Greetings All,

I have several nibs from which I cannot remove real paper grabbing scratchyness. I believe that I am using the proper technique as described in the papers on the topic of nib smoothing. I am using the correct nib smoothing materials, but even though I have sweet spots on the nibs, that grab comes back to get me.

When I look at the nibs with a 30x loupe, it appears as if there are real sharp points on the inside of tines. Some of these spurs are on the top inside and some on the bottom inside. These points typically catch when I put too much pressure on the nib or try flex for ink flow control. But I do not know how to get these points removed.

I have tried placing the diamond Mylar nib smoothing disks between the tines, but the sharp points (spurs) only catch on the diamond material and scratch it off the Mylar with no benefit of smoothing the point.

I am concerned to be too aggressive in smoothing for fear of removing the iridium. I am really banging my head against the wall. Once again, I have several nibs – sending them out would be way too expensive for me.

Will someone or someones please help me to correct this problem?

Thank you,

Ink2Pen

Hi ink2pen,

The only advice I can give you, is to persist. Yes, the mylar will catch on sharp edges, and in bad cases these edges will scratch the working layer off. I end up trimming small strips of my mylar sheets all the time as a result .

What you could do, but you have to be very careful, is to hold the pen with one hand, and with the index finger of the same hand, push one tine slightly up (or down if you find that easier), and with your other hand insert the mylar to work on the other tine. Just rub very gently on the rough edges with the mylar.

This is not easy to do, because you'll feel as if you need 3 or 4 hands to accomplish this, and you have to exert a fair amount of pressure with the fingers of the hand holding the pen, while virtually no pressure is required from the other hand, but if you try, and have a lot of patience, you'll manage.

Once the roughest of the edge is gone, and the material doesn't come off anymore, do the other tine in the same fashion.

Next, make sure you (re)align the nib 100%, and try the pen out. Now you can do the remainder of smoothing the inner tine slits the normal way, if so required.

Just make sure you just take off the sharpness of the inner tine edge; if you really round it, you'll create a baby bottom, with skipping as a result.

BTW, if this a flex nib, F point or finer, you will very likely have to live with some scratchiness, as it is inherent to the nib type, especially when you flex.

Anyway, HTH, warm regards, Wim

Hi Ink,

I think you wil have better luck if you cut the mylar into strips that are about 1/8 - 3/16 of an inch wide, and use these to "floss" the nib slit. This helps the feeling that you need 3 or 4 hands. You can use a little bit more pressure this way by flexing the floss as you stroke it through the tines so that it rounds the edges just slightly. You will have better luck with scraping off the mylar if you pull the mylar through the slit with the writing side trailing. If it still scrapes off the diamond, then try pulling up just slightly to separate the tines as you floss.

Also be sure you're using agressive anough mylar. If it is iridium tipped, then use a 1 micron mylar (no more / no less) strip to do the primary flossing.

You will want to make sure the tines are aligned and that one isn't lower than the other. This will cause slit scratchiness also.

You want to make sure you isolate where the scratch is coming from. To do this, I use a little test, I like to call a "butterfly". Put nib to paper. Think of the line of the slit as the vertical axis. Divide the space into 4 quadrants along this axis (upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right). You're goint to test each of these quadrants and in so doing test the different regions of the slit.

Rotate the pen slightly to the left, and apply just a touch of pressure. enough to just slightly open the slit. Draw a quick stroke up and to the left. Repeat for down and to the left. For the right side, rotate the pen slightly to the right, and then draw a quick stroke, up to the right, and then down to the right. (if you start from teh same point, the pattern will be sort of a butterfly shaped cross) Compare the "catch" on each fo these strokes, and work on the side of the slit that catches the most. you can also use figure eights to test this if you pay close attention to what part of the figure 8 is scratchiest.

Thank you Wimg and KendallJ for your suggestions. I appreciate your responses.

This is a problem that has really been vexing me and I am happy to have defined direction to help me fix it.

Since this is Thanksgiving weekend and I have family here, I won't be able to get away to my work station to try your suggestions. But when I do, I will let you know the results.

Ink2Pen

Thanks for the replies from me too, Wim and Kendall! I have done inner-tine smoothing myself (just on a couple of my own pens) and this is excellent advice, IMHO.