SamCapote, a very active user regarding fountain pens online, has been in contact with Nathan Tardif of Noodler’s Ink Company regarding the Ahab fountain pen and has gathered some interesting information.
Nathan says that approximately 19,000 Ahabs have sold since the release of the pen just a few months ago. This number is what has been sold to retailers and not specifically to individuals.
The cause of ink flow issues has been discovered and fix put in place. The issue likely stemmed from the manufacturing facility in India using coolant during the machining of the ebonite feeds to prevent them from melting. Initially, Nathan specially asked that coolant not be used as to avoid any issues with ink flow. Nathan has added a step in the assembly process to soak the feeds in an ultrasonic wash before being assembled into the pen.
In regards to the current design of the feed with the fin slits not lining up or connecting directly to the ink channel, Nathan says this is allow faster assembly of the nib and feed into the section. With previous feed designs designs the assembly time was lengthened because the the nib and feed had to be heat-set into the section instead of force fit as it is now. There were also issues with the nib not sitting perfectly on top of the feed and the tines slightly misaligned.
The design decision to not have the fin slits directly cut into the feed ink channel is allow the custom fine tuning of ink flow. With a properly cleaned and oil-free feed the ink flow should be a bit on the dry side with the stock feed. If you prefer more flow, Nathan recommends starting on one side of the feed and connecting the fin slits to the ink channel, as outlined in SamCapote’s instructional thread.
About half way through the run of 19,000 Ahabs, Nathan instructed that the assemblers start using a double o-ring design. Nathan wanted to make sure these o-rings would be available from most hardware stores if they ever needed to be replaced in the future.
You can view the full thread here.
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The double-seal o-rings _will not_ be available from hardware stores.
The original, plain o-ring that was used in the Ahab was chosen at least in part because it's widely available. However, it makes the piston stick when it's been sitting in one position for a while, so the new double-seal o-ring was developed.
It is, of course, always possible to go back to the plain o-rings in the future if the double-seal ones can't be obtained for some reason.