I have a few questions about Italic or slanted nibs on FPs.

a: can the be found on FPs and how are they identified
b: can regular FP nib be alterd to be Italic or slanted?

any insight would be greatly appreciated.


cheers


................Stani

"Slanted" nibs are called "Oblique" nibs. Unless you have trouble with writing with an italic nib, you don't need to get one.

Italic nibs are generally identified as such. They may be either "true" italic (very sharp corners and edge, not good for rapid writing) or "cursive italic" (rounded corners, allows you to write pretty much at normal speed). Sometimes, manufacturers offer "stub" nibs -- these may be cursive italic or they may be actual stub nibs. A stub nib does not give as much variation in line width as a cursive italic. The true italic nib gives the most line width variation.

A nibmeister (there are several here on FPN) can modify a regular fountain pen nib to italic/cursive italic/stub/oblique. Works best with medium or broad nib. Nibmeisters will ask you questions about how you write, in order to help you choose between oblique and the others. Most people do not need an oblique nib. There are left obliques and right obliques, which one a person who needs one will use is best determined by the nibmeister.

The answer to b is easy: yes - though the altered nib will likely end up writing a bit narrower than the original.

As for a: yes, they can certainly be found on fountain pens, but how they are identified varies. Today, different types of italic are identified by nib grinders - crisp italic (with sharp corners), cursive italic (more rounded) and stub (more rounded still); each provides less line variation than the one before it. Pen companies don't make this distinction; aside from calligraphy sets, nibs identified as italics will likely be stubs (music nibs are a form of stub too). With vintage pens it gets more complicated, though it matters less - provided you can look at the nib, you can see easily enough if it's a stub (you're not likely to find a vintage pen with a crisp or even cursive italic nib). As far as I can tell, the commonest term used for American nibs of this type was "stub". German pens with stub nibs were called B (or BB or BBB, depending on width; B=medium stub). Today, German nibs with B nibs have the same big blobs as everyone else's B nibs; they're not stubs at all.

What you're calling "slanted" are called "oblique" by pen companies and nib grinders (some vintage nib makers, especially Esterbrook, used the term "relief"; confusingly, a nib identified by Esterbrook as a stub, the excellent 2442, is also oblique, but less crisp than their relief nibs; but the nibs they made for English Relief pens are much the same as the 2442...). These are most commonly found on vintage German pens, where the nib isn't just "slanted" but also a stub and give excellent line variation; they come in varying widths from fine through triple broad (OB, OM, OB, OBB, OBBB) and, like Bs, are often flexible. At some point (the same time their Bs stopped being stubs?) German manufacturers changed the shape of their oblique nibs so that they no leave very little, if any, line variation. A modern nib grinder can vary the degree of crispness on an oblique nib from next to none to crisp/sharp. They will also give you a choice of right or left oblique. You will almost never see a right oblique nib courtesy of a pen manufacturer (e.g. there's none to be found on a vintage Pelikan nib chart, where all obliques are left obliques).

Simon