ED (III)

On these chronicles, I have spoken several times about eyedropper transformations of some pens—Pilot Prera, Kaweco Sport, Platinum Preppy… Good, correct writers as those are, they are not the most charming pens in the market, and filling their barrels with ink is a safe bet for having them inked for a long and boring while. But those experiments show a couple of things.

A Kaweco Sport filled as eyedropper. In this case, the italic nib from the Kaweco Calligraphy set makes this pen a lot more interesting.

Making an eyedropper pen is easy. Easy for the user and, more important, easy for the manufacturer. However, very few companies market pens openly as eyedroppers: Stipula, Pilot-Namiki, Romillopens, Danitrio, Eboya-Nebotek,… And with the exception of the Stipula T, all those pens are very expensive. But the market of stylophiles, on its side, demands arcane filling systems like this.

The Stipula T. A good idea for a poorly performing pen.

Stipula seems to be the only company truly understanding this, although its eyedropper-cartridge-converter pen –the Stipula T— does not perform correctly. Then, why do other companies not try this approach? Why do Pilot, Platinum and Sailor not try to create affordable eyedroppers with their admirable selection of nibs? On top of that, as Stipula showed, eyedropper pens are not incompatible with the convenience of cartridges and converters.

Maybe they are pushing us into buying vintage pens instead of their newly crafted goods...

(Sailor Realo with Cross-music nib – Pelikan 4001 Royal Blue)

Bruno Taut
December 18th, 2011
[etiquetas: soluciones técnicas, mercado, estilofilia, Stipula]

Failure

Maybe I like Occam’s Razor too much, but I am not fond of new inventions unless they did prove to offer a real advantage. So, I have a hard time understanding the point of 24 K gold and 23 K palladium nibs. Or that of those titanium nibs in some Italian pens.

Out of the box.

Do they offer anything or they are just bricks in the wall of marketing?

Testing the Stipula T with a medium nib in titanium –the only one available on this pen—made me change my mind. This nib really shows some flexibility, and when dipped in ink, it performed nicely.


Therefore, here we got a flexible or semi-flexible titanium nib in a pen that accepts cartridges, converter, and that can be inked as an eyedropper. And, how does it work? How well does this pen perform?


To answer those questions a review is in order. But those two selling points—filling system and nib—need to past the test before analyzing the rest of features.

The titanium nib (by the way, how pure is this titanium? 100%? 75%?) is flexible and is capable to generate some line variation. But, as was pointed out on a previous chronicle (“Against Dipping”), there are problems regarding the ink flow. And those problems are connected to the filling systems.

Inked with cartridge or converter, the performance of this pen is the same—awful. The nib seems to never get enough ink. If pressed down, it starts railroading almost right away. A second problem is that the nib becomes dry very quickly during pauses on the writing, even if short.

In summary, a total disaster. Not usable.

Writing sample with the pen inked with the converter.

The third filling option is the eyedropper. In this case, the nib performance improves a lot. Now, the railroading problem is a lot less noteworthy.

The nib is very wet, almost uncomfortably so. But at the same time, it keeps being annoyingly quick at drying up and it is a very slow starter.

The gasket inside the barrel to seal it when used as an eyedropper pen.

As an eyedropper, this pen improves, but not enough to become a reliable and comfortable pen. Actually, the continuous interruptions in the flow make the writing experience a nightmare.

Therefore, given these circumstances, who cares about the looks, the construction quality and the rest? The first thing a pen needs to do is to write reliably. And this Stipula T does not do that.

(Stipula T as eyedropper – Parker Blue)

Bruno Taut
(In exile, January 4th, 2011)
[labels: Stipula, plumín]

Against Dipping

This is the second time I go through this. An interesting nib, a modern flexible —or at least semi-flexible— nib that seemed all right in the shop... Then, at home, it turned out to be a total failure.

Pilot Custom 742, falcon (FA) nib, size 10.
In the shop. At home.

The first conclusion is clear: dipping the pen is not the same as inking it.

Dipping does not make the ink to go all the way through the feed from the ink deposit. Dipping only makes the ink to arrange itself along the ink-lines in the feed. Therefore, not much is known about the flow the feed provides. And if the nib run dry, more dipping is in order in the assumption that there was no more ink available, which is not necessarily the case.

Stipula T, titanium nib.

Filling the ink deposit (or attaching an ink cartridge) is, of course, the real McCoy. The ink must really go through the whole network of channels at the right speed to provide the right flow, as demanded by the nib.

Few merchants, however, allow this real test. Any alternative? Check the internet in search of pen reviews and references on those objects of desire. In the meantime, I fully distrust any modern flexible or semi-flexible nibs. The art of making proper feeds seems to be lost.

(Pilot Custom 74 SM, Atelier Yamada – Pelikan Turquoise)

Bruno Taut
(In exile, January 3rd, 2011)
[labels: Pilot, Stipula, plumín]

ED (II)

The final point of the previous chronicle was that a number of cartridge/converter pens could easily be transformed into eyedroppers. And some people, myself included, have made that transformation with some pens.


So, if that is so easy, why do pen companies not market such pens directly? Well, there is at least one such pen in the market—the Stipula model T.


This pen fulfills all three conditions—tight thread with a sealing gasket, no holes in the barrel, no metallic parts in contact with the ink. And this pen can use cartridges and converters. Therefore, as some fellow Fountain Pen Network member said, this pen combines THREE different systems, because not all pens using cartridges accept converters!


This simple strategy certainly raised some eyebrows among pen enthusiasts—it increased the appeal of a pen whose nib is indeed interesting. But that will be the topic of another chronicle.

(Pilot Super 200 – Visconti Sepia)

Bruno Taut
(In exile, December 31st, 2010)
[labels: soluciones técnicas, Stipula]