Quick Follow Up on the Ensso Bolt
After I posted about my experiences with my Ensso Bolt drying up, no matter what I tried, someone from the company reached out on Instagram, suggested I may have a faulty feed, and said they could send a replacement. I got back in touch with them and they quickly arranged to send a replacement. I got it in the mail today. I was only expecting a nib assembly, but they sent a whole replacement pen. It surprised me, but thinking on it, I'm sure they wanted to eliminate a bad silicone seal from the equation as well.
I opened up the pen to flush the nib before filling it and saw that the feed and some small details on the nib like the shape of the secondary hole and the "fins" that attach to the feed looked different from the first pen I got.
The new feed is more squared off, and the parts of the nib that wrap around the feed at the bottom have a different shape, the original having more of a tapered edge vs. the straight horizontal edges on the newer version.
You can see some slight differences between the nibs themselves, including the overall shape, the size of circular engraving and its distance from the breather hole, and the shape of the cutout for the "secondary hole" at the bottom of the nib.
Here's a quick writing sample on Iroful paper:
Transcription:
ensso Bolt, F
Diamine Earl Grey
[figure-8 doodle, horizontal and vertical lines in groups of 4, "reverse writing" written with the nib turned to the reverse side]
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Ensso sent over a whole new pen, not just the nib assembly, which surprised me. The first thing I noticed when I took out the assembly to flush it out and then fill it is that the feed and parts of the nib cutouts & attachment points to the feed look noticeably different. Here's hoping this leads to improved performance! It did feel significantly harder to push the nib through the silicone seal also. Hopefully it loosens up a bit without affecting protection against drying.
I'm looking forward to testing out this new pen and seeing whether its resistance to drying has indeed been fixed. Wish me luck! 🤞