PEN NEWS for September 2016
Arrgh, frustrating. I got a Saturday delivery and that is always a nice thing, right? New pens to view and on the weekend after all. Kind of went with the nice sunny spring day. Well I open up the package and find 3 big JInhao #159s which again should be a good thing. It's a favourite pen of mine, but these are just sitting loose in the bag! No protection of any kind? Now here is some insider trivia. Asian pens are never really packed all that great, but this was evidence of real lack of care. When I send out your pen or pens. Each pen is foam or bubbled to the point that any kind of mishandling during the shipping should not affect the pen unless there is some serious damage. (which is why there is insurance) When you get a pen, it will have a glassine type slip cover. Reminds me of cigar wrappers. A see-thru sleeve that keeps each pen clean from it brother pens when grouped or stored. This is the minimum of what you'd expect.
But my #159s were naked in the bag. Quickly I found micro scratches from the metal bits jossling on the bodies. Worse I saw chipping and all three, ironically they had QC stickers stuck directly to the pens. The worst fear being that the glue of the stickers would further complicate the arrival condition. Anyway. Now I have deal with this pens and I can't add them to sale. Because I don't know what their status is. Nothing like my surprise balloon being popped. Because of mass production and lot sales. I do run across the odd disappointing batch and I work hard to stop that here before it ever gets out to you.
On to better and brighter. I got some nice NEW OLD STOCK Wing Sung Duofold Style Bakelite pens in. These are from the 90's or older, as the Wing Sung Factory was closed down and torn down back when. Wing Sung pens can be found as NOS, but all are NLA at this point. It does to clarify that Hero sells some pens branded as Wing Sung [Lucky] the Pilot 78G copy comes to mind. These are newly made and come in modern plastic blister packaging. They look different to the old Cardboard boxed Vintage Wing Sung pens. The model is #590 and listed now. These are very large pens, quite light for their size. They use rubber squeeze bulb fillers and have large #6 nibs with an ebonite rubber feed. Quite the nice specs. Here is an affordable pen that you could do a lot of modifications to without a lot of overhead. There are many #6 nibs out there in a variety of qualities and nib choices. The Gilt gold WS nib that comes with the pen is very smooth and nice. I did DIP test them as these are older pens. I also water filled the system to make sure it was all working as planned. It was. (Although a lot of my pens are cheaper. I do give them all a good inspection and test when required. You can be sure you are getting good working pens when you buy from me.)
The Wing Sung 590s impress me because they are of a past age. A nuance detail of the pens, they have small etched Double Dragon images scored into the gold waist bands. The Dragons breathing fire at each other to make up the circumference of the space. Each one of these motifs is hand-cut. Each pen is different. A unique detail in a mass produced item. While modern pens have shifted into being variations of the cartridge and pump converter for most models. I do like pens that you can fiddle with and make them your own. Wing Sung 590 is perfect for this approach. As I said it has a squeeze bulb filler and these are well attached. Since you can remove the feed and nib by pressed friction. You can clean the bulb space as easily as any pen you take apart.
I noted that the dense body threads and if you were to remove that bulb and you would have a HUGE reservoir Eyedropper pen. I filled one with water and measured it. Over 7ML which is a scary amount of ink to carry. But if this was set up as an artist drawing pen? You could go for ages on one fill! I also noticed that the tail jewel screws in and out. Something that if you did convert it to eyedropper. It would do to glue those threads fast to get the best seal and prevent it from loosening when filled ... they are truly NOS, new, unused. Their alloy gilt parts show age surface oxidation effects. But they were both sealed shut in their cardboard boxes, unused.
You can see in my previous blog post that I have gone on just a bit about the Parker 51 and the pens that it has spawned of the decades since it was first offered to the public. I have avoided saying it's the iPhone of it's time. Because it's probably more correct to say the iPhone is the Parker 51 of this age? There are products that become the definition of their genre. The 51 did this very well and in a time of both undue consumerism and war-time conservation. I read an aside that remarked how when the Parker 51 first came out. They sold many more caps as parts, than the whole pens. These were clipped, sans pen into upper pockets as status totems. [The pens in their time were not cheap] and so there was an actual option of chameleon-ing pen ownership! I wonder what the routine was if someone asked to borrow your ghost pen?
I have a good selection of Hero 51 clones. They are all impressive writers. The Hero 100 Classic is the closest to a real Parker 51. It has a 14K gold nib and that is trick of getting a very responsive writing tool. The fact that Hero gives these a Lifetime Guarantee doesn't hurt. Just like pens of the past. My favourite daily writer is the Hero #565. I like that it's slightly blimpy in dimension and it feels good to my own needs. The nib seems to be a wet Medium, I think they call it fine, but MF is closer. I also have been using the #366 as a small carry option. At the price of a disposable. This model impresses me to no end.
I also have been furthering my quest for the perfect ink. A very subjective quest. I find that while some inks behave well when used in just about any pen. There are a lot of pens that require, a specific type of ink. Characteristics within that will make or break the way that pen performs? Examples: If you put a drier flowing ink into a dry pen. You can create yourself all kinds of frustration. The ink skips and starts and stops. You spend more time trying to get it to work than writing. Only to then find that perfect medium and then it acts up after you are entrenched in your output. That same pen with a wet-flowing ink suddenly becomes a gem and a favourite, all down to the choice ... where too wet an ink in a wet pen, gives you the same amount of fits, but is a far messier and blobby-ier scenario.
I have two personal go-to inks. Simply because these work in any pen and never let me down. [Hero #232 Blue Black. aka Cartridge #028 Blue Black & KWZ Iron Gall Mandarin.] But I am always looking for inks that will behave the same as these Grail Inks, but give me variety beyond only two choices. It's tough going at times. It's safe to say that Noodler's inks are very popular. Nathan has huge fan following and so for me it wasn't hard to get swept up into the marketing that is unique to Noodler's. Colour-wise his stuff is impressive. I have tested a fair few. Trying to pick what I thought might substitute inks I like, but aren't perfect. So I have gone through a good selection of Noodler's as of late. Out of all of those. I am sort of stuck with only one that I like enough to keep and to buy a full bottle of. [Noodler's Red/Black]
A bit of a back-story to this colour. I liked the idea of a "redblack" ink Something that dries to a dark black, but you get the tonal red showing. In undersaturated or shaded writing, you get the red with a distinct black background to it. I used some of my own auction listing colour cartridge inks to make a Home Brew Red/Black. The cartridges I sell are quite readily mixable inks. They are very well behaved to such experimentation. No great science going on here, just ratio mixes of the Tui Black, Whero Red, and some Lupine Pink to add highlights. I got a really close result that matched the Noodler's both wet and dry. I was a bit surprised it was so easy to do. I went on to try some Hero Permanent Black and found it didn't react with the others. So I created a second Home Brew variation called Black Red. Which is a more reddish version [I know, why Black/Red then?] The trick is if you spill water on the Black Red ink, the red will flow away and yet your writing will remain as black now. So it follows the traits of other permanent inks that use a black underbase with an expendable tint.
- This is where I get the feeling that his inks work best in his pens. And that is primarily because you can strip and clean his pens really easily. And you will need to. Some problems, that I have personally ran into with Noodler's inks:
- 1) Feathers and bleeds on papers that are generally well behaved with my other ink brands.
- 2) Seriously long drying times. I was using my favourite Noodler's which is Red/Black and I do like this ink. I had it in one of my Dip Pen projects where I use a dip nib in a fountain pen. Lovely flex nib output, going from thin wispy, to super saturated. The ink had sheen to the next decade! And that was because it wasn't drying. Two days later and it smeared to the touch as if I had just laid it down. Otherwise if can wait a week or so, wow!
- 3) Serious gunk issues. Several different Noodler's samples have done this and it's a bit alarming. One of my hand-lathed ebonite eyedroppers started to smell like mildew. And I couldn't figure out why? I got it to go away once I removed the ink, which was Noodler's 54th Massachusetts Blue. Later I stripped and cleaned a more modern pen with this same ink and found clumps of stuff in the feeder?! I looked at the sludge with my digital microscope at the time and it was wet. But it looked like mould or fibre debris? Hard to tell exactly what? Nothing you'd want to find in your pen. It was stuck into the fin section of the feed. And this is the same ink that smelled of mould. Later I found similar clumps in other pens, in other colour samples of Noodler's inks. Which again bothers me to think that is wasn't just a one-off? But something of a trend.
Now I have some OMAS inks that are two decades or more old. Good inks don't actually require a use-by date. It's a bit of a worry that Noodler's is apparently susceptible to mould? All the samples were sourced from the USA and from a very well know retailer. And generally I have heard good things about the inks. But my own experiences have left me looking elsewhere. No problem. Because I have yet to be disappointed by KWZ of Poland. If you want a unique, small company producer. Konrad of KWZ is the chemist to explore. These inks have such great characteristics and much of that is how they make your pen and paper choices look good. Exceptionally well behaved.
