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View Full Version : Hansa Piston Filler



Jeph
August 24th, 2013, 11:53 AM
Note: I do not know the proper name of this pen.

Summary: If you are desperate to make carbon copies this will get the job done. Otherwise, this pen is pretty meh.

I got a pair of these in this week’s batch of clunker piston fillers. The clips are marked Hansa in script and the nibs are marked Hansa 53 with the same script. The only reference I can find to Hansa is from South Korea, although they may have been in Germany previously. They looked promising at first, but disappointed quickly.

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Size:

Hansa Dimensions

Length Capped 130 mm 5 3/32" 5.10 in
Posted Length 153 mm 6 " 6.00 in
Unposted length 115 mm 4 1/2 " 4.51 in
Barrel Length 98 mm 3 55/64" 3.86 in
Cap Length 65 mm 2 9/16" 2.57 in
Barrel Max Dia 11.9 mm 15/32" 0.47 in
Section Min Dia 8.5 mm 1/3 " 0.33 in
Section Length 14.9 mm 19/32" 0.59 in

The pen is made of plastic. Throughout the entire pen, to include the piston, the caps, the barrel and even the feeds there are extrusion boogers from the forming process. The nibs are thinly gold plated steel, with the writing tips made from folding extra material at the end of the nib 90 degrees. The two tips were not even the same size. Overall there is a lack of attention to detail. One pen had a broken piston and a broken piston housing, and the other one had a badly rusted nib, rusted clip and damaged feed. So between the two of them I was able to construct a serviceable pen. The cork seals on both pistons still worked, and thankfully the intact one was in better shape. The nib and feed are friction fit, and slightly loose. After complete cleaning, soaking the cork in water for 36 hours and liberal amounts of silicone grease, the pen still leaked air from the piston side when filling. It was still able to draw ink though. I have not bothered to try my leak test as I do not ever expect to ink this pen again, but I might leave the ink in there and see what happens.

The writing experience was poor, as expected. I would describe the line width as closer to medium than fine. Purely out of habit I tried to smooth the nib and it actually worked. I managed to get it to write reasonably smoothly and with not too much feedback. I would define the writing experience as serviceable. The only redeeming quality is that due to the construction of the tipping, this pen would work great at making carbon copies. Even up to a stupid amount of pressure (imprint left on paper 2 sheets below the one written on) the nib wrote with the same line although it did get toothy. The nib was also slightly dry but it could have been adjusted to provide more flow had I wanted to bother doing it.

So overall, it was interesting to see how a different pen was put together, but into the box with the others it goes.