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Thread: Early 1960s Pilot feeds: a tale of plastic that turns to mush :shocked:

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    Senior Member awa54's Avatar
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    Default Early 1960s Pilot feeds: a tale of plastic that turns to mush :(

    Well, a new shipment of cool older Japanese pens arrived on my doorstep late last week, which was great!

    However, much to my dismay, two (and maybe more) of the pre-1965 Pilot pens contain feeds that have decomposed into crumbly junk and a third lacks a feed entirely (gee, I wonder why?).

    All three are "dart" nibbed pens: the "dart" (my name) is a streamlined, mostly enclosed nib design, where all that is seen of the nib is a "V" shaped gold point, that crowns at the nib slit and has flat tine faces. Additionally, both remaining damaged feeds are opaque black material, rather than the (seemingly) more common translucent plastics Pilot used in other pens from that era which I have disassembled.

    dart nibs by David Wimmer, on Flickr


    These come in three sizes as far as I can tell: the smallest, as seen in the larger early 1960s L-100 and smaller late 1960s L-100V. The medium sized nib is featured in the early 1960s Super 150V and the large nib is in the early 1960s U200, with a similar steel nib found in the 3A student pen (no dating on my Korean made 3A).

    This is a real shame, since the large and medium iterations of this nib design are inherrently designed to allow easy flex and produce very nice line variation with the right technique...

    I wonder if this feed plastic(?) was a material pilot experimented with to improve performance over their earliest generation of plastic feeds, that was abandoned quickly, or if these fell afoul of sumi, scented, or fast drying ink formulas that can cause damage to any pen? I'm leaning toward the former, since later small darts don't have feed decay issues and the large feed in my u200 is standard Pilot frosted/clear plastic and nearly identical to the feed in the 3A (which I suspect is at least a decade newer).

    Any experience with this phenomenon, or suggestions about a feed that might be interchangeble in the Super 150V would be greatly appreciated!
    Last edited by awa54; November 12th, 2019 at 08:46 AM.
    David-

    So many restoration projects...

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