fqgouvea
July 20th, 2015, 10:17 AM
This is a story of frustration, though it has a hopeful ending. It is about this beautiful Conklin Herringbone in silver that my wife gave me several years ago.
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At that time, I had only three fountain pens: two Watermans (Expert II, Phileas) and a Pelikan M200. At first I found the Conklin very strange. Being all metal, it was much heavier. It was thicker, and its steel nib was quite stiff, much finer than the nibs on my other pens, a bit scratchy.
I soon found reasons to like the pen, however. For one thing, my usual pens made a mess when writing on lower-quality paper. So the Conklin became the pen for balancing my checkbook, for quick notes, and so on. And, because it is so pretty, it impressed people.
So how did I kill it? It has to do with how the threads for the cap and for the barrell were set up. I have heavy hands, so when I was capping the pen I tended to turn it hard. I presume the pen originally had some bit of plastic to stop the cap turning when it was in place. If it did, that is gone. So screwing in the cap eventually starts pushing on the barrell. The result is that the barrell gets pushed back a bit from where it should be. Because the section is friction fit, the effect is to push the section up towards the nib, like this:
20312
After a while, the section comes loose:
20313
When this first happened, I sent it to Yafa for repair. It came back fixed, but the fix did not last more than a month or two. My impression is that they just replaced the section with a new one. But with repeated use the new section came loose as before.
I asked a friend who is a fountain pen fanatic for help with it, and his verdict was "you need a new pen". We ended up deciding that this is a design flaw in the Conklin, and that no amount of fixing would solve the problem permanently. (But maybe someone here has a suggestion?)
But there's a bright side! Faced with the need to get a new pen, I started asking him questions. And then searching for answers on the internet. And then buying pens, especially vintage pens, looking for interesting nibs and different styles. And, eventually, turning myself into an FP Geek!
PS: In taking the pictures above, I noticed that the nib says "Toledo"... But that isn't where it is made, I'm sure!
20311
At that time, I had only three fountain pens: two Watermans (Expert II, Phileas) and a Pelikan M200. At first I found the Conklin very strange. Being all metal, it was much heavier. It was thicker, and its steel nib was quite stiff, much finer than the nibs on my other pens, a bit scratchy.
I soon found reasons to like the pen, however. For one thing, my usual pens made a mess when writing on lower-quality paper. So the Conklin became the pen for balancing my checkbook, for quick notes, and so on. And, because it is so pretty, it impressed people.
So how did I kill it? It has to do with how the threads for the cap and for the barrell were set up. I have heavy hands, so when I was capping the pen I tended to turn it hard. I presume the pen originally had some bit of plastic to stop the cap turning when it was in place. If it did, that is gone. So screwing in the cap eventually starts pushing on the barrell. The result is that the barrell gets pushed back a bit from where it should be. Because the section is friction fit, the effect is to push the section up towards the nib, like this:
20312
After a while, the section comes loose:
20313
When this first happened, I sent it to Yafa for repair. It came back fixed, but the fix did not last more than a month or two. My impression is that they just replaced the section with a new one. But with repeated use the new section came loose as before.
I asked a friend who is a fountain pen fanatic for help with it, and his verdict was "you need a new pen". We ended up deciding that this is a design flaw in the Conklin, and that no amount of fixing would solve the problem permanently. (But maybe someone here has a suggestion?)
But there's a bright side! Faced with the need to get a new pen, I started asking him questions. And then searching for answers on the internet. And then buying pens, especially vintage pens, looking for interesting nibs and different styles. And, eventually, turning myself into an FP Geek!
PS: In taking the pictures above, I noticed that the nib says "Toledo"... But that isn't where it is made, I'm sure!