Bent Nib Repair Et Cetera

My daughter dropped her favourite PILOT Kakuno on hard tiles.

The left tine had been bent to the left, and the right one went upwards (think of “Seig Heil!”) …

Needless to say I was furious!

After giving her a refresher on basic fountain pen care, I got to work on massaging the tines back. Tuning the flow back to the factory specs was easily the trickiest part, but soon after that the pen was back to normal.

It wasn’t so bad really, but the whole process still took a bit more than two hours. Steel nibs are much harder to work on than the gold ones.

I suppose not all made in Japan stuff are tough as G-Shocks 🙂

Pardon for the lack of updates, as I’ve been busy with watches lately. But I do have some new pens to go with my new watches. Hopefully I can post a nice pen and watch combo next weekend. —TR

Workbench Wednesday

A picture is worth a thousand words or about five man hours and some pineapples.

• Parker “51” Vacumatic
• PILOT R53-T (“Teko” filler/a unique j-bar and channeled pressure bar hybrid)

—TR

Mixed (1970s) PILOTs

Some people were talking about these pens on FPA, so I found this old picture of mine. I thought I might share it here as well. Thank goodness my quest on the sixties-seventies PILOT has ended. I’ve found the pen I wanted most out of the genre; or rather, it had found me. These are just some of the collateral damage from that quest.

—TR

PILOT Custom Sterling (1975)

Just a quick update to show the current rotation. I love sterling silver mainly because of the patina. But being metal, silver is obviously cooler to touch than plastic, so it is especially nice in Spring/Summer. The chiseled or “ciselè” pattern is non slip, similar to my other sterling PILOT Elite (1977).

1930s “Daimaru” Fountain Pen

This pen was made by PILOT in the ’30s (incorrectly captioned “fifties” in the pic, my bad) for Daimaru department store chain. My then seven yo daughter made the pen rest out of clay. —TR

1950s PILOT R3R (A-shiki Filler)

Today we are examining a specimen of the PILOT R3R from the fifties. These lower mid tier pens hold a special place in my heart because of my fondness of Showa period Japan. And on this particular pen, its unique A-shiki filling system (which is like a primitive predecessor to the excellent CON-70) adds more to the appeal. I personally think these modest pens as the opposite of the Pelikans from the same era in terms of design and build quality, however they would rival (if not exceed) them in terms of character; subjectively speaking of course. Righto, let’s get it on.

It arrived inked and in “as is” condition, which is good.

I was doing the standard procedure cleaning when I had unexpectedly found the extra tube. A quick search revealed it was indeed a special filler type.

Squeaky clean and good to go.

This writing sample shows this particular flexy shiro nib can do. Not all of them are flexible, mind you.

The nib that’s responsible for the above. Note the huge V-shaped breather hole.

The pen and paper. The pen looks black in the photos, but it is really dark green celluloid, in a way similar to the Montblanc racing green ink. Cheers. —TR

As you’ve noticed, I put links to Estilofilos on each topic. I got most of my knowledge from there, so it’d be pointless to repeat all that info here. Please refer there for the details. And on this occasion, I’d also like to express my deep admiration of Crónicas Estilográficas and appreciation to “Bruno Taut”‘s magnificent efforts on maintaining it. Put simply, it is pretty much the reference point when Japanese Fountain Pens are concerned. 頑張ってください 🙂

—TR

BFTP: WW2 Era PILOT “R”

Banzai! Let us continue the war theme from a different Axis power: Japan. The “R”s were produced by PILOT during the World War II and well into the postwar fifties. These wartime pens have the typical steel or shiro nibs because of the gold prohibition. The ink delivery system is the eye-dropper with a shut of valve. The barrel and cap are made of celluloid, ebonite section and feed, and the cap ring and clip are nickel plated. These pens are very modest yet exudes craftsmanship.

A 1940s PILOT ad. featuring the Japanese Imperial NAVY.

My PILOT R and an eye dropper kit with a PILOT 375ml black ink bottle. Despite its size, the pen rivals even the biggest piston fillers in terms of ink capacity, thanks to the eye-dropper system. Unfortunately, it also has all the ED cons: burping when low on ink, must shut valve on and off for anything longer than a sentence, etc. Nothing is perfect, but I could live with it for several fills without any problem.

The Nippon Imperial ARMY ad.

The Kamikaze pilot’s pen of choice. No wonder these are scarce! 🙂

As found, my pen had a rusted out “warranted” nib, but it wasn’t the correct one anyway. So I replaced it with another shiro nib from my stash. Unfortunately, the replacement has an oval breather hole, not the crescent, from the fifties. I do have a crescent shiro nib on another PILOT, but that’s for another blog post. Cheers! —TR

I Think I Need More Giant Tupperwares Soon™

+6 Iroshizukus fresh off Japan. Just one more and it would not fit the largest IKEA microwave container, where I usually kept my inks in. —TR

BFTP: PILOT Custom 742 FA

BFTP: 1977 PILOT Elite Sterling and Beijing Zungu-6

Blast from the (not so distant) past, my daily carry around April.

Maximum retro.