I'm currently trying to review some inks and I normally reach for a Lamy Safari or an Al-Star. However, yesterday I decided I wanted to add a line for an EF nib as other users seem to like them even though I don't. Having turned my pen pots and the house upside down looking for a Lamy EF nib I eventually worked out I didn't have one.
Then I remembered someone gave me a TWSBI EF nib for a Diamond 580, I decided to look through all of the turned out debris in order to try to find that and I was successful. Yay.
So I filled the TWSBI 580, swapped in the EF nib, and wrote with it. Then I needed to swap up to a F nib so I unscrewed the EF nib and dropped it into my clean water pot for rinsing out.
I knew that the section part whether plastic or metal was loose and easily disassembled but the little metal collar also came off that nib while I was cleaning it. Could I get that little metal collar back on? Absolutely not. No way was that nicely slotting back into place like it showed me in various You Tube videos. It left much more of the black plastic collar sticking out beyond it. At one point both nib and feed came out of the collar and I needed to reset them and push them back in. I always thought 580 nibs couldn't be disassembled to that degree but this one came apart easily.
Careful examination showed me that there were micro sized slots in the metal and a very fine rubber O-ring that butted up to a ridge around the feed collar. The metal ring had decided that no way was it going past that ridge. I tried warming up the metal collar, and used my plastic pliers to try and push it on properly. Nope. It wasn't having any of it.
The reason for the problem eventually made itself clear after about an hour of trying to reassemble this nib unit. The tiny O-ring needed to be moved over the ridge towards the nib. As soon as I moved that O-ring the metal collar went straight back on as if to say Problem? What problem?
Therefore I'm posting this just in case this problem ever happens to anyone else. All you need to do is to slide the O-ring over the ridge.
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