Heat Setting a Noodler's Ebonite Feed

One of the most asked questions we get at Goulet Pens is about how to tweak the Noodler's Flex pens: the Ahab, Konrad, and Nib Creaper. These pens are honestly a modern marvel in the pen world, but they are not without their quirks.

Cleaning out your pen thoroughly is always a good first step, if you ever have any flow issues. That's with any pen, honestly, not just Noodler's. But once you've done that, you may feel that the pen still just isn't quite working like you'd hoped. There could be a variety of reasons that pens like these have flow issues, but far and away the best thing you can do to troubleshoot them is to heat set the nib.

Heat setting is a great option for helping with the following situations:

  • Consistent railroading
  • Dry writing
  • Hard starting
  • Dripping
  • Excessive leaking into cap
  • Blobbing
  • Excessively wet writing
  • Changing of the nib to another type

The great thing about the hot water heat setting method we show in this video is that it's so easy to do, and so simple. You don't have to mess with lighters, candles, or voodoo to get it to set, the hot water works great. And you can heat set over and over and over again if you find you need to. Just heat the water, set it again, and go from there.

Heat setting is something that has raised a lot of questions and has been shrouded in a bit of mystery. But you see now how straightforward a process it really is, and it can get that fussy Noodler's pen working like you feel it should.