Is there a place to just buy feeds?

[spotted and speckled]

I broke down a few months ago and had one of my favorite pens, an old Soennecken, retipped because it was visibly pock-marked and scratchy badly when I wrote with it. It came home to me with a lovely new nib tipping, and I inked it with J.Herbin Bleu Ocean. It wrote for 4 paragraphs and stopped. I shook it. Nothing. I flipped the nib and a bit of ink came out. For a few days, I could coax it to write if I started a paragraph with it flipped. I rinsed & soaked & rinsed & reloaded, same story. Unhappy! Wrote the nibmeister and he said it was the ink. I broke down and bought an ultrasonic cleaner. Nope. Used my water pic on it. Nope. Unhappy.

Then I wrote someone else who is doing some other work for me. He said (my paraphrase) the nib sounded starved. By flipping the nib I was forcing the nib to make contact with the feed to get ink and to check the spacing between the feed and the nib. Or worse, the feed was broken.

It was both, but it's worse. I pulled it apart with my fingers, using no exertion at all. There is a huge gutter where the ink should flow down the back of the feed (probably not getting much contact at all!), and the bottom of the feed is irregular (accident? It's longer on one side than the other, not level). I have no idea what the feed looked like before I sent to him, so I don't know if he widened the flow channel or not, and I don't know if the bottom of the feed was irregular before or not. I don't know what the feed looked like at all before this, so it might not even be the same feed. But it did work before! It still draws up ink and sits it out just fine.

No, I'm not going to send it back to him for him to fix it, since I can't prove and don't really know for certain he changed anything. But I'm going to try my hand at changing the feed myself.

Know anyplace I can buy feeds at? I figure worst case scenario, I buy some ahabs or dillis as donor pens.

Thanks for letting me vent!!

[pengeezer]

Suggestion might be to measure the size of the feed(hoping it's still in one piece)
and look on fleabay for a suitable parts pen that would have the same size
feed. This,of course,is under the assumption that certain pen lengths carry
a certain size feed.


John

[spotted and speckled]

91083mm long, 1/2mm wide. 9103 Hard to see the gatch in the feed, but it's there. The channel is fairly clear. The nib wasn't getting enough ink flow because there wasn't a lot of feed left for it to sit on. The nib and the feed seem to have some different contours too. If that was the only problem, I could try the warm water trick.

[pengeezer]

Try again,V. Your pic didn't upload(BTW,when you use the uploader,use the basic
uploader.Otherwise,it shows an attachment tag) .


John

[Jeph]

My only luck with repalcement feeds has been with the same model and production era donor pens. Even rotten sonneckens go for silly amounts of money on evilbay. Companies did save money and use the same feeds for several pens but it is still a crapshoot. I have lots of non-name German piston filler parts pens and other than the very bottom of the line pens, none of the feeds are interchangeable. Some will fit but will not work properly.

And I cannot see your attachment. I think you need to go advanced to get it to show properly.

And you need as accurate measurements as you can manage. Thousandths of an inch matter on the diameter. You frequently do have a little room to play with on the length.

[pengeezer]

If the crack you're talking about is in the back of the feed,then I think I see it.
Again,you might have to check fleabay for a suitable replacement.


John

[Farmboy]

You will almost need to get your pen and a large box of random feeds in the same location to find a suitable replacement. You need to be concerned about diameter, length, channel design, and point contour for starters. Once you get the size sorted you will likely need to work on flow.

Not that I can tell but I don't see anything tragic about your feed.

For a random unknown unidentified unremarkable feed figure it will cost you a few bucks. Known identified and remarkable feeds can be expensive. You can play on the un-end. Figure you will need to add the cost of a flow adjustment and resetting the nib to the total cost.

If you send it out, choose someone with a large pile of feeds to work with.

Todd

[glinn]

It's hard to tell from the picture but that feed looks like every other vintage feed I own. They all have that deep channel. You probably just need to heat set the feed or maybe floss the nib.

Gary

[spotted and speckled]

9172

[pengeezer]

9172


V,your attachment isn't coming through. When you uploaded your pic,
did you use the basic uploader?


John

[spotted and speckled]

I did!! I swear I used the uploader. Trying again now...9177 Look, it did the same thing.

Oh, dear. Here's my flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/52211876@N00/12126572436/

[pengeezer]

I did!! I swear I used the uploader. Trying again now...9177 Look, it did the same thing.

Oh, dear. Here's my flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/52211876@N00/12126572436/

What I can see in your 1st pic is that there looks to be a crack at the back end of the
feed(you might need to focus on the back end of the feed). Could be wrong,
but it looks like there is a crack running down the feed on the right side. BTW,
I click on the basic uploader tab to upload pics from my laptop. If it still shows
as an attachment,then I re-click on the basic uploader tab and it puts the pic
in the post.


John

[Jeph]

MY eyes are not good enough to get any information from the pictures other than a rough idea of the size. I don't have piles of extra feeds but I do have more than a handful and most of them are from German pens. With a better picture and some accurate measurenemtns I might be able to send you something that might work.

[Woody]

Spotted and Speckled. Start here ... Www.penkits.biz. Then call Ron Zorn at Main Street pens for more distributors, then move along to Terri at Peyton street pens. If you were able to head to a pen show they have bags of them. Also write to Richard Binder at Richards pens. You'll find them. May have to buy a few but you'll find them. Message me if you need some more ideas.

[Massaya]

Hi, just read your thread on feeds. I buy 'job lots' and it means I find myself looking for unusual feeds. Most recently I came across a Evesharp-Phillips pen with an unusual section and the feed was broken with no nib. I just liked the look of the pen c 1958, just when Phillips was taking over Eversharp. Anyway, just today I finally located the right feed. There is a company in the UK (treat with caution) they often have collections of feeds and bits and pieces which they advertise on E-bay. I found my feed by looking at the ones for sale and spotting one that seemed likely. The seller on E-bay is 'humanosaidinternational'. I hope that is some sort of help.

[79spitfire]

Spotted and Speckled. Start here ... Www.penkits.biz. Then call Ron Zorn at Main Street pens for more distributors, then move along to Terri at Peyton street pens. If you were able to head to a pen show they have bags of them. Also write to Richard Binder at Richards pens. You'll find them. May have to buy a few but you'll find them. Message me if you need some more ideas.

+1, I've ordered from these folks, and they are great, fast shipping and reasonable pricing.