Tale of a Vandal Pen User: It Came Thru the Crack – Part 1

/ JD

The most stressed part of a fountain pen is  the section grip. You know, the piece that holds your nib and feed, where you place a finger when you write, or, depending on the type of pen, you unscrew from the barrel to get at the converter to fill your pen or to clean it. An average vandal pen user pulls a friction-fit nib or, if possible, unscrews a nib from the section, quite often because variety is the name of the writing game.

My Aurora 88 Minerali, for example, often gets a nib swap between a broad and a stub nib, depending on my mood. I’ve used this pen extensively since it arrived in my tiny hoard three years ago. Its sister, the Aurora 88 Plutone, arrived a year later.

Seeing that the Minerali was hogging all the writing fun, it was cleaned and put away for a while. About three months later, near the end of May, I inked the Minerali up. I began to write, and after a few minutes, I noticed ink on my index finger. Wiping it off, I continued on, and again, more ink on my finger and thumb.

Looking closer, it was clear ink was seeping through the section. This was new behavior. It had never leaked ink before. There has always been a seam in the section grip, but no ink seeped through that. For quite awhile, I thought the ink was seeping at the place where the nib and feed protruded from the section grip. Nope.

Several attempts later—inking, de-inking, reinking the pen—I found the microcrack near the seam.

Enlarged photo of Aurora 88 Minerali section crac

I’ve read complaints about the demonstrator Auroras developing cracks in the past. Even various complaints that they couldn’t get their pens repaired by Aurora because of a lack of materials. How do you run out of clear acrylic? But there you go. Sometimes it’s hard to know what’s true, ay?

I contacted Kenro Industries, the US distributor of Aurora, and Ken said, “Of course we can help!” To get a service evaluation, Kenro has you fill out an online form and pay (at the time of this post) $35 for the assessment. You’re told to expect six to eight weeks before you hear from them, and then, if the repair requires more money, you’ll be told the cost.

I shipped my beloved Minerali off to Mineola, New York, and set my mental turmoil to wait and see status. Since my pen was out of warranty, my biggest worry was  the cost to fix the section. All I could do was hope that I could afford what was needed.

The pen arrived in Kenro’s mailbox on June 2.  I didn’t hear from them again, nor did I badger Ken.  Nine weeks and a day later, just as my need to know something began to emerge, the pen returned home.

No microcracks. The section is new. The pen was super clean. My piston had taken a yellowish hue. The returned pen had a pristine white plunger. The LE number on the pen cap is the same (049/388). The box the Aurora came back in lists the Italy address, but I don’t know if my pen traveled that far or not. I suspect it did.

The Minerali in its returned condition, sparkly clean.

The repair didn’t cost me more than the initial $35, even though the pen was out of warranty. Aurora honored a known issue with its demonstrators. I’ve dealt with Kenro Industries twice, and each time was a joy.  Of course, YMMV.

The Aurora 88 is a pen made by humans, not spit out by machine. I like to think of the humans that handled my pen along the repair journey. Thanks and appreciation go to all of them.

For now, I’ve decided to leave the nib on the Minerali alone. No more swapping. If I can help it. The pen holds a Broad nib which I like a lot.

Since we moved to the Northern Mountains of New Mexico, I’ve had a few unexpected issues with a fountain pen or four. One in particular, I’ll detail in It Came Thru the Crack – Part 2.

And you thought I didn’t blog about pens anymore.

Here’s a PW oldie from 2011 about Platinum Preppy cracking: Tale of a Vandal Whiteboard User

A few links about Aurora cracks:

A refreshing YouTube video about accepting a pen’s aesthetic flaws: