Pilot Custom 823

[spencerwilli]

I recently bought a Pilot Custom 823 from someone local to me. The nib is a medium and though I prefer a fine, the guy was selling it on craigslist for $90. I had to get it. The nib is extremely smooth, though the upstrokes were very dry (to the point where there was no flow). After some adjustment I got the nib to a decent upstroke flow but the pen now writes a little too wet, and now I can really notice the difference between my other pens with a fine nib vs the 823's extra wet medium. I've adjusted it some more and it has helped a little, but the nib is still a medium and I find it sitting in my pen pouch more than I'd like.

So my question is... Should I send the nib off to get it ground to a fine and risk the absolutely lovely smoothness that it has? If so, who would you recommend that could return the pen just as smooth as it was stock. I have a Montblanc 149 that I personally don't think is nearly as smooth as this 823's nib and I'm worried that I may ruin a really nice nib by getting ground, so I'm wanting to make sure to send it to the best nibmeister I can find.

[adhoc]

I would start first with a dry ink. Try Waterman's - cheap, dry, and amongst safest inks you can put in a pen. Which ink did you try with it?

[spencerwilli]

I’ve used an assortment of inks. The pen came with pilots blue, I have some montblanc inks, I have some iroshinzuku, and some sailor 252. Right now I have some Diamine cobalt jazz and it’s really* wet. I’ll buy some of the noodlers you mentioned and see what happens


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[adhoc]

I meant Waterman's ink, not Noodler's. From my experience Noodler's inks can vary greatly from one to the next in writing properties.

That said, Pilot's blue is a dry ink and if the pen is too wet for your taste with that ink, I'm afraid the nib is probably too wet. From what you wrote I think you probably already tried, but pinching the tines a bit more together should make the nib write drier. If that doesn't work, nibmeister is probably your best bet then. You can perhaps start with Dan at nibsmith - but last time I checked everyone had a huge backlog.

[XYZZY]

Legend has it that Tokyo Pen Shop Quill has an owner that is buddies with somebody high up in Pilot who makes that 823-FA available to that shop as a supported item.

Pensachi also sells an 823 with FA nib. https://www.pensachi.com/products/pi...cial-nib-brown That's relatively recent, and I don't know where they get them from. They might have a similar arrangement with Pilot. Or maybe instead once you place the order they run down the street and buy one from Tokyo Pen Shop Quill, and flip it to you:-) If you go the Pensachi route it would be nice if you enquired what kind of warranty support is on the pen, and report back here.

Note that the "FA" nib may very well stand for "falcon", but the Falcon nib is the one in the Falcon pen, also known as the Elabo. I try to only use "falcon" to refer to that pen in order to avoid confusion.

As mentioned above, the 743/823/745 pens use a #15 size nib, and you can swap the nibs/feeds amongst them. The pens ending in 2 (i.e. 742) use a #10 sized nib: you can swap #10 nibs and feeds with other pens that also use a #10.

The Falcon/Elabo pens have their own nib/feed.

Personally, I prefer converters so I'm more than happy to own a 743/FA and not bother with finding an 823/FA.

For more information about Pilot pen sizes check the obligatory post on KMPN: http://kmpn.blogspot.com/2011/06/pilot-custom.html