On 2008-06-28, The Drunken Lord wrote:
On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 14:43:07 +0000, MatthewK
wrote:


I remember that post too but can't think if it was griz or
not. Somebody, maybe him, was suggesting plugging the whole
with a machine screw and o-ring. The whole idea seemed like
guilding-the-lilly to me.

Yeah, it was kind of like the mad scientist ink mixing stuff, not as
insane as the ink in the microwave though. I did pull the end cap off
a pilot and look where Old Griz recommended drilling. I believe it
would work, but, yeah, there is the problem of sealing the damn thing
up again. And then once you seal it up with the o-ring and the
machine screw, you'd play hell getting back into it to refill it
again.

I love e.d. pens but you start adding o-rings to them then they
seem less pure to me. I'd rather have one designed for it and
keep a little wax on the threads. That being said, my most used
e.d. has an 0-ring.


All you gotta do is wrap a paper towel around the feed and take a pair
of pliars and pull it off and you can snap it right back in.


I think some old eyedropper fp's had to have the nib/feed
removed to fill. Maybe if was the section...what ever it was
they were friction fit.



How are you doing with your nib grinding? What are you using? There
is some good advice, not so good advice on this on FPN. I like the
idea of keeping the pen inked so you can test what you're doing as you
do it. And one other thing I know about this--you've got to **** up a
few before you start getting it right.

Pretty good I think. The directions I'm using are in "A
Italic way to Beautiful Handwriting" by Fred Eager. The book
was $4 dollars on the internet. These instructions seem better
though: http://www.marcuslink.com/pens/nibs.html


I used a ceramic spyderco (brown) hone and finished it up on a
micromesh nailboard 600 grit.

I did the pilot purple varsity and have ground it down to no
tipping material, just messing arround. I was able to get
things to look right on paper but it was still scratchy. The
problem was I ground the nib as an oblique by mistake. I need
to dig up a decent magnifying glass or loupe and find my
finishing papers.

Keeping the pen inked was definitely helpful. Speaking of
grinding nibs I saw a quill pen making video on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAImP41BlZU


And if the pilot varsity is too broad for you, I'd definitely
recommend your trying out some of those Chinese pens. They're made
just as good, if you ask me, as those high dollar pens. But then I
wouldn't know for sure as I've seen very few of those pens that
FPN'ers max out their credit cards on. I wonder if it gives them any
pleasure knowing they're writing those checks for credit card payments
with $500 pens.


I'm avoiding pen purchases like the plague right now but I've
mostly had good experiences with chinese pens. Hero is my
favorite cause I love the aerometric fillers.

matthew