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Thread: Can this pen be fixed?

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    Default Can this pen be fixed?

    Hello to all. I'm new here, so let me introduce myself (juanseba).

    I'm 36 now; I began writing with fountain pens when I was 12 or 13 years old. I started in a new school for junior high (in 7th grade) and the new teachers were not as tolerant of my handwriting as my elementary school teachers had been, so I was forced to take in-school remedial penmanship lessons, three hours a day for 30 minutes during lunch hour. My penmanship tutor did not use calligraphy pens in said classes but suggested them to me for individual out-of-school practice. As any young teen wanting to spend time with his friends during school lunch rather than being stuck in extra classes, I tried to hurry the process along, so when I saw a set of Sheaffer calligraphy pens in Costco of all places, I asked my mother to buy them for me and have never looked back. I'm a diehard Sheaffer fan, in part because they were my first, but even more so because my first two non-Sheaffer fountain pen buys (a Cross Aventura and a Pilot Metropolitan) turned out to have rather disastrous outcomes.

    I could say more about the pros and cons of my Sheaffers or talk about my non-Sheaffer pens, but getting to the point, my question is about the aforementioned Pilot and Cross instruments. The Cross wrote magically when it was new, buttery smooth, but after months of use it began to progressively give more and more feedback until it became downright scratchy and started to snag (and rip) the pages of both the regular school composition notebooks and the legal pads that I have to use at work. I bought the Metropolitan later; it was more disappointing out of the box because it didn't glide over the pages like the Aventura, plus I have to use it posted since I frequently write standing up while away from my desk so I have no other place to put the cap and my Metropolitan's cap has always steadfastly refused to stay posted for very long. In any case, it too started to give more feedback with time, and has recently become scratchy as well. The tines of the Aventura's nib were aligned, so I tried smoothing it out, to no avail. I thought to do the same with the Metropolitan's nib but decided to ask for advice first.

    I noticed something about the tines of both pens when I looked at them under magnification, which is that, although aligned, they have become ever-so-slightly curved. I take very good care of all my pens, and I always keep them clipped upright in my shirt pocket; neither pen has ever been dropped uncapped and they've both been always in my sole posession. The Metropolitan, which is flexier than the Aventura -which is itself flexier than all my Sheaffers- is pictured in the attachment. I have never seen this with my hard-as-nails Sheaffers even though some have over two decades of intermittent-but-not-infrequent use. I assume the curve is due to the metal yielding under my usual writing posture and pressure over months and years. My question is... can these tines on this nib be straightened in the hope of making said nib not scratchy?

    Thanks in advance to all.metropolitan.PNG
    Last edited by juanseba; September 1st, 2019 at 10:26 AM. Reason: Insert image inline.

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    Senior Member Deb's Avatar
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    Default Re: Can this pen be fixed?

    Yes.
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    Deb
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    Default Re: Can this pen be fixed?

    :-))

    All right; my bad for carelessly writing my post. I'll bite, and rephrase: "...can these tines be straightened [...] and what method would you recommend? Should straightening the tines make the nib non-scratchy like I hope or could the scratchiness be due to some other reason? Are tines really supposed to have to be restraightened periodically after only ordinary use with no trauma to the nib or is something else going on?". I can read online manuals and follow the guides in order to attempt restraightening the tines without asking anyone for any advice -in fact, I already have done such reading- but I have questions beyond that which I had hoped this community could help me answer.

    It should go without saying that a starter pen like a Metropolitan (as long as it has no sentimental value - mine doesn't) isn't going to end up in the workshop of a professional. This would be a job for me and me alone at home; else the trash bin.
    Last edited by juanseba; September 1st, 2019 at 11:01 AM.

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    Senior Member Sailor Kenshin's Avatar
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    Default Re: Can this pen be fixed?

    Don't try to flex these pens. Don't lean on your pens. Try to lighten up your writing style.

    Do not flex pens!

    To attempt a repair, first search youtube so you can watch a few videos. Then get a pair of needlenose pliers and very gently and carefully try to align the tines, a little bit at a time. You could try using your fingers at first.

    I'm no pro but I've straightened nibs.

    Oh, and have I mentioned: don't flex the nibs.

    Good luck.
    My other pen is a Montblanc.

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    Senior Member azkid's Avatar
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    Default Re: Can this pen be fixed?

    Yes, if careful, and somewhat good with your hands, you can fix the above nib. I am not a repair person like Deb but have coaxed a few jacked up nibs back into use.

    I must mention that Wing Sung makes nibs that are are drop in replacements for Pilot Metro nibs. They are absurdly low price and yet the several I have tried worked out of the box and were pretty good, in fact. I used one to fix a metro that I had dropped which looked slightly worse than yours.

    All that said, the bigger question I have is: if you're not dropping pens or using them to stab zombies, what in the wide world is causing your nibs to end up like this?!

    I'm utterly gobsmacked that the pen above ended up looking like this just from writing use. How much do you write per day? And how much writing pressure do you use?

    This really isn't supposed to happen with normal use and pressure.

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    Default Re: Can this pen be fixed?

    UPDATE: The cropped first response I got to my post led me to believe my question(s) would be generally considered as stupid questions, so I just went ahead and tried to straighten the tines with gentle brute force and managed to make the pen smoother. (The nib now curves slightly upwards at the tip, but whatever; it works well enough.) I'm still surprised at how the nib go worse with use so rapidly (and also at how little force was necessary to reshape it for repair). I'm used to the hard Sheaffer nibs that have held up unchanged for years (and sometimes decades) under my natural writing style. (Yes, I am a rather tall man with rather large hands and somewhat strong piano-playing fingers.) I still wonder whether what happened to the Metropolitan can be considered normal - I've had it for about three years but it only saw five-days-a-week use for about 10 months. Can anyone with more experience with these softer nibs enlighten me? Thanks.

    (P.D.: I just saw the next two responses. My greetings to the repliers. Thank you for your time.)
    Last edited by juanseba; September 1st, 2019 at 11:31 AM.

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    Default Re: Can this pen be fixed?

    Nibs are comparatively easy to straighten if you have the tools. If you don't have them you can make do as I did for several years. I used a wooden pen rest and a smoothed piece of wood and they worked well enough. Roundnose pliers are pretty well essential. I can only imagine how your pens got in such a state. I would think that would be quite hard to do.
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    Senior Member azkid's Avatar
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    Default Re: Can this pen be fixed?

    Some of the stiffer nibs (the Metro isn't one of those) designed for carbon copies, can take more than normal writing pressure. However, the big advantage of fountain pens is that very little pressure is needed, which can reduce fatigue from extended writing sessions.

    Normal pressure to avoid damaging nibs is probably about like how much you would press down on a 0.5mm mechanical pencil to avoid breaking the lead, if you were writing with it on an angle, instead of straight up and down. Maybe less. So, hardly any pressure at all.

    Most pens I've used will lay down a line with only their own weight. If you hold the pen at the tail and let the nib rest on the paper with the pen at a normal writing angle, and then pull it along, it should write a fine, faint line or possible darker.

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    Default Re: Can this pen be fixed?

    OP in order to do that sort of damage to your fountain pen nibs just by writing, you're pressing much too hard when you write. There's no way you should be able to damage a nib so badly just by writing with it.

    Good luck with your repairs, but moving forward you should be practising on using your pens with a much lighter hand and not pressing down on the nib at all. The pen should write across the page with you just guiding it and without using any pressure. Maybe you could practise with a pencil and don't press down.
    Regards, Chrissy | My Review Blog: inkyfountainpens

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    Default Re: Can this pen be fixed?

    Thanks to all the repliers.

    [Quote=azkid]
    All that said, the bigger question I have is: if you're not dropping pens or using them to stab zombies, what in the wide world is causing your nibs to end up like this?!

    I'm utterly gobsmacked that the pen above ended up looking like this just from writing use. How much do you write per day? And how much writing pressure do you use?

    This really isn't supposed to happen with normal use and pressure.
    [Quote=Deb]
    I can only imagine how your pens got in such a state. I would think that would be quite hard to do.
    [Quote=Chrissy]
    There's no way you should be able to damage a nib so badly just by writing with it.

    Good luck with your repairs, but moving forward you should be practising on using your pens with a much lighter hand and not pressing down on the nib at all.
    Yes, I'm gobsmacked as well. (Hence my original post.) Even though it may sound like it from said original post, I'm not a newbie when it comes to fountain pens. My collection isn't large -it's less than 20- and most of those are Sheaffer nails, but I do have pens from several different brands, including three soft gold nibs which still write as brand-new almost four years from purchase. In short, I know to use less pressure than with a regular ballpoint. To answer azkid's questions, I *do* write a lot. I'm working as a teacher now, so I have to write in student's notebooks in almost all class periods, plus a lot of writing does require blue ink on carbon paper per school policy: receipts when I collect money as the homeroom teacher, hall passes, detention slips, copy orders, student citations for the tutoring period, and all other sorts of official school documents for which the carbon copy needs to be kept. (The original has to be blue to distinguish it from copies; black is too easy to photocopy almost identically, per regulations at the last two schools I've worked at.) Outside of school, I do grading and correcting and marking at home well into the night almost all nights, so my pens are very well used. My gold-nibbed pens have never left home, and my usual pair for work used to be a VFM for the required blue ink and a $5 Zebra V-301F which I used with a Lamy converter for non-blue ink when I needed it, which was often. (I had to drill out the back of the Zebra's barrel for the converter to fit, and after a while I converted it into an eyedropper by sealing the hole in the back with super glue and black electrical tape and improvising an O-ring for the barrel-section joint with plumber's teflon tape and beeswax or flautist's flute joint grease, as available. I had done the eyedropper conversion for the VFM first: I couldn't get a Sheaffer mini converter one time -the regular-sized one doesn't fit the VFM- and I don't like cartidges because of the expense and because I dislike polluting the Earth by throwing away plastic when they're empty, so I got fed up one day and invented something.) I got the Metropolitan and the Cross and switched them to my daily writers, after which both rapidly took a nosedive in writing quality. I didn't expect either of them to be so soft. My Sheaffer Student has been writing for 17 years and is still as smooth (and wet, and sometimes hard-starting and occassionally skippy and *always* sopping wet) as it was when I first bought it for $3 and change at the university library. That one served as my first-ever fountain pen daily writer and saw me through undergrad college plus grad school in cheap notebooks; it has written plenty, including many carbon copies, so to see the changes in my new daily writers in less than a full school year of use was amazing to say the very least. At work, I'm now using the VFM again, for black this time, and a Sheaffer POP for blue, but maybe I'll switch it to a Noodler's Charlie, which is also rather hard-nibbed.

    Thanks again to everyone.
    Last edited by juanseba; September 2nd, 2019 at 06:28 AM. Reason: fix typo

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    Senior Member azkid's Avatar
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    Default Re: Can this pen be fixed?

    Yes, I'm gobsmacked as well. (Hence my original post.) Even though it may sound like it from said original post, I'm not a newbie when it comes to fountain pens.
    You have been doing this way, way, way longer than me... I hope I didn't come across wrong but if I did, I'm really sorry.

    I wonder if the Metro nibs just don't hold up to significant use. Or maybe this nib was part of a batch with bad steel or bad heat treating.

    They aren't like stiff gold nibs, that's for sure—I know what you mean about that. I have some old Sheaffer Balances and one of those, a '29, has a really beefy, stiff nib (gold of course). The nibs on my two Parker Duofolds are similar. Pretty sure all could handle carbon copies and writing all day long.

    I've tuned a handful of nibs and it seems like the steel ones usually take less bending to force into a new shape than do the gold nibs, though my Pelikan M205 steel nib is similarly difficult to tune and feels much springer than any other steel nib.

    So if the metro nib is way more deformable than the Sheaffer gold nibs, maybe with a ton of writing they just get more and more bent out of shape.

    I don't know. Really weird. Meanwhile I would love to hear (and see) more about your other pens. Which is to say I hope you'll stick around.

    Hopefully the other pens will work out better.

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    Default Re: Can this pen be fixed?

    Quote Originally Posted by azkid View Post
    Yes, I'm gobsmacked as well. (Hence my original post.) Even though it may sound like it from said original post, I'm not a newbie when it comes to fountain pens.
    You have been doing this way, way, way longer than me... I hope I didn't come across wrong but if I did, I'm really sorry.

    I wonder if the Metro nibs just don't hold up to significant use. Or maybe this nib was part of a batch with bad steel or bad heat treating.

    [...]

    I don't know. Really weird. Meanwhile I would love to hear (and see) more about your other pens. Which is to say I hope you'll stick around.

    Hopefully the other pens will work out better.

    You needn't worry. You didn't come across wrong. (No one that replied to my original post did, by the way.) Just the opposite, I very much appreciate all the replies.

    As a closing post on this thread, I'm going to grant azkid's wish and show my first and fourth oldest fountain pens. Left is the very first one I ever used, with the M calligraphy nib that I broke in first out of the box; right lies the very first non-calligraphy one I ever used, the aforementioned Student. I used that very old Student with its original, never-been-adjusted nib to write in that "hello" message in that legal pad. The cap shows why I stopped taking it out of my home: Repeated use tarnished it to the point where it isn't "presentable" anymore - certainly not at work, anyway. It still writes as smoothly as it did in my sophomore year of college, though. Thankfully, I've learned to use drier inks with it since then .

    By the way, I made a mistake when I said the Metropolitan and the Aventura were my first-ever non-Sheaffer purchases: I had a Pilot Varsity in college, too. I liked it better than the Student because it wasn't as wet and had less start-up problems, but back then I didn't know enough to refill it when it said it wasn't refillable. (Disposable fountain pens... a sign of how much we've de-evolved in our consumerist society... .)

    Have a great day, everyone.
    Attached Images Attached Images
    Last edited by juanseba; September 2nd, 2019 at 01:05 PM. Reason: retook picture; wasn't satisfied with original photo

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