Noodler’s Ahab Flex Fountain Pen – Mesa Tortoise

The Noodler’s Ahab flex pen features a steel flexible #6 nib and a slide piston mechanism. If you’d like, you can even remove the piston mechanism and use the pen as an eyedropper for a massive 6ml ink capacity. This yellow-orange Ahab is made of a celluloid derivative and is technically biodegradable and formed from a “renewable resource”. The vegetal resin body of this pen may show particles or striations within the material. This is most noticeable in demonstrators and bright colors.

The Noodler’s flex pens were designed for the hands-on tinkerer – they are made to be taken apart and adjusted. The nib and feed pull right out and can be adjusted and heat set for optimal performance. Don’t be afraid to get a little ink on your fingers while you learn how to use this pen.

As a simple rule of thumb for writing with a flex pen, just apply slight pressure on your downstrokes, which will spread the tines and increase the line width, achieving that optimal line variation. Make sure to go slowly so that the ink can keep up with your writing. As with any flex pen, it just takes practice!

Due to the residual machining oils used when cutting the feeds for these pens, we highly encourage you to give the pen a good flush before use. We recommend any of the following options: distilled water, water with a touch of dish soap, a pre-packaged pen flush, or a solution of 10% clear ammonia to water. This should resolve most ink flow issues!

We do our best to photograph the pens to show how they will appear in person, but due to the nature of the material, there will be some variation in the pattern seen here. This adds an element of uniqueness to the pen, with no two patterns being exactly the same. We cannot honor special requests.

Click here to download the printable PDF instruction sheet for the Noodler’s Ahab.

Formerly known as Apache Tortoise, renamed in June 2022.