Waterman Carene fountain pen nip repair
French-based Waterman pens have been a hallmark of high-quality writing instruments for decades. I use the past tense because I have encountered numerous cases of inferior quality modern Waterman pens being used for fountain pen repairs. Most of the time, either the inside of the nib was eaten away by rust or the metal quality was poor and easily warped. Many of the inscriptions are laser engraved by the Waterman company, which also seems to be a poor quality job compared to other brands. The Carene type is one of the higher quality pens, although the 18 carat gold tip is also laser engraved. However, gravity acts on all nibs, meaning that if dropped, the damage cannot be sustained by even the best quality nib. This was the case with the nib in the picture, but someone had previously tried to repair this nib without much success (the nib would not come out), but the repaired nib had to be repaired again because it often had a problem writing. The top picture is the one taken, the bottom picture is the one of the finished nib. But the work was not easy...
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Waterman has designed the nib of the Carene as sophisticated as possible. While the classic nibs can be pulled out with a careful movement, the Carene glued the nib into the pen body (is there another solution of this type? I've never seen one!). The repair of the nib can only be done by "scraping" this glue with a very thin and sharp steel plate, i.e. I had to cut around the glue under the nib. Before I could do this, however, I had to lift out the ink guide, which was only possible with rubberised tweezers.
In the picture below you can clearly see the individual elements of the nib.
After lifting the nib, I could start repairing the damaged pen nib. Another fault with the nib was that the entire metal body was bent about 2 millimeters at the moment of falling, and it did not lay against the ink guide (ink was stuck) exactly, but instead a gap was created. Bending it back just enough is also a bit of a tricky task, as it lies exactly on the ink guide with just 2 mm of back bend. At 3 mm, the two nibs are split, and the ink does not creep into a 1 mm gap. In this case, shaking the pen gently (the ink fills the gap) gives a solution, but once the ink is "erased" from the gap, writing stalls again.
Once the pen tip repair was complete, it was time to assemble and test. Since the black part that guides the ink is quite large, the ink from the cartridge ran along the capillaries to the end of the pen tip for nearly a minute.
The final result of the tip repair with the glued back tip:
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