Suppose that a pen tended to skip on the downstrokes of letters when writing. It occurs to me that this indicates "writing with the fingers", because the nib would nominally have no idea which direction its moving in. But if you plant your hand and change the angle of the pen to reach the top/bottom/left/right of the glyph, then one of those might be off the sweet spot of the nib.

When I'm polishing or burnishing a nib, I write large circles using the fingers. This purposefully applies different angles between the tip of the nib and the paper. But when writing I try to keep the pen at a constant angle.

On the other hand, the "large circles" did in fact test a larger variation in angle then any reasonably sized letter height, so that pen ought to work anyway. Unless the circle didn't test straight up and down, only down while on the left or right; but I don't know how that would matter.

I was lying awake thinking about this, and thought I'd throw it out to the forum to see if anyone had any other thoughts on this.

--John

On all downstrokes or on initial downstrokes?

I have a pen that skips on MOST initial downstrokes, but rarely otherwise. I suspect a feed problem on this one; it doesn't seem to have a baby bottom problem that plagues some pens.

I think that you are right about the fact that angle changes on contact with paper can be a major cause of skipping and that "finger writing" can contribute (especially writing large).
That makes me think, a broad pen would also naturally accentuate any finger movement contributing to skipping.

I'll be following this one closely, because I'm experiencing the same thing with one pen. My new Reform school pen skips on most downstrokes, unless I slow down. My downstrokes tend to be very fast compared to the rest of my writing, but slowing down seems to solve that problem most times.

It's not you. The pen should write. I had the same problem with an expensive new pen recently, with skipping on many initial downstrokes but writing OK after that. Very aggravating and completely destructive of enjoyable writing. I took the pen to Richard Binder at a pen show and when some nib grinding failed to solve the problem (i.e., proving it was not the "baby-bottom" effect), he diagnosed it as a problem with the feed. I gave him the OK, and he took the nib/feed apart and operated on the ink channels. After reassembly, the pen worked perfectly, and has continued to work perfectly, a lovely writer. So based on that, I'd say it's something to do with the feed. To get that fixed, you should send the pen to a nibmeister, because I watched it being done, and it's a delicate job, one that requires some knowledge, one of those "don't try this at home" things. It amazes me that in this day and age some manufacturers, even of costly, so-called handmade pens, don't get the feed right, sometimes in design, sometimes in material, and perhaps sometimes in workmanship. It's the literal heart of the pen.

I too think it's a feed/ink delivery problem. You might want to make sure the system is clean and free by rinsing it thoroughly. Also might want to try a free flowing ink -- Gulf Stream Blue is the most freely flowing permanent blue ink I've found. These remedies fall into the "things you can try at home" before sending it off to a nib meister; I've "fixed" a number of my own pens this way.

Doug

In my own case, it's one of the Stipula titanium nibs that's skipping, and I've tried rinsing and several inks. I think I finally got one that had a feed from the bad batch.

I have had several new nibs that skipped when pushed or pulled in certain directions. In every single instance, my good friend and local pen genius, Bert Heiserman of Pen Haven, was able to fix the problem within minutes by a combination of moving the tines and using abrasive paper. In none of the cases did he do anything to the feed or the filling mechanism. I would recommend you have a pen expert look at the nib.