You know how Nathan Tardiff encourages people to tinker with his fountain pens? Well I don’t think even he envisaged it to go this far:-) In one corner, there was NOODLER’S KONRAD whose brush tip wore out but the rest of the pen, especially the piston, worked well. On the other side, a warranted 14K semi-flex nib, along with ebonite feed and section from a tired vintage pen with ruined and unusable threads. Somewhere in the middle, a cheap Chinese school pen, a humble but proud donor of supporting parts.
Unscrewing the plastic part that holds the brush tip was a piece of cake. Of course, in NOODLER’S tradition it was meant to be user serviceable. To continue, a bit of sleeve-rolling and manufacturing was required, to thin the far part of the vintage section in order to fit into KONRAD. Once done, the cap had to be elongated with a piece of Chinese barrel, as the “newly made vintage” section wouldn’t fit anymore.
Persistent sanding eventually made everyone join the party. The phase one was over.
Now it was time to glue the parts tightly, fill the meeting points carefully so nothing would leak and smooth all the joints by new turns of sanding. The section is now slick and comfortable to hold. The clip was the casualty of this phase, as I decided to eventually put a new skin over the pen if it proves itself as a dependable hard working fellow.
Filling it up with a dose of CARBON BLACK and off we go. Nothing drips or leaks so far – it even works as planned!
To conclude, a group shot with the team that made this frankensteinisation possible.
