Hi all,

I'd like to buy a new nib for my M650, F or EF. I already have two Pelikan F nibs, one for my M200, the other for my M400, but the M200 nib writes much more 'finely'.

My M200 nib is a standard F, like this:

Click to view attachment

My M400 has an older style F, bought from Bertrams' Inkwell, which looks like this:

Click to view attachment

Although the M400 nib is nicer, I prefer the thin line of the M200 F: so, which M650 bi-colour nib would produce the fine line of the M200 F?

Phew, I feel my head spinning after trying to work out the phrasing of this question!

Thanks for your help...

Emma

Nibs can be adjusted so they write thicker or thinner, wetter or drier. Chances are both nibs could be adjusted to write the same. So you can't generalize about one Pelikan nib and another like that. An F nib will write within a range different from an XF nib though. I hope that helps more than it confuses.

Thanks, ANM!

I just wondered if the vintage F wrote thicker than the newer F nibs, but it's really helpful to know line-width is specific to each nib, within a relative range.
Emma

Recently I tried Fine nibs (M 1000, Namiki Falcon, Parker T1 and MB 149) using different inks.
The thinner viscosity of Waterman (SS Blue) and Herbin (Moondust) Inks gave me an apparently broader line than did the slightly heavier Pelikan Violet and Parker Quink Blue.

Diamine (WES Imperial Blue and Diamine Deep Magenta) were somewhere in between.

Had I seen the results without knowing about the nibs I would have said they were of different fineness.

This was not a scientifc study - i was just checking out my own pens and my own inks.
Solitaire

Thanks, Solitaire. I've also been using Herbin Moondust with the 'thicker' F, and Private Reserve Chocolat with the 'thinner' F so maybe this accounts for it.
Cheers.
Emma

And of course, paper makes a big difference. And its very apparent when using fine nibs.

Some inks will provide a fine line even on newspaper.

Solitaire

It is hard to generalize but I have found that my 14K and 18K nibs usually have a fatter line than the steel nibs, despite having the same size designation. Seems like, at least for a while there, Pelikan put a bigger "blob" of tipping on their gold nibs than on their steel nibs, perhaps to enhance smoothness in the more expensive models.

I bought an M150 with a Fine nib and I was pretty happy with it. I bought an Extra Fine nib for it that was more like Extra Broad, but I figured out how to tweak it a bit and it's ever so slightly finer than the original Fine nib.

Then I bought an M200 with an Medium nib and sent it to Chartpak to be swapped with a Fine. It came back MUCH finer than I expected; more like a true EF. And it's filled with Herbin ink, which is usually quite runny. It's a very nice nib!

So basically, I don't think you can expect a certain fineness. As a previous poster said, you can expect a nib to fall within a range; if you're lucky you'll get what you want, otherwise, you can tweak or exchange your nib. I bet if you sent a pen to Chartpak with a sample of the line width you're hoping for, they'd do their best to match a nib to it, or tweak one before sending it to you.

Neill

(edited for typo)

I have an old style M400 with the single tone nib and a new style M400 with the 2 tone nib.
Both are F.
But the two tones one writes a tinner line than the single tone one.
Another M250 with an F single tone nib also writes a thicker line than the 2 tones nib.

So I think the single tone F 14ct nib from Pelikan generally writes a thicker line.

One expert - it may have been Richard Binder - studied the tipping on fine and medium nibs and often found that the only difference was that the fines were more NARROW than the mediums. This means that, used in some directions, the fines and mediums will have lines of comparable thickness.

My own experience seems to confirm this finding

Solitaire

Thank you all! This is really helpful. I may opt for a two-tone EF and hope for the best, but it's interesting to hear the old gold nibs may write slightly broader. I've found the same with Pelikan M nibs (my current M650 M nib is broader than my M400 OM!)
I suppose the more nibs the merrier though...

All I can tell you is this:

If you try out let's say 5 different samples of each of 4 different pen models -- whether steel or gold nibs, but all of one nib size -- you might get up to as much as 20 different real widths.

(of course all with the same ink and paper)

Mike

Hello,

Perhaps the vintage F nib is more flexible as the newer one. In my opinion vintage nibs tend to be more flexible and with such a nib you will get a thicker line depending on the pressure with the nib.

Best regards
Werner

Contact Richard Binder and buy the nib from him.

Yes, it will cost you a litle extra. But you will love the nib. He will smooth it and make it write to the size you want. You could probably send him a writing sample so that he could match the thinness of the line to your liking.

I, personally, think this is your best bet.

I bought the nibs for my Pelkian 1000s from him and sold the ones that came with the pens. The ones he tuned were very different from the ones that came out of the box.

I have no relationship with him other than as a satsified customer. j