I'm not overly experienced with adjusting ink flow, so I was wondering: Is it harder adjusting the flow on a steel nibbed pen (Rotring, Lamy)? I'm working off of Richard's post.

I'm finding that steel nibs spring back into place after being stretched with a brass sheet, and that I need to stack sheets to get any improvement in ink flow. Or get thicker sheets, I suppose. Have others had the same experience with steel nibs? Thanks.

I was able to increase flow, btw, which was quite a lot of fun.

Stephen

Actually, the correct way to spread the tines is to bend the from the "corners" of the sides by the feed, not by forcing things into the slit, even brass shim stock. Too much risk of doing something nastly to the slit or the ends of the tines. You can also push them up and out from the feed, but that can lift the nib up off the feed to far, causing other problems.

That said, steel nibs are harder to spring or bend than gold, with some exceptions -- low chrome nickel stainless is soft, and will bend almost as easily as gold. Go slow, it's better make several adjustments that it is to "undo" one.

Running shim stock up the nib does wonders for clearing dried ink out -- in fact, my Lion Chinese pen has an "ink jam preventer" built in that is just a slip of shim stock that slides down the slit. Quite clever, clearly the manufacturer expects the use of Chinese carbon black ink....

Peter