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Mike Hosea

Member Since 26 Dec 2013
Offline Last Active Sep 13 2015 04:56 AM
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Posts I've Made

In Topic: 40% Off Platinum President Fountain Pen in black w/ rhodium trim

16 July 2015 - 07:20 PM

The Platinum President Demonstrator clearly did not, or at least it didn't when the photos I've seen of it were taken. There's no mention of it on the page linked to above when you click through, so I think this was just a simple mistake. It is surprising that a lower model would have the touted state-of-the-art system while the "flagship" does not.

In Topic: Sheaffer thread sealant question

13 May 2015 - 01:52 AM

I wonder if there was a faulty batch of sacs, I had one basically melt a big hole in the side of it after ~12 mths ( give or take 4,6,8,or 10) and I use fairly basic inks like Watermans.


No question it can happen for that reason, especially in a Snorkel or TD because the proximity of metal. My personal opinion when it came up back then was that the risk of confirmation bias was overwhelming once people had made the association with Noodler's inks.

So I started exposing sac fragments in Noodler's inks for long durations, with control fragments cut from the same sacs (side-by-side cuts). Ron points out that my experiments will not yield a convincing negative result, because actual usage involves inks on one side and air on the other. I concede this and considered how to modify the experiment, but in the end I decided that I was already doing all I was willing to do. Because, you see, I really don't give a rat's ass about Noodler's inks in particular. I'm just being me when it comes to analyzing information.

Long story short, nothing happened to most of the sac fragments. I don't mean "very little". I mean as far as I could tell, they were pristine, perhaps even in better condition than the control fragments in Waterman Blue. This was also true of the fragments that had been in "dryout" versions of the experiment, open vials. However, after one year, the fragment in the closed Noodler's Blue vial had lost its elasticity and become a bit sticky, whereas the control fragments were all fine. So last July, I restarted two more trials with Noodler's Blue (and another couple of inks) using a lot more sac fragments. I check on it infrequently because it did take something like a year last time before any change was evident to me.

I'm actually kind of hoping the results repeat. Otherwise, I'm left with the enigma of the first sac failure (and not of the control fragment). But if I had to put money down, I'd bet on ending up with an enigma.

In Topic: Sheaffer thread sealant question

12 May 2015 - 07:10 PM

While I would preface it by noting that Ron's price is very reasonable, and I'm confident that his product is excellent, there is a sliver of Stef's position that I can relate to. It's not the cringe-worthy application of nail varnish (!), rather the notion that Ron's rosin-based sealant is the one to get in order to do it "right", which might be coming across unintentionally. It's not difficult to make rosin-based sealant with a block of rosin, pure castor oil, a glass or metal jar/tub, and a heat gun. I finally got around to mixing up around 30ml last night in an old ink bottle with $3 worth of ingredients (admittedly with a $70 heat gun). It wasn't exactly the hardest thing I did yesterday. Looks real purty, too. I'm sure it's not the optimal consistency, but I can dial it in.

Rather than go to the trouble, I'd actually have bought some from Ron myself, but either my email went astray, or I might well have pissed Ron off over the Noodler's Ink melting sacs or not issue awhile back. (Still in the process of trying to replicate a melt with Noodler's Blue, but it took a year to see it the first time, and there are still 2 or 3 months to go on this trial.)

In Topic: I have a patent question

07 May 2015 - 07:28 PM

I wasn't sure why you inferred that 1950 would be the earliest production date unless you were looking at a patent number on the actual product you were trying to date.  If we're just talking theoretically, under current US rules I think you have 1 year after the invention is revealed to file, which, if the same rules were in place back then, would put the earliest embodiment at 1945.  If there was no grace period back then, then 1946.  The date the actual patent was granted would not be relevant.


In Topic: I have a patent question

07 May 2015 - 03:54 PM

The patent number is issued when the patent is granted.  Prior to that the information is indexed by an application number.  I assume this practice is unchanged.  Consequently, if the product has the patent number inscribed on it, then the production date could be no earlier than the date the patent was granted.  Before that, they could have written "patent pending" without a number.