Vintage venting and other peeves
The one thing that drives me absolutely mad, beyond any other fountain pen sin, is the over-polishing of vintage pens. Clean up some dull places, sure, but seeing a lineup of lovely vintage pens all so polished they look wet, just bugs me on a base level. There are new pens that aren't that slick. The pen is decades old, let it keep some character. To a lesser extent, this also applies to gold nibs whose patina has been thoughtlessly polished away to a squeaky-clean, gleaming gold nib.
Anyhow, what are you fountain pen peeves?
Re: Vintage venting and other peeves
I'm more sanguine about overpolished vintage pens. I figure that if someone has gone to the trouble to restore a pen and wants to make it gleam, it is their pen and they can knock themselves out. Obviously, it must make them more attractive to some buyers, otherwise they wouldn't do it.
My pet peeve is people that collect Sheaffer OS Vac-fill Balances: there aren't enough to go around! :p
Re: Vintage venting and other peeves
I like my stuff to have the patina/scuffs/scars which I put on it, not the previous owner. So I think I don't mind.
EDIT: if it can be polished to a "gleaming wet" look, it probably was in an excellent condition to begin with, so I especially don't see it as a big loss of character.
Re: Vintage venting and other peeves
well, polishing is removing material (like grinding, just a lot finer). so if the pen doesn‘t lose caracter, it will lose material at least 😂
c.
Re: Vintage venting and other peeves
A couple of my fountain pen peeves are used pens that have bite marks on the ends of their barrels, or marks around their barrels where their caps have been posted.
I have a gold plated Sheaffer Targa and the top of it's barrel annoyingly always tarnishes to a different shade where the cap was previously posted on there.
I don't mind pens being polished. Most of mine aren't particularly old or vintage. I try to keep my pens as undamaged as possible and like to find similar examples that look good. :)
Re: Vintage venting and other peeves
My biggest peeve is always pens that leak into the cap when they’re in my shirt pocket. I don’t know if it’s body heat or just jostling. (But I don’t tend to move all that much!) getting that surprise when I open the pen is dismaying... especially when I post the cap before noticing the leak.
On the other hand, nibs that dry up just because they haven’t been used for a day or two are also evil. (I’m looking at you, Faber-Castell Ambition, you and your fine nib.)
As for ultra-polishing, It ain’t nohow permanent, so why do it?
Re: Vintage venting and other peeves
Drip-prone pens drive me batty. I have this issue with a couple Parker 21s and a Sheaffer Balance. Otherwise they are great writers but surprise blobs of ink on the page make me unhappy.
Re: Vintage venting and other peeves
As a restorer, looking back, one of the things that drive me up the wall is weird sized feed and section. When I have a beautiful barrel that came with a crummy nib, and I have the perfect replacement nib that will make that pen a darling, but the odd size and fit between the nib, feed and section prevented that from materializing.
And of course I ended up trying out and swapping nibs/feed/section left and right, finding a fit for only two but not the other. It's like trying to build a house of cards next to a running fan.
Plus in the end none of them would fit just right. Now that's quite irksome.
Re: Vintage venting and other peeves
Over polishing my vintage pens has never been a concern. Indeed, even with my prettiest vintage celluloids, I don't polish them at all any more. Clean them, yes. I did get some wax for them years ago, but have used it so seldom that I just had to get up and take it off the shelf to remind myself of what it's called. "Renaissance" wax. Just a little bit used off the top of the container.
For peeves specific to vintage pens, as azkid says, the tendency of some otherwise excellent pens to spit a drop of ink from time to time is particularly vexing. Or perhaps what is annoying me in some cases is my inability to find out why a particular vintage pen is doing that.
Other than that, I can't think of anything in particular. I have four pens inked right now, and three of them are vintage. I have vintage pens that are unreliable, or that don't have good nibs, or have other defects, but they are used pens, in some cases overused pens, and I don't let it bother me. Some will eventually get some therapy that may make them better. And I already have a number of vintage pens that work well, and fit into my regular rotation.
Now I have some peeves with brand new modern pens that have problems out of the box, or were overhyped (and I fell for it). But that's another story.
Re: Vintage venting and other peeves
My other peeve is under-polished pens.
Re: Vintage venting and other peeves
I don't mind polished vintage pens. I have three pens from a certain restorer that has an eye for British pens and shows them off on YouTube. The ultra-polished feeds that glimmer under my LED lamp brings a warm joy to my heart as no other ebonite feed has ever done. :applause:
Re: Vintage venting and other peeves
Parker 21 Mk I and Mk II pens don't have enough feed capacity to cope with air expansion in their sacs. Early Sheaffer balances (those without fins all the way around their feeds) are similarly handicapped. You have to treat these pens as if they were eydropper fillers: During the night keep the pen vertical, nib up, in your pen holder. Extra ink in the feed will leak back down into the reservoir. In the morning, when the pen is cold, clip the pin in your shirt pocket, nib up, until it warms up. Then you can hold it in your hand and write with it and it won't hork a blob onto your paper.
The Parker 21 Super has extra capacity and doesn't have the problem.
Re: Vintage venting and other peeves
My biggest pet peeve with fountain pens is being a prisoner of dye based inks. Although other options are available, they really are a pain to clean. A little piece of dust or something imperceptible getting in the tines and ruining the consistency of the line can also be very annoying.
If it has to be about something someone else does with fountain pens, I guess letting my friend have a go with my pen and then watching them write with the nib rotated wrong strikes fear into my heart.
Re: Vintage venting and other peeves
Quote:
Originally Posted by
azkid
Drip-prone pens drive me batty. I have this issue with a couple Parker 21s and a Sheaffer Balance. Otherwise they are great writers but surprise blobs of ink on the page make me unhappy.
Yeah huge peeve of mine. Nothing pisses me off more than a huge blob of ink on the last page of a correspondance. [emoji35]
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Re: Vintage venting and other peeves
Oooooo.....Yeah, the dripping thing can be a hassle.
@Chrissy, yeah, I can understand the toothmarks thing. Largely because I don't understand the need to chew ones pen. Fortunately, I haven't had the misfortune of finding too many of those.
@Penwash the mismatched nib/feed thing is such a hassle. Same can be said for modern pens, as well. On the flip side, over time I've managed to have a few spare nibs sitting around just waiting for the perfect pen to rest it in.
On further consideration, the high gloss bugs me more when I see those pens for sale as "near mint" condition, which I guess is true to an extent, if not disingenuous. Your own pen is one thing, but one slated to be sold? Nah.
Re: Vintage venting and other peeves
Well, maybe there is one more thing, although it's not a problem with my most commonly used vintage pens. On some of them with gold nibs, the tines seem to want to be out of alignment, a kind of metal memory perhaps. On a couple, I can get the tines nicely lined up, put the pen away without writing with it, take it out the next morning, and find that one of the tines has magically crept up during the night.
Maybe there's some sort of nibmeister magic where you take the entire nib out of the pen and give it a special alignment massage so that its natural state will be aligned. Most of my minor alignment tweaks last for a very long time on both modern and vintage pens, but sometimes I run into a problem child.
Re: Vintage venting and other peeves
Sometimes when tines persistently return to a position out of alignment the problem lies with the feed. It may be that it is a little rotated or even has a small imperfection.
Re: Vintage venting and other peeves
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Deb
Sometimes when tines persistently return to a position out of alignment the problem lies with the feed. It may be that it is a little rotated or even has a small imperfection.
This is so true!
Re: Vintage venting and other peeves
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kaputnik
Well, maybe there is one more thing, although it's not a problem with my most commonly used vintage pens. On some of them with gold nibs, the tines seem to want to be out of alignment, a kind of metal memory perhaps. On a couple, I can get the tines nicely lined up, put the pen away without writing with it, take it out the next morning, and find that one of the tines has magically crept up during the night.
Maybe there's some sort of nibmeister magic where you take the entire nib out of the pen and give it a special alignment massage so that its natural state will be aligned. Most of my minor alignment tweaks last for a very long time on both modern and vintage pens, but sometimes I run into a problem child.
Another variation of this, are those vintage nibs whose tines are downright crooked, and it should write like a nail on the chalkboard, but amazingly, it's one of the smoothest nib you have.
I've encountered a few of these.
Re: Vintage venting and other peeves
I was recently criticized because I do not polish my vintage pens. Holy cow, some of the pens in question were older than me and the other person put together. Let them show some age! I believe this is part of their character.