I thought when I got "da book", all my questions would be answered. But this is not a tutorial, but a reference manual on individual procedures. It refers to "the section" without explaining. Then when I see a diagram of a pen with its parts, there is nothing called "section"! So some have them some don't? Or is it called different things?

--John

The section is the piece of the pen that goes into the barrel, and the nib & feed go into the section. You hold the pen gripping it at the section when you write with it.
Not all pens have a section; on some pens the barrel ends in such a way that the nib & the feed go into it directly.

There is a nice drawing on Richard Binder's site: http://www.richardspens.com On the right click on the tab "Reference Info", then go to "The Anatomy of a Fountain Pen I". There you'll see a drawing that explains it all.

In the simplest terms, the section is the 'grip'. It's the part of the pen that you hold with your fingers while writing. Attached to the section are the nib, feed, ink-sac (in older pens. Cartridges or converter in modern pens) and the barrel.

Richard Binder's site is the best site I have seen in the web, there is no site in Europe available to compare with Richard's site.

Max