. . .because. . .
bad things will happen.
I suppose I should have taken a 'before' picture but I was so horrified that I couldn't bring myself to do it. The tines were bent upwards, and separated, by Sam's enthusiastic ten seconds of vigorously stabbing the pen into the tabletop- I think the ink splatter must have been very satisfying. The left tine had been bent upwards at an angle of sixty or so degrees and the right to nearly ninety. However. . .
I was able to effect satisfactory repairs. I thought that this picture of the patient at the conclusion of the operation, just before closing, might be of interest. As you can all see, the nib unit of the Pelikan M800, which is an interchangeable screwed in modular unit, is made up of a threaded collar, and a conventional (and very high capacity) feed which appears to be made of laser etched plastic- very well done, however, with a matte sheen very close to ebonite. The nib and feed fit into the collar in the conventional manner, as a friction fit (very tight, by the way) and I was able to remove the damaged nib with a standard knock-out block, by placing the nib into the block and gently but firmly tapping on the back of the feed with a ballpoint pen barrel cut down, and a watchmaker's hammer. After three or for taps the nib came cleanly out, and a leisurely fifteen minutes of careful finger work through a 4x loupe left me with the results you see here. To finish, I gently burnished the nib on the shaft of a sable hair watercolor artist's brush, whose taper was perfect for supporting the rather delicate metal against the pressure of the pegwood rod I used. The bend in the right tine was rather complex and I actually had to use a tweezers to sequentially unbend the distortions- as you can see from this shot of the underside I was succesful in eliminating all but a slight waviness in the metal:
Interestingly one can also see the filemarks left by Mr. Mottishaw's modification of the nib. Not only are the tines narrowed and the shoulders brought closer to the base of the nib in order to increase flexibility, metal is also carefully removed from the underside of the nib to produce a profile similar to that of vintage flexible pen nibs.
I toyed with the idea of re-tempering the nib to make it more springy once the shape was restored but it is writing just fine and I think I'll leave well enough alone
.
Jack