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Chinese Flex Pen?


JLZenor

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I was just watching a video of someone demonstrating how flex nibs work, and I'm intrigued. Is there a a good Chinese pen with a flex nib that I can start with?

 

Thanks.

- Jon Zenor

Christian, Author, Starship Captain, and all around fun guy.

Follow me on Twitter: @JLZenor

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I was just watching a video of someone demonstrating how flex nibs work, and I'm intrigued. Is there a a good Chinese pen with a flex nib that I can start with?

 

Thanks.

 

If you're wanting a good, cheap flex pen, I'd recommend trying the 'Guru' from Fountain Pen Revolution (www.fountainpenrevolution.com). It's dirt cheap, with low cost shipping, but the writing experience is pretty great. Made in India, not China - but I'm not aware of any Chinese flex pens, so thought I'd throw this in!

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If you're wanting a good, cheap flex pen, I'd recommend trying the 'Guru' from Fountain Pen Revolution (www.fountainpenrevolution.com). It's dirt cheap, with low cost shipping, but the writing experience is pretty great. Made in India, not China - but I'm not aware of any Chinese flex pens, so thought I'd throw this in!

Thanks. I'll check that out next time I get a pen... which may be soon....

- Jon Zenor

Christian, Author, Starship Captain, and all around fun guy.

Follow me on Twitter: @JLZenor

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There's the Hero 395. I'm sure the vintage flex people would be unimpressed, but then, they'd be unimpressed with almost anything in either the cheap or modern categories, and this is in both.

 

I haven't had mine long, but so far I've found it to be a decent pen, and it is definitely flexible enough to allow for line variation. The section is a bit small and slippery; I end up holding it half by the section and half by the barrel most of the time.

 

I can't really compare it to other flex nibs, as it's the only flex I've got. Mine was about $15, IIRC.

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None of the ones I found online mention having a flex nib. Do they all come with flex? Or is it not really a flex nib but is just slightly flexible?

- Jon Zenor

Christian, Author, Starship Captain, and all around fun guy.

Follow me on Twitter: @JLZenor

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None of the ones I found online mention having a flex nib. Do they all come with flex? Or is it not really a flex nib but is just slightly flexible?

 

If you're referring to the Hero 395, I suspect it's a nib with some natural 'spring' - quite a few steel nibs have at least a bit of 'flex' to them, though you have to be careful you don't go too far!

 

The Fountain Pen Revolution pens (Guru, Dilli, Triveni, Indus etc), and quite a few of the other pens on their website, can be ordered with a range of nib options. It costs an extra $3 (on top of the 'base' price of the pen) to purchase with a Flex, or a Broad, or a stub nib - so for the Guru you'll pay a total of $12, plus $3 postage. It's hard to go too far wrong at that price - and the flex nibs, in my experience, work pretty well from the get-go.

 

For my money, the Guru's a great little pen. If you're prepared to spend more (maybe on a return visit?), the Indus and the Triveni are even better (in terms of form and feel), but somewhat more expensive - especially the Triveni.

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To the best of my knowledge, and I admit it only covers a tiny proportion of the available Chinese pens, there are no Chinese pens that are 'flexy'. There are those that use stainless nibs that are springy, but most of those are simply due to very thin metal being stressed to very close to the yield point. Such pens are very likely to be damaged by slightly more load flexing them.

 

The Noodler's pens (Ahab etc) made in India do have nibs close to being flexy.

 

A couple of years ago, with my stress engineer hat on, I sat down and used what few figures I could find for the yield point and stiffness of gold and stainless steel and plugged them into data I had after doing a 3D CAD model of a nib. The results surprised me. For a given amount of flex, if the nibs are the same thickness, then the stainless nib will require much more force. If the force is made the same, then the stainless steel will be much thinner and much, much closer to bending permanently than the gold nib. To obtain good flex, the material stiffness (Youngs Modulus) must be low, while the yield point (permanent bending stress) must be high relative to the ultimate strength (breaking strength). Stainless (particularly austenitic/ non magnetic stainless) has a low yield point relative to ultimate strength (around 40%) so bends permanently long before breaking, and all steels have a pretty similar and high Youngs Modulus. Gold is much better, with 14k gold having a low stiffness and a yield point that is about 80% of it's ultimate strength, this means that the reserve against bending is higher with gold than stainless steel for a given level of flex and force. This makes 14K gold, as far as I can see, the best currently used alloy for flex nibs.

 

Data I had:

Stainless Steel:

Youngs Modulus: 207,000 N/mm2.

Yield Strength: 180 N/mm2

Ultimate Strength: 510 N/mm2

Gold (only sure about the Youngs modulus, the other two data points are based on nibs I have seen damaged and an estimate of the force to damage them - I would like to test a nib, but cant bring myself to break one)

Youngs Modulus: 78,600 N/mm2

Yield Strength: 80 N/mm2

Ultimate Strength: 100 N/mm2

 

 

If there were ways of preventing corrosion in ink, Tin and aluminium might be good alloys to use too, as Aluminium has a similar stiffness to Gold and many of the alloys are stronger than the values I have used for gold above. Tin is around 70% the stiffness of gold with similar strength. Titanium (as used for many modern 'flex' nibs) has a stiffness of 110,000 N/mm2, so is only suitable by virtue of its high strength allowing thin nibs to be made and then highly stressed as they flex.

 

Regards,

 

Richard

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The Fountain Pen Revolution pens (Guru, Dilli, Triveni, Indus etc), and quite a few of the other pens on their website, can be ordered with a range of nib options. It costs an extra $3 (on top of the 'base' price of the pen) to purchase with a Flex, or a Broad, or a stub nib - so for the Guru you'll pay a total of $12, plus $3 postage. It's hard to go too far wrong at that price - and the flex nibs, in my experience, work pretty well from the get-go.

 

For my money, the Guru's a great little pen. If you're prepared to spend more (maybe on a return visit?), the Indus and the Triveni are even better (in terms of form and feel), but somewhat more expensive - especially the Triveni.

Thanks, I'll have to check those out.

 

A couple of years ago, with my stress engineer hat on, I sat down and used what few figures I could find for the yield point and stiffness of gold and stainless steel and plugged them into data I had after doing a 3D CAD model of a nib. The results surprised me. For a given amount of flex, if the nibs are the same thickness, then the stainless nib will require much more force. If the force is made the same, then the stainless steel will be much thinner and much, much closer to bending permanently than the gold nib. To obtain good flex, the material stiffness (Youngs Modulus) must be low, while the yield point (permanent bending stress) must be high relative to the ultimate strength (breaking strength). Stainless (particularly austenitic/ non magnetic stainless) has a low yield point relative to ultimate strength (around 40%) so bends permanently long before breaking, and all steels have a pretty similar and high Youngs Modulus. Gold is much better, with 14k gold having a low stiffness and a yield point that is about 80% of it's ultimate strength, this means that the reserve against bending is higher with gold than stainless steel for a given level of flex and force. This makes 14K gold, as far as I can see, the best currently used alloy for flex nibs.

 

Bringing science into it, nice! I like it. Thanks for the explanation.

- Jon Zenor

Christian, Author, Starship Captain, and all around fun guy.

Follow me on Twitter: @JLZenor

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Must admit I was surprise how small a window there was with steel nibs between flexing and damaging them, and also at how much this window widened up with gold. For constant nib geometry, three ratios need to be optimised by material and alloy choice: yield-ultimate strength, yield-Youngs Modulus and ultimate strength-Youngs Modulus. All want to be as high as possible, with Youngs Modulus being as low as possible.

 

The flex effect can be increased by changing the geometry, as occurs in the weirdly long slit in the Noodler's flex nibs, or Pendleton Brown's nib shoulder removal on either side of the breather hole. Both allow greater deflection for a given force, though the Noodler's solution does not increase the stress dramatically, unlike Pendleton Brown's solution.

 

Regards,

 

Richard

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post-117767-0-80654300-1432128351_thumb.jpg

 

The only Chinese pen that I have that has any flex to it is the Wing Sung 590, which will show some decent line variation when "flexed". I don't know if the nib is just springy like others say, and I am also wary of pushing it too much when using it because of this, so not ideal if you want to have a go at flex.

 

I will eventually get a vintage pen with a flex gold nib, but that will cost, so it's not on the near horizon.

The Ahab, is probably your best bet if you're just looking to sate your flex curiosity.

It is made for fiddling with, and is easy to take apart and mess around with.

I am no "handwriting star" but as you can see in the pic, you can achieve quite a marked difference against normal non-flex nibs.

I was kinda put off by the Ahab to start with as it's quite dull and ugly ( probably because I chose the Cardinal Darkness colour) and I couldn't use it on any of my paper as the ink feathered quite badly.

I then found some low cost paper that can cope with the extra ink, did a bit of fiddling, and I've become quite attached to it.

It's great fun to use, and there are threads on here about how to modify it if you want even more flex.

I've not got that far yet as I'm still messing around with my writing, trying different styles, and using the flex.

 

I do have an FPR Dilli, but it's not a patch on the Ahab, It feels flimsy and fragile in comparison, and the Ahabs' nib is far better.

 

One thing I would say though.......If you do consider getting one, get a nice bright coloured one as they look so much better.

I wish I had. :rolleyes:

 

Ian

 

 

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