Click Fountain Pens

[Ronald Plumley]

I've been seeing clickable fountain pens on the regular Pen Store sites and I was curious as to whether or not anyone has come across kits for us to make a clickable/retractable fountain pen... Anyone?

 

[Dieseldoc]

My experience that kit fountain pen are for. show and not use. Drying out and are leaking , the main problem and due to the design of the kit ability to seal the nib.

Google the Lamy German made, for fountain pen and you see how they have three seal 's to control drying out and prevent leaking. I also have been using a. Janpan Diamond pen TWSBI for several weeks and still wet and not a leak any place. Has a good sealing process for nib.

 

[d_bondi]

I have not seen a kit for a click fountain pen.

The best example of a commercially made click style fountain pen is the Pilot Vanishing Point. I have the Pilot Vanishing Point LS in Matte Black. It is an exceptional writer (stock 18K Fine nib) and does not dry out.

There are at least two Chinese made blatant copies of it, but I cannot speak to quality of build, seal or writing for those.

 

[duncsuss]

I have a couple of Chinese Mahjohn knock-offs of the Pilot (Namiki) Vanishing Point. They dry up very quickly, I believe because they didn't put much effort into sealing the trapdoor which closes when the nib is retracted.

My plan is to use the innards as the basis of a hooded-nib pen, ala the Parker 51. I will be making a regular screw-on cap for it, which has sealed the nibs of the other fountain pens I've made nicely.

I also have a couple of silly-cheap plastic retractable nib pens that don't have any kind of trapdoor over the hole. These aren't worth considering, from what I can see any attempt to take them apart would break them.

 

[BHuij]

The Pilot Vanishing Point is the quintessential click fountain pen, as has been mentioned. I like mine. It has a "trapdoor" design that closes after the nib retracts to prevent it from drying out, and I find it works quite well. Not as well as a good cap seal on a screw-lid type pen (TWSBI pens have the best of any I've used), but well enough to go a week or so without using the pen in my dry climate, and still expect a fast start-up.

The Majohn A1 is a direct clone of the Vanishing Point (though with a rather unimpressive EF steel nib that I didn't care for). The one thing the A1 does better than the Vanishing point is offer a clip-less version. The clip on the actual Vanishing Point interferes really badly with how I hold my pens, so I actually put my genuine Vanishing Point medium nib unit into a clipless A1 body, and it's been fantastic. The trapdoor seems to work just as well on mine. That @duncsuss has had the opposite experience makes me think either the quality control on the A1 isn't as good, or the drying up issues had at least something to do with the nib and/or feed itself, not only the trapdoor in the body.

Majohn also makes an A2 which is a bit more of a riff on the Vanishing Point, not attempting to be an exact clone. I have no firsthand experience with it.

 

[duncsuss]

The Pilot Vanishing Point is the quintessential click fountain pen, as has been mentioned. I like mine. It has a "trapdoor" design that closes after the nib retracts to prevent it from drying out, and I find it works quite well. Not as well as a good cap seal on a screw-lid type pen (TWSBI pens have the best of any I've used), but well enough to go a week or so without using the pen in my dry climate, and still expect a fast start-up.

The Majohn A1 is a direct clone of the Vanishing Point ... The trapdoor seems to work just as well on mine. That @duncsuss has had the opposite experience makes me think either the quality control on the A1 isn't as good, or the drying up issues had at least something to do with the nib and/or feed itself, not only the trapdoor in the body.

You prompted me to look again at mine.

I must apologize for my defective memory, the pen I have which dries out is a "Jinhao 10", not a Majohn. If it's still possible, I'll edit my post to make that clear.

 

[duncsuss]

I have a couple of Chinese Mahjohn knock-offs of the Pilot (Namiki) Vanishing Point. They dry up very quickly, I believe because they didn't put much effort into sealing the trapdoor which closes when the nib is retracted.

My plan is to use the innards as the basis of a hooded-nib pen, ala the Parker 51. I will be making a regular screw-on cap for it, which has sealed the nibs of the other fountain pens I've made nicely.

I also have a couple of silly-cheap plastic retractable nib pens that don't have any kind of trapdoor over the hole. These aren't worth considering, from what I can see any attempt to take them apart would break them.

Correction: the knock-offs I have are by Jinhao, not Majohn. Sorry for the error.