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Noodlers Ahab These are a joke right?

Commander Quan

Commander Yellow Pantyhose
Yesterday I was flushing the pen and in the process of drying it the feed moved. So far I have wasted about 4 hours trying to get it adjusted so that it'll write again. Usually after I put it back together I put the pen to paper and nothing happens, occasionally when I reassemble it it lays a 1 or 2 millimeter line neither of which are acceptable. These pens are like those birthday candles that never blow out right?

Even before I disassembled the pen it would skip whole letters in the middle of writing, it would have been working fine and then all the sudden, run dry and then start working immediately after again. I am a fountain pen newbie, and so I may not understand all the intricacy of them but this pen seams like the unicycle version of a bike, they only cost half as much a the real thing, but only designed for a small hardcore group.
 
I had to tweak the nib on mine a bit... sounds like you should do that, too. I also had to clean it (water with a few drops of dish soap).
 
As usual with a Noodler's product, flaws come with excuses. But I guess for $20, you do get more features than you would expect. My Ahab writes well for the most part. I would guess it is primarily for artists, people who like playing with pens and customizing them.
 
I'll say again that these should be sold disassembled as kits. I've come to believe that the nibs are half the problem on these for flex pens to work well everything has to be just so. If the feed isn't perfect the nib under flex will drain the feed quickly and you have to wait until it is saturated again for it to write, or it lays a sloppy line under normal writing and gets ink where you don't want it. A less than perfect nib makes for poor control from the feed and uncomfortable writing. In my preliminary cleaning I have found dust gummed up with machining oil in the fins and channel which would bugger up ink flow if it wasn't addressed. I ran a sharp knife through all the above, I didn't cut new, and scrubbed the feed with and old toothbrush and sudsy ammonia water. I then set the feed with about eight fins showing and vigorously flushed with the same solution. If it still isn't right after that, forgiving some minor feed adjustment by a fin one way or the other to adjust for personal taste, it has to be the nib.
 
The first Ahab I purchased was a pain in the neck but since I got it properly adjusted it has performed quite well. I now own three of them. They are not for everyone because of the tinkering involved. At the end of the day it is a $20 pen that can, with adjustments, writes as well as other pens with higher price points. However, that can be said of many cheap pens too...and without all the grief.
 
I'm no pen expert, but it was about the only fat-bottomed pen I could find that wasn't an eye-dropper for a (to me) reasonable price.
 

luvmysuper

My elbows leak
Staff member
The months of surgery, the years of rehabilitation. Wondering why this happened to you. Asking yourself what kind of a God could allow such a thing? And then coming to the conclusion that he was either malicious or indifferent. And then realizing... you dont know which is worse. Such a thing cannot be allowed to live.
 
These are almost as wonderful as TWSBI pens...

Never had an issue with my 530.


I must be in the minority with the Ahab. I did an initial thorough cleaning, fiddled with the nib/feed placement for about 30 minutes and haven't had a problem with it since. I could see if a person had never used a FP before and tried an Ahab as their first it could be very discouraging. I've got a regular flex that I picked up on the BST that had some work done to the feed and it works perfectly.
 
I've got two Ahabs - one stock, and one converted to a different cursive italic nib with the same feed. Both have been solid performers.
 
It should be clear to people:

If you want a pen you can stick a cartridge in or swap a converter into and it will just work, something like a Platinum Plasir is the way to go.

If you want a pen that will encourage you to get very hands on and tinker, the Ahab is probably the poster child for that movement.

It is true that you can easily find the nib and feed shooting out of your Ahab if the breather tube and the syringe collide on the downward stroke. I have had it happen twice. If that in particular bugs you, pull the breather tube. It won't fill ink into the hollow part of the syringe quite as well, but it will work perfectly fine.
 
if the Ahab had been my first FP I would be as far from FPs as possible now. Noodlers ink is OK but he should leave the pen making to others. Tossed a Ahab after wasting way too much time on it and tossed their regular flex along with it. For the same money I'll take a Kawaso Sport any day or 2 $8 chinese pens.
+10,000

I ruffled plenty of feathers and curled plenty of toes with my criticism of the Ahab back when it was the "flavor of the month". Much like the R41 (which I liked).
For a $20 ***, it was not worth my time to mess with.
I mentioned I was going to bin it and was immediately flooded with PMs requesting that I PIF it to them or put it on BST.
It's a $20 *** that I already spent a couple of hours messing with trying to get it to work. It's not worth the 20 minutes of my time to box up and take to the post office.

The only reason it's not binned is because it's a good looking pen... but it sits with an empty reservoir.
 
+10,000

I ruffled plenty of feathers and curled plenty of toes with my criticism of the Ahab back when it was the "flavor of the month". Much like the R41 (which I liked).
For a $20 ***, it was not worth my time to mess with.
I mentioned I was going to bin it and was immediately flooded with PMs requesting that I PIF it to them or put it on BST.
It's a $20 *** that I already spent a couple of hours messing with trying to get it to work. It's not worth the 20 minutes of my time to box up and take to the post office.

The only reason it's not binned is because it's a good looking pen... but it sits with an empty reservoir.

***? Is that a Pelikan Operating System?
 
The funny thing is, as much trouble as I had with the $20 Noodler's, my $10, and $3, and free... BentonClay Chinese imports have been trouble-free.
Not the smoothest nibs in the jar, but they write and write well.
SWMBO loves her dragon and dancing ladies.
My Shakespeare is the smoothest of the bunch... maybe even a touch nicer (though not as beefy) as my Lamy Al-Star.
 
The funny thing is, as much trouble as I had with the $20 Noodler's, my $10, and $3, and free... BentonClay Chinese imports have been trouble-free.
Not the smoothest nibs in the jar, but they write and write well.
SWMBO loves her dragon and dancing ladies.
My Shakespeare is the smoothest of the bunch... maybe even a touch nicer (though not as beefy) as my Lamy Al-Star.

Shhhh! Don't say that! Didn't you know that Chinese pens are trash?

The flaws in Noodlers products are acceptable because everyone loves Nathan and they're made in the USA!
 
Shhhh! Don't say that! Didn't you know that Chinese pens are trash?

The flaws in Noodlers products are acceptable because everyone loves Nathan and they're made in the USA!

Actually, the "flaws" are acceptable because they are correctable. There is no harm is no liking a pen but the bashing gets a little tiresome.
 
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