Picture tutorial: How to "tune" a Hero 616 fountain pen

Great post, Matt.

I have a bunch of Hero 616s. I like them fine. The nib is finer than I like, even though they are medium nibs as I recall.

On thing I do not like about them, is the cap seems to come off the rest of the pen easily in my pocket. But I agree that there is a lot to like about them, and they are so very inexpensive!

ARGHHH !!

Now I want to buy some..........

Edit: $13US for 10....now I really wanna buy some but then I know I'll have to buy ink

Great tutorial - I suspect there might be a market for pre-tweaked Heros...

I haven't used one in ages, but found the nibs too fine and scratchy -even after some very fine emery paper was used to smooth out the tip.

Can one use silicone bow wax for the sealant purposes?

Ahhhh....No

Cool, its about time someone stepped up and did a tutorial on these. Ive been eyeballing them for some time.

Thanks!

Thank You!

I know what I'll be doing later...

They're like the Gold Dollars of the fountain pen world, apparently. Just picked up a ten pack, we'll see how it goes! It'd be worth it if even one of them turned out well.

DunEdinRanger said:

Thank You!

I know what I'll be doing later...

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It's going to take you about three weeks to do this to all your sub-$4 Chinese pens!

craig87c said:

It's going to take you about three weeks to do this to all your sub-$4 Chinese pens!

Click to expand...

Make that a year !!

Well, I got mine apart. Looks just like that, except now I can't get the breather tube to attach to anything. Excuse my lack of lingo, but the feed is in two pieces, right? The narrow black part that actually extends to the nib, and the white, ribbed part. The black part slides right into the white part and seems to secure, but the tube just wiggles free. I think it may have been glued to the end of the black part. How critical is the breather tube anyway?

Well, I got it back together without the tube. Only fills half way, still spurts out blobs of ink (I did grease the section threads). Maybe I got a dud. I might try another one.

JPDyson said:

Well, I got it back together without the tube. Only fills half way, still spurts out blobs of ink (I did grease the section threads). Maybe I got a dud. I might try another one.

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Only filling half-way is sort of par for a lot of 616s. The squeeze-bulb system is one of the weaker features of the pen. Best of luck though.

I guess I'm not 100% sure what part of this rebuild is supposed to stop the ink blobs from shaking out; is it the sealing of the section hood with grease? The only other change is the alignment of the nib with the hood.

Great post and excellent tutorial. Job well done. I am going to apply this my Hero 616 see if performs better.

Will this work with a Hero 329 as well? I ordered one and it will probably be in soon.

Also, what silicone grease do you use?

Meh, second pen, same results. I got this one to come apart without breaking the breather tube off the feed, but I still couldn't get the pen to stop dribbling. It writes very, very well - but I'm just scared that if I can still shake it and get a good amount of ink to blurt out, I can't trust carrying it in a bag or writing anything important.

Could anybody tell me exactly which part of this process is supposed to help prevent the dribbling? I would have thought greasing the section threads, but it still seems to me like there's a LOT of "free" ink in the section once you load it up. In my other pens, the collector (if that's what it's called - the white thing) is sealed off, where it seems like the hood section of the 616 allows almost open air around it. Is it collecting too much ink for it to hold?

I'm not sure I can explain this adequately. It just seemed like, after I loaded it up with ink, and determined it still spit, and I removed the section, the collector was really wet with ink, as was the inside of the section.

I was admiring my 616 Doctor at the office this morning. The nib is so straight and it writes so well. No dripping and none of that disassemble - reassemble mumbo jumbo. Then I thought, maybe I should see if it needs refilled.

Somehow the nib section coming free broke a vacuum or let the surface tension spread out and weaken in the ink flow. I immediately capped it, washed my hands, tore about four pages out of the notebook I had intended to write in, and packed up my pen to dissect at home.

I'm going to MacGuyver it later. Had I not read this thread first I may have binned it right there at my desk.

Well this convinced me that I needed a set of these to play with. Thanks for the great tutorial.

I followed all the steps but one. I deviated at the silicone.

I substituted - Teflon tape - and it worked like a charm!! You know the white stuff you use on plumbing threads..