Hi,

I have smallish handwriting (related to years of high speed notetaking) and have used fines and some mediums. I want to use some smooth broad nibbed pens. So far i've found that besides writing a little larger, i need to space my letters farther apart. It's slower than writing with fines, but that seems to make my writing neater. Broad nibs also show ink better.
Any other thoughts and experiences would be welcome.

thanks,

Jeen

Hey Jeen,

I've been "migrating" to Broad nibs, from Mediums, in recent months. You've hit on all of my reasons -- they're smoother, more expressive, bring out inks' true colors, and in general provide a more gratifying writing experience (IMHO). You do tend to write bigger and more slowly -- Good Things, IMO -- and, in a pinch, you can flip the pen over and write with the feed facing up to produce a fine or even extra fine line.

If you're a Pelikan fan, I highly recommend Richard Binder's customized nibs for value and performance. I recently bought a gold-plated steel B nib for my M600. It's smooth as silk and puts out a lot of ink, just the way I like it. The cost was all of 19 bucks, plus shipping. And, of course, Richard can make the flow more or less generous, upon request.

Enjoy the new experience!

Hi Jeen,

It's always fun to experiment with a range of nibs. Both broad and fine nibs have their "plusses & minuses." For example, while broad nibs can show the color of ink better, in laying down more ink there may be bleed-through or feathering, unless it is a dry writing nib. Also, with ink that dries slowly, there's more of it that needs to dry with a broad nib. Of course these kinds of things can be worked around with careful choice of ink and paper. Same goes for fine nibs--ink & paper make a big difference. May as well enjoy all of the options!

Ann

Thanks Viseguy and Ann,
One of my goals is to sit at Richard's table at a pen show and get a handle on the custom nibs, but that's another whole can of worms.

In the meantime, i'm finding good uses for broad nibs - writing more legibly, writing short notes, making a short note look long addressing envelopes and signatures. I'm hoping to get to the point of using them exclusively for regular length letters.

Regards,
Jeen

Someone used the term "nib migration." I like the sound of that. When I was in my own nib migration days, I experimented with B and BB nibs by making an effort to write some notes (to myself only) as large as I possibly could to test the limits of the nibs. After those experiments, I found that some nib brands, like Pelikan, did not differ greatly in the ink flow between B and BB but the BB nibs felt ... "flatter," I guess, and were more controllable for me. Pelikan does not manufacture italic nibs, which I have never been able to figure out, so I have a lot of BB nibs on my Pelikans. I have custom ground nibs as well, so I switch back and forth between them and the BB nibs depending on the kind of writing I am doing.

A key to successful writing with the larger nibs is to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n and have fun.

Just one man's experience for what it might be worth.