Hello. I'm a new member of this forum as of about 10 minute ago. I live in the Boston area and started to use fountain pens a few years ago. I grew up with my father using fountain pens daily and always thought they were pretty neat. I am a user...not a collector and have a collection of some modern and some vintage.

I'm also interested in learning about fountain pen repair and restoration. I love to fix things and tinker around so I though it would be fun to learn about fountain pens. I actually just ordered some DVD's to get me started.

I have tried all sorts of nibs and although I really want to love stub and italic nibs, I have found that I write too small to enjoy them. My favorite pens are my trustee Pelikan m805 and some vintage Parker 51's I have. I'd like to try my hand at restoring some old Parker vacs one day.

That's about it for me. Looking forward to learning something from all of you.

Cheers,
Dave

welcome to the group, Dave. Hope you find it comfy and informative here.

re: stubs/italics. You might want to try a fine oblique stub at some point (preferably one that has been made by a nibmeister vs. factory). you'd be surprised at how nice the line variation and feedback can be even for those of us who write rather small. I have a .6mm stub and a .4mm stub - both with left-footed angles of approx. 8degrees. The .4mm does give my handwriting some character, but what I really love about it is the feedback. Not everyone likes obliques but the advantage is that a narrow stub with an angle allows folks like you and me to still write compactly without losing too much of the character of the lettering. sometime soon (yeah, i say that a lot) I'll post a pic that shows the differences in these nibs vs. a typical italic nib. With scale for comparison of course.

yeah.. sometime..

i only use italics for practicing calligraphy these days. though for a while, even with my handwriting, I was using one of Richard Binder's .9mm cursive italics with good results.

anyway - just don't rule them out yet.

hope you enjoy the group and i look forward to reading more from you,
k

That's interesting what you say about the obliques...I've never tried one. If you do get a chance to post a writing sample, I'd be very interested.

Cheers,
Dave

Join the club - if we have any collectors here in the pure sense of the word, they are few in number (nothing against them, just that they are scarce here). Glad you found us - sounds like you are quite on your way to being a full-fledged addict (again, join the club). Anyhow, welcome to the FPNuthouse and I'm sure you'll fit right in. There are plenty of folks around here that can give you good insight into pen restoration, nib grinding, etc. Enjoy!

KCat - would like to see those samples also.

Welcome, Dave. I joined FPN a few weeks ago (I'd been lurking for a while, though) - it's a great, friendly, informative place. I'm learning new things every day.
Neil

this is "catch up" week (I hope) for all those little things I've been putting off. I hope to have my pen stuff unpacked this week and will be able to make this happen. I keep the two narrow obliques at the ready always - but the italics and larger oblique are unfed at the moment.

Greetings Dave!

With your interests several of the fora here should appeal to you.

Like KCat, I would strongly recommend that you try a stub ground from an F nib. I have a stubbed B and a stubbed M, both of which were too wide for small writing, but I just acquired an adorable Pelikan M100 from TMann here, and it has a stub by Richard Binder from an F nib. It obviously doesn't give the line variation that larger stubs do but there is enough there to give your writing that little extra character compared to a plain ball point F nib.

Mine isn't oblique, so I can't speak to the difference twixt a straight stub vs. an oblique stub, but an F stub will get you back to small writing with that little bit of pizazz.

There may be more collectors here than we realize. It's been my experience in a Leica Camera mailing list, that the collectors aren't the everyday talkers. They tend to lay back and jump in only when the topic or question hits them directly where they live. When you consider that this board has close to 800 registrants, and the day to day posting is probably being done by well under 100, my bet is that a good percentage of the remaining 700 are collectors.

Make yourself comfortable and enjoy!


Edit: Had membership numbers wrong. Now corrected

Welcome Dave,

I too was interested in restoration, started with Esterbrooks, and have worked my way up to Snorks and Touchdowns (Sheaffer). I haven't made it to vacs yet, but maybe someday. I am enamoured of snorkels right now, and probably to stay that way for a while.

The board is a great place.

Hello Dave and welcome to the FPN! It's always nice to have new members here from Beantown. I am like you, as a "user" rather than a collector. I just can't stand the idea of buying a fountain pen and not using it at least a few times. However, I have never used a stub or italic nib to write with, but I would love to try one someday.

You have come to the right place when it comes to learning more about nibs and restoring vintage fountain pens.

Sorry for the delay

Welcome to FPN, Dave!!

Nice to have you on board. Like you, I am also interested in fountain pen repair...both for the potential savings but mostly for the joy of repairing an old pen that would have likely wound up in the ash heap. I wouldn't try my hand at a rare pen, of course! I see that you ordered some DVDs (I am guessing they are Dennis Lively's repair DVDs?). I have volume 1 myself and found it interesting as it shows repair techniques and fountain pen component parts in a way that most books cannot. I am not really a vintage Parker collector, so I didn't order Volume 2 but I heard it was improved with better close-ups.