Conklin Stylograph Mosaic Fountain Pen

I'm having more problems with this pen. I ended up mostly fixing the ink flow problems with the tines on my black stub nib, but now it seems as if a tiny bit of the black paint has chipped off halfway down the center of the tines. This did not happen when I was working on the tines and I have not dropped/scraped the pen on the nib. Really sad with they way this is turning out.

What you need to do is GENTLY push the sides of the tines, between the shoulder and the tip, against a harder surface (I use the side of my table), alternating between both sides, and consistently checking the slit with a magnifier (loupes are ideal, but a good magnifying glass should be good enough, or putting up the nib against a bright light in the background, unless you're Superman LOL). Aim for the slit to taper down from the breather hole to the nib, with a hair's-breadth separating the tips. This might move the tines slightly out of alignment, so be prepared to fix this if it happens.

I'm experiencing the same problem here. My stub nib looks awesome, but the ink flow is god awful. At first I thought the feed was unable to keep up, but I see now that the tines are pretty far apart. Explain what you did here, you pushed the sides of each of the tines against a table to bend them in? This is safe?