Converting a Rotring Stylograph into a regular FP. Prt 1 The nib

[Lexaf]

After @KrazyIvan posted his ‘Frankenkuli’ in the thread “show us your Frankenpens”, there were some questions about how to convert a ‘Tintenkuli’ into a regular fountain pen.

I posted a story about how that could be done in September 2016, but ‘thanks’ to the Photobucket hosting site going commercial shortly after I made the posting, all the pictures that illustrated my story were blocked.
So I decided to post the article again in a somewhat edited new 'version 2.0'.

kuli2fp01.jpg

Once the tube nib unit of a Rotring like this has been damaged beyond the possibility of repair, you’ll end up with a nice but useless pen body, that has an excellent piston filling system. There are 2 possibilities to get it functional again: find another stylographic nib from an otherwise damaged Rotring pen or convert the body to an ‘normal’ fountain pen.

This project starts with a Rotring Tintenkuli pen that had three different problems in one pen, so it makes an ideal demonstration object.
When I found it at a flea market it looked OK at first sight. But it was definitely not OK. Look at the damaged section!

kuli2fp02.jpg

As it is not possible to separate the section of a Rotring Tintenkuli from the barrel, this damage is non repairable. So that is problem no.1.

2nd problem. A defective nib unit. The needle is gone, probably a part of it is stuck in the steel tube. If spare nib units were available and the rest of the pen would have been OK, the problem would be easily solved by exchanging the nib unit. In this case there is no spare nib available and the section of the pen is damaged, so I have to choose for another solution.

3rd problem: a shrunken and thus leaking cork seal in the piston filling system. Possible solution: A new seal. I’ll come back to that later.

kuli2fp03.jpg

Question: How can this pen be saved to be a functional writer again?
Answer: Convert it to a standard fountain pen with a nib and feeder and repair the seal.

So here we go.

At first, the defective nib unit is going to be used as a sleeve for a nib/feeder combination. For this project I found a nice new old stock Reform M nib (made by Bock), that looked like having the right measurements.
In order to find a ink feeder that will fit I first have to measure the inside diameter of the nib unit with a calliper.

kuli2fp04.jpg

As it measures 4.61 mm I will need a feeder of about 4.5mm. In combination with the Reform nib it must fit with enough friction to hold the nib. Of course lots of #4 nibs that fits to a 4.5mm feeder will do.
Bingo! (When it fits in the rear, it will fit in the front).
Now the front part of the tintenkuli nib unit has to be cut off. To get a nice 90 degree cut I use a small Unimat 1 hobby lathe and a single steel saw blade.

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The cut has been made. Notice the brownish debris on the blade: ebonite!

In the modified Tintenkuli tube, the feeder and the nib fit well together.

kuli2fp06.jpg

Next thing to do is the modification of the pen’s section. The section has to be shortened because the new nib is longer than the original stylograph system. If the section is not made shorter, the cap will not fit. In this case: this is exactly what I want. I had to remove the damaged part of the section anyway!
The pen body is mounted in the lathe and with the saw blade the damaged part of the section is cut away. See the brown dust. Ebonite again.

kuli2fp07.jpg

After cutting and polishing the section, the nib unit is screwed in, but it is still too long for the remaining part of the section.
So I have to shorten the nib unit sleeve too…

kuli2fp08.jpg

Now it fits. When there would not be a problem with the cork seal, the modification of this pen would now be practically ready. But I also need a new seal in the filling system to replace the defective (shrunken) cork.

As the FPG Forum software does not allow me to have more than 10 illustration inserts in one posting I have to stop my story here. But it will be continued.
In part 2 the repair of the seal and the final finishing of the pen is shown.

So, thank you for reading so far and see you in part 2 : http://fpgeeks.com/forum/showthread....042#post231042

[KrazyIvan]

Wow! I did not realize how much work was involved in getting this pen into writing condition! I enjoy the pen a lot.

[myu]

Wow, great conversion there Lexaf! You're quite the DIY'er, with lathe and all.
I have seen in the past on very rare occasion a Tintenkuli body with a screw-in nib. Somewhere out there in the deep past, there must've been a brand that made compatible nibs. That's my guess, anyway. Later when rOtring released their limited edition tintenkuli, they included both a stylograph tip and nib with it.

By the way, have you had any success in removing stuck/fused feed wires from old stylo tips?

[Lexaf]

(...) By the way, have you had any success in removing stuck/fused feed wires from old stylo tips?

To be honest, no not really...
Most of the time it's a pretty hopeless case when the wire is fused in the tube. In most cases these pens were used with China ink and left uncleaned for a long time. China ink is like tar when it's dried out and when it is has been kept like that for a long time it becomes harder and harder. Practically impossible to solve. Warm water with ammonia, an ultrasone cleaner and very much patience will help some times. You need to get the ink so soft that you can pull - very very slow and carefully - the wire out of the tube without bending it or breaking it off from the small piece of plastic or hard rubber that is on the end, that serves as a counter weight that causes to move the wire in the tube so the ink can flow to the top.

From the many times I tried to 'free' the stuck wire only just a few attempts really succeeded. And that was always with the relatively wide gauges, say more that .8 mm or thicker, because then the wire is thicker and of course stronger. The narrow gauges have very thin and accordingly very vulnerable wires and when a fine pointed tip is stuck it's practically always lost for ever. Finding a replacement unit on e-Bay is easier!

When you can't find a replacement then there is always this possibility to rebuild the pen to a fountain pen!

In the case of the damaged pen I showed above the conversion to FP was complicated because the section was damaged. Plus that I found it a challenge to rebuild the dead tip unit to fit a normal feeder and nib.

But when only the tip unit is dead and the pen + section is still in good order it is quite easy to convert it to a fountain pen.
It happens that standard Esterbrook nib units as well as the old UK made calligraphic Osmiroid nibs have a perfectly fitting thread and can be screwed in a Rotring Kuli without any problem!
See the picture below with a Rotring piston filler, an original stylo nib unit, an Esterbrook nib unit and an Osmiroid Calligraphic nib unit. They are interchangeable in a Rotring pen! (The Rotring unit does NOT fit in an Esterbrook or Osmiroid pen!).

So maybe you will end writing with a Rotbrook, Esterring, Rotroid or Osmiring pen.
If you happen to have those nib units available, just try, it's fun, it works!

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[myu]

I hear you, about the China / India saturated inks. I did end up discovering that sufficiently thin piano wire can help, but once the metal fuses it's impossible. I have a couple of really old vintage celluloid Tintenkuli pens where the threading of the nibs has variances that make other nib units incompatible. I don't know if that was due to shrinkage of the celluloid/ebonite over time... or if different threading was used. On examples where it seems there was no shrinkage, trying to swap with some older stylo tip units doesn't work, and you can see the threading design is slightly different. Because those vintage celluloid Tintenkuli stylos are so rare and collectible, it would be a shame to modify them.

Anyway, I didn't realize that the Esterbrook nib units work! I have some user grade tintenkuli pens and would enjoy trying that out. I also discovered that rOtring made some removable nibs with their Renaissance line (discontinued), and those will fit in Esterbrook pens.

[Wile E Coyote]

I've saved technical pen nibs (stylographic) by soaking them in Koh-I-Noor Rapido-Eze and ultrasonic cleaning. Might be worth a chance to try with the Rotring since they are essentially the same.

Not sure, but technical pen ink seems very similar to India/China ink.

[Savvas]

Thankyou for admitting me to your noble company!

On this subject of Rapidograph f/p conversions, Osmiroid 'Rolatip' & Osmiroid '65' nib units are also convenient screw-in replacements. As are a number of nib units made by Bok ('Iridium Point'), Venus & Reform. I have read somewhere that these are all 'standard thread' units although I don't know what that means in technical terms...


I have converted quite a few of the more recent (1950s & onwards) Rotring Rapidograph piston-fillers to fountain pens using the above nibs. All of these pens came apart relatively easily at both the nib end (using the Rotring 'nib key') and at the back end where the coloured-ring is integral with the filling knob mechanism and the whole thing just unscrews.

However I've been stumped by an earlier model Koh-i-Noor branded Rapidograph (see pic below)! This is one of those with a clear ink-window in the barrel & a large rounded black finial holding the clip on. Very fortunately came with a non-original keyed nib so I was able to swap in a f/p nib easily. However the piston isn't working so well so I'd like to disassemble & check it, BUT the filling knob mechanism doesn't want to unscrew from the barrel.


I note that the coloured ring (a brown 'No. 1') doesn't appear to be integral with the knob mechanism (which is black plastic) - as it is on the later Rotring models - so I'm guessing that there may be some 'hidden' differences in design.

Can anyone tell me if the filler mechanism on this earlier pen is supposed to unscrew from the barrel?

And while I'm here, has anyone figured out how to best unscrew the fully-round 'non-keyed' Rapidograph nibs when they arrive stuck? Preferably a non-destructive method?

Many thanks,

Sam.