Friday, February 29, 2008
Yay! I'm getting a Namiki Falcon!
I know I talked about it for a while, but this morning I went and ordered it. World Lux is having a 1-day sale in honor of Feb 29; everything is 15% off their list price. Their price for the Falcon is usually $135, which is not the best but not bad either for it. With the discount, that brings it down to just under $115, hands down the cheapest I've ever seen retail on one. So I went for it. On top of that, some sort of glitch seems to have given me free shipping. ^_^ Even if that gets corrected I'll still be getting it for less than $125 shipped, good price. If the free shipping stands, it'll be a great price!
Kati's starting the day great. :)
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Oh no. "Snap"? Pens aren't supposed to go "Snap".
And yet snap it did. Last time we were at an antique mall, I picked up a Cub Scout fountain pen. Yeah, Boy Scouts. Sac felt good, so I filled it up with obscenely bright pink ink and tried it out for a while. Nib actually isn't that great. Folded tipping. It feels pretty smooth, and it has a nifty stub effect, but the ink flow isn't so good. Well, got sick of it, decided to empty out the last three drops (I counted) of ink left and rinse it out. While doing that, the sac didn't seem to be re-inflating as quickly as it should, so I thought I should maybe resac it after all. Only, I tried to take the section off, and that bugger is NOT coming. Heat didn't do it, section pliers didn't budge it, and I didn't want to risk breaking it because I plan to resell this pen. (Or, if no one will pay the price I want, keep filling it with painfully girly colors. :) )
So, I decided to just finish rinsing it out, and warn potential buyers that it may need a resac soon. Only as I was filling, "Snap!" The J-bar broke! Right in the pen! Just snapped right under the lever while I was filling it! The thing is, it doesn't look rusted or anything. I do hope it's not a design flaw. It does seem like the lever might be longer than it should be.
...
Although, if the sac is going bad, it may have hardened more near the nipple, where I can't feel it. Maybe the J-bar's end was getting held up there, and so the sac was pushing it down into a bow shape.
I may actually send this one out for professional repair. When I get my vacuum filler back from Binder, I was going to send it to Dillo, so I'm thinking I'll send this along. He'll have more experience with really stuck sections, and he can adjust the nib while it's there, too.
Of course, if I'm going to do that, I'm half tempted to send along a nicer nib if I have one the right size, and have him put it in. ^_~
So, I decided to just finish rinsing it out, and warn potential buyers that it may need a resac soon. Only as I was filling, "Snap!" The J-bar broke! Right in the pen! Just snapped right under the lever while I was filling it! The thing is, it doesn't look rusted or anything. I do hope it's not a design flaw. It does seem like the lever might be longer than it should be.
...
Although, if the sac is going bad, it may have hardened more near the nipple, where I can't feel it. Maybe the J-bar's end was getting held up there, and so the sac was pushing it down into a bow shape.
I may actually send this one out for professional repair. When I get my vacuum filler back from Binder, I was going to send it to Dillo, so I'm thinking I'll send this along. He'll have more experience with really stuck sections, and he can adjust the nib while it's there, too.
Of course, if I'm going to do that, I'm half tempted to send along a nicer nib if I have one the right size, and have him put it in. ^_~
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Oh yeah, Jinnayah's gettin' herself a new nib.
...
Doesn't quite have a ring to it, does it?
My 0.5 mm cursive italic nib from Binder sucks. Bad. It's rough. And since the writing sample included with it (this time, grr) suggests that Binder thinks this is acceptable quality, I'm not inclined to send it back to him AGAIN to get it fixed. Actually, as soon as I get the pen written out of ink, I'm just going to sell it. There are people out there who like a lot of feedback from their nibs; I'm just not one of them. At all. So, this is what the penultimate nibmeister can do, huh? I am unimpressed.
(I am also unimpressed that I'm STILL trying to get the Taccia sorted out, too. It's been in his workshop for a week without so much as a peep beyond 'it's here', so I finally gave up, wrote again, and asked for an update. You know what? I had three items in that order, and they messed up every one of them.)
But ya know what? I learned that Pendemonium does custom nib grinding. Well, I knew that, but it took me a while to figure out how to arrange it. Best of all, the nib grinding fee is only $15. Hell, I'll bite for that. Can't do much worse than Binder did, for less than a third of the grinding cost, and if it's better, I'll (finally) have a nice 0.5 mm cursive italic for $40 -- much better than the $70 the current POS cost.
(I'm resentful about the quality level of my expensive custom nib. Does it show? ^_~)
In any event, at worst I'll end up with another data point on what a fine cursive italic should feel like when writing. Of course, if I don't like Pendemonium's either, I may give Deb Kinney a try. I'd give Mottishaw a go, but I don't know that he'll work on the steel M200 nibs, and I don't want to either pay for gold or wait 6 months to get through his queue with a pen of my own.
While I was ordering from Pendemonium, I was a bad girl and got a bottle of Rohrer and Klingner ink in magenta. Sight unseen except for the monitor swatch, since Pear Tree doesn't carry this brand. Here's hoping I like it. (Like I've ever met a magenta I didn't like. ^_~) And a few other things, but that's the big one, and the one I feel guilty about.
Sadly, I crunched the numbers, and we won't be able to go to the Chicago Pen show this year. But, assuming I'm still on the pen thing, I'm wanting to drive up to Pendemonium and test drive a Namiki Vanishing Point. They fascinate me, but the way I hold my pens and the way they've placed their clips may not get along. I'd like to try one in person. If I like it, I'll get myself one. It not, I'm thinking a Sailor Sapporo. (I don't know if Pendemonium carries those. But I'm sure they'll have something I want.)
Doesn't quite have a ring to it, does it?
My 0.5 mm cursive italic nib from Binder sucks. Bad. It's rough. And since the writing sample included with it (this time, grr) suggests that Binder thinks this is acceptable quality, I'm not inclined to send it back to him AGAIN to get it fixed. Actually, as soon as I get the pen written out of ink, I'm just going to sell it. There are people out there who like a lot of feedback from their nibs; I'm just not one of them. At all. So, this is what the penultimate nibmeister can do, huh? I am unimpressed.
(I am also unimpressed that I'm STILL trying to get the Taccia sorted out, too. It's been in his workshop for a week without so much as a peep beyond 'it's here', so I finally gave up, wrote again, and asked for an update. You know what? I had three items in that order, and they messed up every one of them.)
But ya know what? I learned that Pendemonium does custom nib grinding. Well, I knew that, but it took me a while to figure out how to arrange it. Best of all, the nib grinding fee is only $15. Hell, I'll bite for that. Can't do much worse than Binder did, for less than a third of the grinding cost, and if it's better, I'll (finally) have a nice 0.5 mm cursive italic for $40 -- much better than the $70 the current POS cost.
(I'm resentful about the quality level of my expensive custom nib. Does it show? ^_~)
In any event, at worst I'll end up with another data point on what a fine cursive italic should feel like when writing. Of course, if I don't like Pendemonium's either, I may give Deb Kinney a try. I'd give Mottishaw a go, but I don't know that he'll work on the steel M200 nibs, and I don't want to either pay for gold or wait 6 months to get through his queue with a pen of my own.
While I was ordering from Pendemonium, I was a bad girl and got a bottle of Rohrer and Klingner ink in magenta. Sight unseen except for the monitor swatch, since Pear Tree doesn't carry this brand. Here's hoping I like it. (Like I've ever met a magenta I didn't like. ^_~) And a few other things, but that's the big one, and the one I feel guilty about.
Sadly, I crunched the numbers, and we won't be able to go to the Chicago Pen show this year. But, assuming I'm still on the pen thing, I'm wanting to drive up to Pendemonium and test drive a Namiki Vanishing Point. They fascinate me, but the way I hold my pens and the way they've placed their clips may not get along. I'd like to try one in person. If I like it, I'll get myself one. It not, I'm thinking a Sailor Sapporo. (I don't know if Pendemonium carries those. But I'm sure they'll have something I want.)
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Let's talk ink
OK, it's more "let's listen to me rant about inks".
First, international short cartridges: Whose stupid idea were these things? I bet it was someone in marketing. "Hey, let's find out the smallest amount of ink a pen user will tolerate having available in a fill, and build pens around that! And then we can sell lots and lots of carts because they're so bloody small!"
Seriously, one of those things would probably hold maybe a day or two of ink for me. What a pain in the hinder.
____
Next...
You know, I want to support privately owned American businesses. But I'm ready to make an exception for Noodler's. I'm starting to feel towards Nathan Tardiff about like Tolkien. I'm not really thrilled with his work to start with, but his fans push me right over the edge.
What are my problems with Noodler's?
1) He mistakes quantity for quality.
a) Most of his inks are over-saturated, in the scientific sense. There is so much pigment that the ink base cannot hold it, and it falls out of solution. This leads to poor performance and clogging problems in pens. On paper, it causes slow dry times and smearing after dry. Let me really stress this: the excessive amount of pigment is a serious detriment to the performance of the ink. And yet if you point this out and suggest that he'd be better to balance with amount of pigment with the amount of carrier, he pulls out his favorite straw man. You see, if you don't like his overly saturated inks, you must "desire a weak ink akin to food coloring". That is a direct, word for word quote. Yes, you want his ink or you want diluted food coloring. There's nothing in between.
b) His ink bottles are often full to the point where it's hard to open them the first time. Of course, I'm sure if you pointed this out, he'd mock you for wanting less product. No, I don't want less ink; I want more bottle.
2) He puts his conservative politics in your face. Now, I do generally try to buy blue from corporations where I can, but privately-owned businesses, I'm not going to judge on the owner's politics unless he makes it an issue. Nathan does. From his "Iraqi Indigo" ink to the kerfluffle he purposely stirred up with his "would anyone call me a racist if I named an ink 'Heart of Darkness'?" thread to removing the mL measurements from his bottles because he's pissed about European regulations, he keeps forcing his political views into nonpolitical items, and often mocking the opposite side.
3) He's recently taken to answering complaints about product quality with whining about his business financials. Look, Nathan, your financially viable return rate has absolutely no bearing on whether one of your inks will instantly stain modern pens or not.
4) And in general, a constant attitude of victimhood whenever addressing the community, combined with a clear "I cannot possibly make mistakes, so the error must be yours. It's not my inks that's the problem; it's your use of them" or the pen company or whoever else is convenient and not him.
5) Questionable "tests" to show the superiority of his inks. The most famous is his pH test using aluminum foil -- a material not used in pens due to its reactivity with ink ingredients in general. But the only that really pushed me over was his "freeze" test with a bottle of water. He says it froze to the point of breaking the bottle in less than 80 minutes at 22F (-5.5C). There's only one way that would happen: he filled the bottle ALL the way to the top. No one with any sense, and no good ink company, would do that.
Now, let me share two specific examples which have led me to the "throw up my hands and give up" stage.
First, Nathan recently released a new ink called Baystate Blue, an eye-seeringly bright blue. This ink instantly stained the section of a brand new pen. In the time it took to dip the pen, fill it, and wipe it off, the pen was permanently, irreparably stained. Ammonia wouldn't take it off. Bleach wouldn't take it off. It ain't coming off. Someone later tried it on acrylic pen blanks (for lathe workers) and found the same result. This ink permanently stains the materials many pens are made of. What were Nathan's responses to this?
First post:
1) He quickly pulled out his favorite straw man again, the "if you don't want my ink, you want food coloring in water" one.
b) started whining about low profit margin, high taxes, European regulations, and return rates. What this has to do about the staining characteristics of this particular ink is anyone's guess.
c) threatened to pull Baystate from the market if return rates exceeded 3%. This caused a run on the ink. (IMHO, the people who bit are now getting what they deserve, as it's being widely discovered that the ink is also so prone to feathering as to be largely useless, and that if you really love the color, you're better off with a blue Sharpie marker.)
d) claim that this behavior should be expected because it is a "vintage style ink". And because it is labeled as such, anyone who didn't expect pen staining doesn't know what vintage inks were really like and the fault is thus theirs.
Vintage style ink. *nose wiggle* Well, I'm sure it was an interesting experiment, but I don't think the world really wanted the return of Superchrome 51. :P
(That's a terribly geeky joke. Superchrome 51 was a Parker ink that destroyed pens. When it was released, it would literally eat any pen except for one that was specifically designed for it, the Parker 51, and even those didn't do wonderfully with it.)
What a load of bullshit! My pen box is filled with cheap vintage users -- pens that were used and abused with impunity every day of their lives until they were thrown in a drawer with a full load of ink and left with it there for 40 years or more. Let's go and find one that was stained by real vintage inks, shall we?
Let's see... Um... Hmm. I don't see a lot of stains. What about that green tip dip I gave Laura? No, they came off with water. Red Esterbrook? Nope, came off with Simichrome, and good old pen cleaner probably would have done it if we'd had some.
OK, how about visulated sections? They're supposed to be terribly prone to staining. Surely one of THOSE has been stained by a vintage ink. Um... Nope. I can line up half a dozen Touchdowns of various models, including one I've just been working on that I've been soaking for DAYS to get all the old ink residue out of, and every one of them is perfectly clear, maybe ambered with age but not an ink stain in sight.
Vintage inks did not stain pens when used properly.
Nathan also likes to keep repeating what a "small" company Noodler's is. I question how useful that statement is regarding a company that sold product on five continents until just recently, and still sells on four.
Some of his fans took his statements and ran with them, basically boiling them down to "ink stains, duh."
Not only is this rude, it's not true. Actually, most fountain pen inks do NOT stain permanently. Many can be washed right out of paper and other fibers. This is also, perhaps moreso, true with vintage inks, as I was inadvertently forced to prove this morning. (While standing on carpet, do not play with the newly restored filler of a pen you've been soaking to get ink residue out of. But, the 50-year-old ink came right out with a little water. ^_^;)
So, Nathan's second response:
a) ink stains. Duh.
b) Oh, poor me, living in a lawsuit happy country. (That's, um... where did that even come from? And lawsuit-happiness is FAR overstated from truth in the U.S.)
c) Threats to completely drop a retailer who did not want to keep carrying Baystate Blue due to its risks.
d) Blame the plastics that the pen is made from, because obviously the problem must be with the pen since it can't handle his vintage-style ink. (Besides my counter-argument above, I'd also like to point out that LOTS of people use vintage inks -- actual 50-year-old inks -- in their modern pens without problems.)
Suffice to say, I lost a lot of respect for Nathan for the way he handled this. And then, the final straw: Polar Bear Inks.
Polar bear inks were originally formulated to be liquid at temperatures down to -114F. Thus, they performed best at -20F, and started to suck above 30F. Now, obviously this is going to have a very niche market -- people running cold room tests, working outside in arctic conditions, and... that's about it. Not realizing its odd temperature range, people bought it, had poor results at room temperature, and returned it at a rate higher than his 3% threshold (as he again likes to remind people of in his explanation.)
Nathan whines that he had a four-panel informational explaining this and telling how to mix it for better properties, and retailers didn't like it. Dumbass. Proper labelling, if I may say so? "For temperatures from -100F to 30F. Will not work at room temperature." None of this four-page shit. Short, simple, to the point, no confusion.
But, that's beyond Nathan, So he reformulated the ink so that it's usable at higher temps. To do this, it partially freezes but is still usable at 22F. Colder temperatures, like those found in a normal kitchen freezer, will freeze it solid.
Small problem. Nathan apparently neglected to inform some key people about this change. Many retailers still advertise it as being good to -120F. Absolutely everyone who wrote in on FPN was shocked when a member's bottle froze solid in his kitchen freezer, and several advised him that he must have gotten a bad bottle* and should contact Nathan.
*Any time there's a problem with Noodler's ink, the immediate Cult of Noodler's knee-jerk is "oh, you must have gotten a bad bottle." It's an anomaly, it must be. If they were right, it still wouldn't be a positive, because Nathan would have such a high fail rate that I'd wonder if he had any QC at all.
You know, I see an ethical problem here. Nathan HAD to know when he formulated the original that it would be a very niche market. I don't have a problem with him discontinuing that, or with developing a more mass-market friendly "chilly weather" ink. But I have a serious problem with him using the same name and not informing retailers or buyers that the formula was VASTLY different. May I suggest that perhaps he would have been better with a "Polar Bear" niche ink labeled as I stated above, and a second "Penguin" or "Husky" ink for the less extreme temperatures?
First, international short cartridges: Whose stupid idea were these things? I bet it was someone in marketing. "Hey, let's find out the smallest amount of ink a pen user will tolerate having available in a fill, and build pens around that! And then we can sell lots and lots of carts because they're so bloody small!"
Seriously, one of those things would probably hold maybe a day or two of ink for me. What a pain in the hinder.
____
Next...
You know, I want to support privately owned American businesses. But I'm ready to make an exception for Noodler's. I'm starting to feel towards Nathan Tardiff about like Tolkien. I'm not really thrilled with his work to start with, but his fans push me right over the edge.
What are my problems with Noodler's?
1) He mistakes quantity for quality.
a) Most of his inks are over-saturated, in the scientific sense. There is so much pigment that the ink base cannot hold it, and it falls out of solution. This leads to poor performance and clogging problems in pens. On paper, it causes slow dry times and smearing after dry. Let me really stress this: the excessive amount of pigment is a serious detriment to the performance of the ink. And yet if you point this out and suggest that he'd be better to balance with amount of pigment with the amount of carrier, he pulls out his favorite straw man. You see, if you don't like his overly saturated inks, you must "desire a weak ink akin to food coloring". That is a direct, word for word quote. Yes, you want his ink or you want diluted food coloring. There's nothing in between.
b) His ink bottles are often full to the point where it's hard to open them the first time. Of course, I'm sure if you pointed this out, he'd mock you for wanting less product. No, I don't want less ink; I want more bottle.
2) He puts his conservative politics in your face. Now, I do generally try to buy blue from corporations where I can, but privately-owned businesses, I'm not going to judge on the owner's politics unless he makes it an issue. Nathan does. From his "Iraqi Indigo" ink to the kerfluffle he purposely stirred up with his "would anyone call me a racist if I named an ink 'Heart of Darkness'?" thread to removing the mL measurements from his bottles because he's pissed about European regulations, he keeps forcing his political views into nonpolitical items, and often mocking the opposite side.
3) He's recently taken to answering complaints about product quality with whining about his business financials. Look, Nathan, your financially viable return rate has absolutely no bearing on whether one of your inks will instantly stain modern pens or not.
4) And in general, a constant attitude of victimhood whenever addressing the community, combined with a clear "I cannot possibly make mistakes, so the error must be yours. It's not my inks that's the problem; it's your use of them" or the pen company or whoever else is convenient and not him.
5) Questionable "tests" to show the superiority of his inks. The most famous is his pH test using aluminum foil -- a material not used in pens due to its reactivity with ink ingredients in general. But the only that really pushed me over was his "freeze" test with a bottle of water. He says it froze to the point of breaking the bottle in less than 80 minutes at 22F (-5.5C). There's only one way that would happen: he filled the bottle ALL the way to the top. No one with any sense, and no good ink company, would do that.
Now, let me share two specific examples which have led me to the "throw up my hands and give up" stage.
First, Nathan recently released a new ink called Baystate Blue, an eye-seeringly bright blue. This ink instantly stained the section of a brand new pen. In the time it took to dip the pen, fill it, and wipe it off, the pen was permanently, irreparably stained. Ammonia wouldn't take it off. Bleach wouldn't take it off. It ain't coming off. Someone later tried it on acrylic pen blanks (for lathe workers) and found the same result. This ink permanently stains the materials many pens are made of. What were Nathan's responses to this?
First post:
1) He quickly pulled out his favorite straw man again, the "if you don't want my ink, you want food coloring in water" one.
b) started whining about low profit margin, high taxes, European regulations, and return rates. What this has to do about the staining characteristics of this particular ink is anyone's guess.
c) threatened to pull Baystate from the market if return rates exceeded 3%. This caused a run on the ink. (IMHO, the people who bit are now getting what they deserve, as it's being widely discovered that the ink is also so prone to feathering as to be largely useless, and that if you really love the color, you're better off with a blue Sharpie marker.)
d) claim that this behavior should be expected because it is a "vintage style ink". And because it is labeled as such, anyone who didn't expect pen staining doesn't know what vintage inks were really like and the fault is thus theirs.
Vintage style ink. *nose wiggle* Well, I'm sure it was an interesting experiment, but I don't think the world really wanted the return of Superchrome 51. :P
(That's a terribly geeky joke. Superchrome 51 was a Parker ink that destroyed pens. When it was released, it would literally eat any pen except for one that was specifically designed for it, the Parker 51, and even those didn't do wonderfully with it.)
What a load of bullshit! My pen box is filled with cheap vintage users -- pens that were used and abused with impunity every day of their lives until they were thrown in a drawer with a full load of ink and left with it there for 40 years or more. Let's go and find one that was stained by real vintage inks, shall we?
Let's see... Um... Hmm. I don't see a lot of stains. What about that green tip dip I gave Laura? No, they came off with water. Red Esterbrook? Nope, came off with Simichrome, and good old pen cleaner probably would have done it if we'd had some.
OK, how about visulated sections? They're supposed to be terribly prone to staining. Surely one of THOSE has been stained by a vintage ink. Um... Nope. I can line up half a dozen Touchdowns of various models, including one I've just been working on that I've been soaking for DAYS to get all the old ink residue out of, and every one of them is perfectly clear, maybe ambered with age but not an ink stain in sight.
Vintage inks did not stain pens when used properly.
Nathan also likes to keep repeating what a "small" company Noodler's is. I question how useful that statement is regarding a company that sold product on five continents until just recently, and still sells on four.
Some of his fans took his statements and ran with them, basically boiling them down to "ink stains, duh."
Not only is this rude, it's not true. Actually, most fountain pen inks do NOT stain permanently. Many can be washed right out of paper and other fibers. This is also, perhaps moreso, true with vintage inks, as I was inadvertently forced to prove this morning. (While standing on carpet, do not play with the newly restored filler of a pen you've been soaking to get ink residue out of. But, the 50-year-old ink came right out with a little water. ^_^;)
So, Nathan's second response:
a) ink stains. Duh.
b) Oh, poor me, living in a lawsuit happy country. (That's, um... where did that even come from? And lawsuit-happiness is FAR overstated from truth in the U.S.)
c) Threats to completely drop a retailer who did not want to keep carrying Baystate Blue due to its risks.
d) Blame the plastics that the pen is made from, because obviously the problem must be with the pen since it can't handle his vintage-style ink. (Besides my counter-argument above, I'd also like to point out that LOTS of people use vintage inks -- actual 50-year-old inks -- in their modern pens without problems.)
Suffice to say, I lost a lot of respect for Nathan for the way he handled this. And then, the final straw: Polar Bear Inks.
Polar bear inks were originally formulated to be liquid at temperatures down to -114F. Thus, they performed best at -20F, and started to suck above 30F. Now, obviously this is going to have a very niche market -- people running cold room tests, working outside in arctic conditions, and... that's about it. Not realizing its odd temperature range, people bought it, had poor results at room temperature, and returned it at a rate higher than his 3% threshold (as he again likes to remind people of in his explanation.)
Nathan whines that he had a four-panel informational explaining this and telling how to mix it for better properties, and retailers didn't like it. Dumbass. Proper labelling, if I may say so? "For temperatures from -100F to 30F. Will not work at room temperature." None of this four-page shit. Short, simple, to the point, no confusion.
But, that's beyond Nathan, So he reformulated the ink so that it's usable at higher temps. To do this, it partially freezes but is still usable at 22F. Colder temperatures, like those found in a normal kitchen freezer, will freeze it solid.
Small problem. Nathan apparently neglected to inform some key people about this change. Many retailers still advertise it as being good to -120F. Absolutely everyone who wrote in on FPN was shocked when a member's bottle froze solid in his kitchen freezer, and several advised him that he must have gotten a bad bottle* and should contact Nathan.
*Any time there's a problem with Noodler's ink, the immediate Cult of Noodler's knee-jerk is "oh, you must have gotten a bad bottle." It's an anomaly, it must be. If they were right, it still wouldn't be a positive, because Nathan would have such a high fail rate that I'd wonder if he had any QC at all.
You know, I see an ethical problem here. Nathan HAD to know when he formulated the original that it would be a very niche market. I don't have a problem with him discontinuing that, or with developing a more mass-market friendly "chilly weather" ink. But I have a serious problem with him using the same name and not informing retailers or buyers that the formula was VASTLY different. May I suggest that perhaps he would have been better with a "Polar Bear" niche ink labeled as I stated above, and a second "Penguin" or "Husky" ink for the less extreme temperatures?
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