so it has to be machines and thus more costly but also more durable

 

Why do some pens have ebonite and others have plastic? Pretty much that's a decision that the manufacturer made in the choice of materials.

 

Are there feeds made of some other material? I believe the majority are of lastic ( both ebonite and other) but there might be some ultra LE that has a ruby for a feed

 

Do ebonite feeds require a break in or soak in period, and if so, how best to accomplish this? I believe that it's a good pratice to soak in every new feed but this can be accomplished during the first filling of the pen.

 

Soak nib/feed in ink for x minutes? see above.

 

How can you identifiy an ebonite vs plastic feed? There are some visual clues such as roughness of machining for ebonite and you'll never see a mold marks on one. But the best way to test is to rub the feed and see if you smell sulfur= ebonite.

 

 

What modern pen companies use ebonite feeds? I think that a good number of Italian companies use ebonite or in their higher end pens like Aurora, Delta, Omas, and Montegrappa but I also remember mention that Dani Trio either uses ebonite or was in discussion with Bock about being provided ebonite feeds maybe Winedoc can elaborate.

 

Kurt H

[wimg]

Hi Jeen,

 

I'd like to add a comment or two on porosity of plastics and breaking in a feed.

 

All plastics are porous to some degree, some more than others. Ebonite is very porous, plastic used for plastic bags generally is quite porous, and other plastics a lot less, to the degree they behave like being non-porous to us. It depends on the pattern formed by the specific plastic molecules.

 

Breaking in a feed is something I find necessary, whether it is made from ebonite or from another plastic, when you use a pen with a nib/feed combination seemingly designed for a specific ink, or brand of ink, either by accident or really by design. I have noticed, that an ink that works extremely well in performing this function, is Waterman Blue Black, as are Waterman Florida Blue, and to a slightly lesser degree, Waterman South Seas Blue.

 

This is all empirical stuff, which I found out because I like to use inks with high dye contents. Some new pens, even after rinsing and flushing with the ubiquitous soapy solution, just wouldn't perform with such an ink. They would keep on skipping, or drying out, or not laying down a consistent line, for 4 or more fills of that particular ink, which obviously tends to get rather annoying. By filling such a pen with WM BB, it first of all wrote straight away without problems, most of the time, or otherwise fairly quickly, and when filled later with another ink, one of those with high dye concentrations, it would still perform fine.

 

I have been experimenting a lot with this, and come to the conclusion with a new pen, that it is best to do a rinse and flush with a soapy solution first, dry it off, and fill it with WM BB first, for one or two fills, depending on the pen. Some pens seem to need two fills before they work well with another ink.

 

So, this process of using WM BB with every new pen has virtually become my standard now (just like the rinse and flush with soapy water), and I call this procedure "priming the feed". I call it that, because I noticed that the feed actually obtains some of the colour of the ink after a period of time, as if it is soaking it up. I guess, but this is pure speculation, that somehow when it has soaked up a well flowing ink like WM BB right through the pores in the entire feed, it will just work well with almost any ink.

 

You may wonder why I say "almost" any ink, rather than just "any ink". That has to do with the flow settings of the nib/feed combination. An ink with fairly poor flow in a stingy nib/feed won't work flawlessly most of the time, it will still show some skipping and other not so favourable characteristics. However, those can only be remedied by adjusting the flow of the nib/feed combination, that is, if you insist on using that particular combination of ink and pen. And I have done a couple of those , as I felt that was just the right ink for that pen .

 

Anyway, HTH, warm regards, Wim

[Blade Runner]

Thank you everyone. I've filled some big gaps in my pen knowledge.

Wim, your Waterman BB ritual strikes a chord. Recently I filled a new Optima with Quink washable blue and had a few episodes of flow stoppage. I switched to Mont Blanc blue, and the pen wrote well. After a few days I went back to washable blue, and flow has been perfect and uninterrupted. Perhaps my MB ink did for me what your blue black has done for you.

 

 

Regards,

Jeen

[zxc]

The Wality (69L ED I think) has a Ebonite feed to my knowledge if you wanted to try a cheap one.

[ISW_Kaputnik]

[sNIP] How can you identifiy an ebonite vs plastic feed? [sNIP]

 

 

...You can identify modern ebonite feeds by observing the roughly machined surface; no modern manufacturer takes the time and expense to finish ebonite smooth and shiny the way the old guys did. You can also scratch ebonite with a sharp object such as a sewing needle and see a brown color to the scratch. Plastic doesn't do this...

 

Reviving this very old thread because of a similar concern.

 

I have a couple of vintage pens where I am considering trying to heat set the nibs, a BCHR Moor L-92, and another Moore, a little celluloid one from who knows when. I'm guessing 30s or 40s. The L-92 has what I assume is the original nib, and it's quite nice, probably the flexiest gold nib that I have. I can write with the pen, and it actually works well most of the time, but every now and then the nib has a tendency to start slipping around the feed, and I realign it by hand. The little celluloid one came with a broken nib, actually split in two, but I put a spare Eversharp nib in it. Again, it has a tendency to slip, while being usable most of the time.

 

I could just assume that both of these have ebonite feeds because of their vintage, particularly the L-92, but how can I actually tell? Scratching one as mentioned in the one quote above doesn't appeal to me because of the deliberate cosmetic damage, although it might not cause a functional problem. Is there another way?

 

For now, I'm just going to leave well enough alone, but I'd just like to explore my options and increase my knowledge. At the moment, paying the fee of a competent pen restorer is not an option, but I might reserve that for later.

[FriedIceCream]

The L-92, if original, is assuredly an ebonite feed. I can tell if a feed is ebonite or plastic just by the feel of them, there are some visual cues as well. A vintage plastic feed will usually have a very very smooth underside and that shiny plastic look. A polished vintage ebonite feed (like whats probably in the L-92) has a shine as well, only it's a bit different, almost just a bit muted. The feel of them is really the giveaway for me usually. Ebonite has almost a soft touch feel to it, hard to describe. But if you take your finger or thumbnail and just run it along the underside of the feed a plastic feed will be slick and have that plastic feeling like so many plastic products we encounter in day to day life do. When you do the same thing with an ebonite feed however, your nail won't "slide" quite the same on it. I know all this is kinda vague, I'm having a hard time putting it into words, but this should get you started.

 

Enjoy your Moore's they're fun little pens.! Those old "The Moore Pen" nibs like what I'm thinking your 92 has in it can be very flexy and really really nice writers. I have a handful of the older BHR Moore's and they've always been some of my favorite pens to write with.

 

I hope I was of at least a little bit of help.

[Bo Bo Olson]

I do have trouble of thinking of rubber, even hard rubber as a plastic....lastic as some one stated.

 

I'm glad those Italian companies are/were still using the much more costly Ebonite, even if they did screw up the design.

 

I always find it amazing that the now generation thinks a generation or three before them are too stupid to know what rain is.

Just as many brilliant minds before computers, before the war as now.

Amazing what one could do with a slap stick and a good understanding of math, and a firm grounding in mechanics when one is an engineer; way back in the when of gold money.

[ISW_Kaputnik]

The L-92, if original, is assuredly an ebonite feed. I can tell if a feed is ebonite or plastic just by the feel of them, there are some visual cues as well. A vintage plastic feed will usually have a very very smooth underside and that shiny plastic look. A polished vintage ebonite feed (like whats probably in the L-92) has a shine as well, only it's a bit different, almost just a bit muted. The feel of them is really the giveaway for me usually. Ebonite has almost a soft touch feel to it, hard to describe. But if you take your finger or thumbnail and just run it along the underside of the feed a plastic feed will be slick and have that plastic feeling like so many plastic products we encounter in day to day life do. When you do the same thing with an ebonite feed however, your nail won't "slide" quite the same on it. I know all this is kinda vague, I'm having a hard time putting it into words, but this should get you started.

 

Enjoy your Moore's they're fun little pens.! Those old "The Moore Pen" nibs like what I'm thinking your 92 has in it can be very flexy and really really nice writers. I have a handful of the older BHR Moore's and they've always been some of my favorite pens to write with.

 

I hope I was of at least a little bit of help.

 

My memory was a little off. The older Moore actually says L-94 on the end of the barrel, but that's a minor point for this thread. The nib says "The Moore Pen 4"

 

That is helpful, thank you. I can't tell much with the appearance, but now that you mention it, I do feel a noticeable difference, a slight softness, with the feed on that L-94 compared with some modern pens that surely have plastic feeds, a couple of Lamys and Waterman Kulturs.

 

The feed on the little Moore with the replacement nib (I'll call it my EverMoore") does not seem as shiny, but there is a slightly different feel still from the modern plastic feeds. I think I'll assume that both are candidates for heat setting, if I decide to risk that. I've done this with Noodler's pens with modern ebonite feeds, but wasn't really too concerned about damage to those. No hurry. The next time I ink these, I'll see how they do. If the nibs slip during writing, then I'll try the heat set.

 

By the way, I have a third Moore pen, called a "Junior", but it's still longer than the EverMoore. It doesn't require any work, though; it was nicely restored when I bought it.

Edited June 17, 2014 by ISW_Kaputnik

[discopig]

All my Moore pens have ebonite feeds, and they were pretty easy to heat set.

[tonybelding]

The problem is that these companies are using "modern" design techniques to develop their feeds, and these feeds tend to exhibit the same sorts of flow problems one normally associates with plastic. My guess is that somebody, somewhere, developed a computer model for the way he thought ink/air flow works and then began designing feeds using this model. Unfortunately, it's clear to me that the model was wrong -- which means the feeds don't work the way they should.

 

That's odd. I've found that today's plastic feeds are consistently, boringly dependable. I'm not sure what flow problems you've seen, or how you think they "don't work the way they should". Of course I know you deal with a much wider variety of pens daily than I'm ever likely to see...

 

I've only had two modern pens that burped ink onto the page. One is my great Reform Czar, which I got back in the 1980s before Reform went kaput. The other was my Edison Glenmont bulb-filler with its enormous ink capacity. And really, even the problems with those two pens have been quite minor and easy to live with once I became aware of the matter.

[Bo Bo Olson]

That Reform pen was made long after the Original Reform company closed down in the mid-late 50's, because the owner refused to make cheap pens. After a couple of years he sold his company name and tooling to some third tier company in Heidelberg. The 1745 is from that company that took over the name.

He made a Cento pen for some one, and his Reform pen...I have two war models. Both are very sturdy first class pens. Reform was such a good pen, right after the war importers sent him money in advance so he could go out and buy materials to make his pens. Now that is something you don't hear about every day.

 

I have a third class gold color plated, metal cap - plastic body "Reform"....that I didn't notice. How ever the spade nib, is 'flexi'/maxi-semi-flex to my shock.

There might well be other German spade nibs that are semi-flex and or 'flexi', but no one mentions them. So I kept away from them. Got a semi-hooded Boehler with a semi-flex nib also.

 

I have no Giant pens. I find Large to be my limit for big pens. With 5 or so of them I have enough.

Edited June 18, 2014 by Bo Bo Olson

[Vlad Soare]

I keep reading that ebonite is so much better than plastic, that one of them attracts ink while the other doesn't, one of them is porous while the other isn't, one of them needs some kind of treatment while the other doesn't, and so on. Users who are undoubtedly more experienced than I am use to mourn the ebonite feeds of the past and to consider today's plastic feeds a downgrade.

What I'd still like to understand is what exactly do these things mean for the end user? How does the one being better than the other translate into everyday practice?

 

All my fountain pens have plastic feeds. With one exception (which is now on its way back to Montblanc for fixing), they write perfectly, start instantly, do not skip, do not burp ink, do not show any sign of nib creep, do not dry out even after being left for ten minutes with the cap off. If I could cast a spell and have their feeds turned instantly into ebonite, what exactly would I notice in the pens' behaviour? What improvement(s) would I perceive?

Edited June 18, 2014 by Vlad Soare

[Bookman]

well first off let's remember that ebonite is hard rubber which is a plastic!

 

 

 

I took science for poets in college. But I thought plastic was synthetic and rubber came from rubber trees—you know, vulcanization, Charles Goodyear and all that.

[wlwilcox]

I took science for poets in college. But I thought plastic was synthetic and rubber came from rubber trees—you know, vulcanization, Charles Goodyear and all that.

 

I agree with this.

[rwilsonedn]

 

I took science for poets in college. But I thought plastic was synthetic and rubber came from rubber trees—you know, vulcanization, Charles Goodyear and all that.

 

Depends on how you look at it. About the only point dictionaries agree on is that plastics are organic materials. Whether they are natural or not is debated. For that matter, hard rubber is vulcanized--that makes it a processed organic material, not really a natural material. So I'd say ebonite fits the definition of a plastic.

[Tweel]

I think of (molded) casein, hard rubber, celluloid and Bakelite as early plastics.

[larnivon]

 

I took science for poets in college. But I thought plastic was synthetic and rubber came from rubber trees—you know, vulcanization, Charles Goodyear and all that.

 

Nowadays there are a lot of synthetic rubbers. For example, automobile tires are often made of styrene-butadiene rubber, and chewing gum is made of butyl rubber, both of which are synthetic.

 

Normally, I would think of rubbers as highly elastomeric materials - they can be stretched a great deal and still return to their original shape - whereas plastics are (by comparison) brittle. Both are made from polymers, so there isn't really an exact division between the two.

 

Of course ebonite is highly vulcanized and is no longer an elastomer - it is quite strong, but not very flexible, due to the number of covalent bonds linking adjacent polymers. I'd agree with rwilsonedn and call it a plastic based on its properties.