I have been interested in the Kaweco fountain pen for ages. I didn't realise there was a chinese 'tribute'. I ordered a silver one a couple of weeks ago from ebay from China. It arrived this morning.
Very impressed, nice weight and very well built.
It was around £3.50 delivered. I'm struggling to see how they make any money from it.
Unfortunately, I think I have a dud. I put an ink cartridge in it and discovered that it skips quite badly.
Anyone have any tips on how to fix the nib?
The first job is to have a good look at the nib, ideally through a jewellers loupe or strong glasses. The end of the nib should be perfectly in line, the tips as 00. The pen probably came with a converter, use this to flush the pen using warm water with a couple of drops of washing up liquid, what you are looking to do is to check that the pen is cleaned of any manufacturing oils or similar from the pen.
The pen will take International cartidges, some of these are are a lot better than others, to remove this question see if you can find a bottle of ink and fill the pen using the converter. One of the crazy things, unlike DE blades, is that all manufacturers cartridges will not fit all pens.
I am reasonably sure that the problem will now be fixed, most Chinese pens are good to go straight away, I have bought many of these pens from China and always been happy with the results, especially at the price.
If you are still having problems I will happily have a look at the pen for you and see if I can make it work, if you want to have a go yourself, try some me nib smoothing. You will need one of the following,
Micromesh sheets
A piece of shiny soft metal such as copper or aluminium,
Something mildly abrasive such as a piece of flint or polished granite or marble,
The idea is that you are going to draw some figure of 8s and lines on pne of the above as you will be polishing the tip of the nib. The pen should have ink or water inside the pen as a lubricant for this proceedure and you should work the nib for about 2 minutes.
One last test is to fill the pen with ink, take a damp paper towel, stand the pen upright nib down on the towel and leave if for 30 minutes. The ink should move down the nib by capillary action and the towel should now bevery ink coloured. If it doesnt happen then there is a substantial manufacturing fault or the ink in the cartridge is dried up, or is not for fountain pens but for drawing pens such as India ink.
As I said, I am quite happy to look at the pen and see if it is a dud, no charge.
If I had to identify the most likely fault I would be looking at the ink supply first of all, preferably filling from an ink bottle or a use a different cartridge, as with many things, eliminate the easy stuff before moving on to the things that need work.