I have really enjoyed making italic nibs out of my duplicate Esterbrook nibs. They are really fun to use! Great line variation! Each nib is unique and they all write great with the "P-grind" (slightly rounded on the corners for good...well, cornering)

It's worth trying if you are game, or, I can do it for you for $20 post paid/pay pal CONUS. Susan Wirth has gotten me hooked on straight italics and I've been doing mostly Esterbrooks and Parker 45s which is handy since they both screw out with relative ease and are plenty available. You can send me one to have done or, for $5-10 depending on the nib #, I'll send you a dandy, satisfaction guaranteed or you bucks back!

I plan to have a good stock of them at the Raleigh Pen Show first weekend in June.


Blessings in ink ~
pb2

Hi PB - do you by any chance sell un-ground Esterbrook nibs? I've been looking to get a sampler of the different nib styles.

Please don't there are only a limited supply of Esterbrook nibs and once they are gone there aren't any more

I don't have many Esti nibs of great interest. Mostly run of the mill stuff. The desirable ones cost more than the pens. That's what got me started grinding. I also dropped a sweet gold Wahl nib into an Esti. Fankenesti, I know... I sold it and am still stinging. I have also found that some Osmiroid nibs screw into Esterbrooks. It's all fun.
pb2

I know it may not seem quite kosher to mess with originals. But there are many more out there that the world will ever be able to use. They'll probably last 100+ years and the replacement nibs far out numbered the pen production.

I say, let's set our Estis FREE!! Let em inter marry with different colored caps and barrels (black looks great with red!). FREE THE ESTEES!

I'll gladly trade twanged nibs for good ones if you are going to grind the tipping off of them.

Todd

While in theory you have a point, the supply of NOS Esties is so large this shouldn't be a real consideration.

I see suppliers selling boxes of 12 NOS nibs on the 'bay at a time quite regularly.

See this store for some examples...
http://stores.ebay.com/VINTAGE-WRITING-INS...idZ2QQpZ2QQtZkm

Regards,

Gerry

Wow that's a really interesting reply, What if people who bought vintage pens thought that way- oh wait they did and that's why there are 'rare' pens because people figured it's just a pen and they will make more of them or there are plenty out there- just toss it if it doesn't work.

I think my point is very valid, there are no manufacturers of these nibs now and when the supply is done they are gone. There are nib grinders who will refuse to work on pens because that particular pen is rare.

Esterbrook nibs might not be rare for but itis a short sighted view what about two generations from now? will there still be the same amount of Estie nibs available?

Kurt

I agree with Kurt. They're no longer making the Renew Point nibs, so regrinding them is consuming a finite resource. That seems to be reason enough.

I also agree with Kurt. There's plenty of thoroughly-used points with the tipping gone entirely that can feed the urge for modification; lets leave the functional one as they are, until regular use renders them otherwise.

I've got quite a few nibs that are bent or "tweaked". Just like FarmBoy said, I'll trade those for some of your good nibs and you can grind away. Please be nice to Estie nibs!

I got on here to say don't do it but I see titivillius already voiced my opinion as have others. DON'T DESTROY NIBS THAT CAN NEVER BE REPLACED, no matter how many there are currently extant.

While I agree in principle about saving the nibs, they ARE his nibs. So, he has every right to do as he chooses with them. If someone wants one of his ground nibs, whose right is it to say he can't do it? If you are so adamant about it, you should just send him your damaged nibs for free. Then maybe you've saved one.
I had a member on FPN try to tell me I had no business trying to repair a vacuum fill Sheaffer desk pen because they are a little rare and I might make it unusable for someone else in the future. I bought the pen, and I'll do whatever I want with it. That's what I bought it for.
Maybe his grinding of the nibs will be an improvement over the stock nib as far as writing goes. And they are first and foremost for writing.
It sometimes gets a little tedious having people try to impose their idea of what correct collecting is.

I'm sort of surprised that no one has figured out a way to remanufacture or effectively renib Esterbook nibs. I understand the difficulty, given the sleeve around the feed and all. Perhaps someone should figure out how to modify the sections to take typical feeds & nibs that, after all, can also be removed.

That said, I, too, am a preservationist, even for the many fine manifold or general writing nibs out there. I bought a pen recently on eBay, a quite nice brown J, for the nib--a 9314 medium stub. (To me, the nib may have been worth the price of pen.) But it has clearly been modified to work a left-handed stub italic. The seller probably didn't know--you have to compare it to another nib of the same kind. This one is far shorter than it should be, about 4 millimeters, and pretty scratchy for a right-handed writer. But it isn't a badly done job.

That's why I don't want people regrinding the nibs: the numbers present newbies with enough of a challenge. It is sad when they don't write as promised.

Obviously we can't prevent people from doing anything they like with their pens, so if people want to grind their nibs into italics then they should go ahead. They don't have to listen to a word we say, and we don't have to be happy about it. Of course people are trying to impose their ideas of correct collecting, but readers are no more obligated to follow these ideas than they are to conform to anything else they read on the internet.

Yes, there are tons of Esterbrook nibs out there, and yes, they belong to whoever owns them and FPN cannot legally enjoin people from grinding them, melting them, or hitting them with a mallet, but if you're posting to a conservative collector community about how you're irrevocably altering the things they collect, do you really expect a supportive reception?

I might question if it is conservative.

Conservative in the sense that members generally support the preservation of old fountain pens in their original forms. Maybe you're right though - people seem awfully excited about the Minuskin re-tips of Parker 51s, and they certainly don't look anything like the originals (I'm not counting Richard Binder's gigantic Pelikan re-tip because they're in current production).

Anyway, mostly I'm just playing devil's advocate, here. I have a few duplicate nibs and would not alter them.
The point I'm making is that everyone has their own idea of what collecting is and why they do it.
I collect only things I can use. If it can't be restored to usable condition, I'm done with it. If I had a pen that was unrestorable, whether or not it had collector value in that condition, I would use it for restoration practice if I couldn't interest someone in taking it off my hands.
Ain't it great, though, that we are not all of the exact same opinion?

Apparently you don't agree in principal about saving nibs. And they are not his nibs when he solicits others to send theirs to him for regrinding. There may be lots of nibs waiting to be reground but there are a LOT more italic nibs already extant that you don't need to mutilate a good nib for the purpose. As he stated there are even Osmiroid nibs that fit Esterbrooks which are already quite suited for italic writing. I have about 20 relatively cheap calligraphy fountain pens. That is more than I will ever need. There is no need to make more, IMO. It is true that you can do whatever you want with your possessions though. You can take a Lexis on a long drive off a short pier if you want. It's your car. Just don't advocate that I do the same with mine.

OK...I'm beginning to see the light about where many of you stand regarding "Save the nibs". I truly appreciate the appreciation for them. I do see that taking a perfectly good piece of antiquity and putting it to the sparks does strike some people like drilling in the Arctic Nation Wildlife Refuge. Thank you for the fresh awareness. Please forgive my absence of awareness in this matter.

And, perhaps we can agree there is a way to "Free Willie" ... as a step toward "saving the wales" (if you'll permit the analogy) So let me propose a truce...Renew Point Rescue Instead of grinding good nibs, Let's Liberate your bungled ones.

Rather than leave a crunched nib dead in a drawer, or toss it in the recycling bin, why not give it a new life as a "racey" and perfectly useful Italic!?!

I'll be on the lookout for the smashed and banged. Maybe the Fountain Pen Hospital has a bandaged batch they don't know what to do with.

If the Statue of Liberty was holding an Esterbrook (let say with an unground 2048!) instead of a torch, the inscription might have read as such:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled mashed nibs yearning to scribe free..
the wretched refuse of your twisted tines...
send these, the penless, tempest tossed to me
I lift my Estie by the golden shore."


Bless people with your pen ~
pb2

PS ~ Here's a little "good night" music I penned for you...