Informational Post On Gold Nibs

[canibanoglu]

Hello everyone,

 

For a long time I meant to write about the misconceptions surrounding gold nibs and last night I finally got around to it and I opened a new blog and posted my first article on there. The misconceptions about gold as a nib material have been disturbing for some time, mainly due to retailers spreading wrong information (whether deliberately or not I don't know) and a post here on FPN a couple of weeks ago really made me write it.

 

I'm going to paste contents of the post here but you can also see it on http://penbunny.com/gold-nibs-and-flexiblesoft-nibs/

 

I hope someone will benefit from this information.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I intended my first post on here to be either a pen review or an ink review but I’ve had a change of heart as the amount of misinformation on gold nibs is appalling and I truly believe that I can make a meaningful contribution to the fountain pen community by putting this out there.

As many of you know, more expensive fountain pens come with gold or other “valuable” material nibs. This is definitely not a rule as there are a lot of expensive pens with steel nibs. But most $150+ pens feature a gold nib. I don’t have any statistic about this (maybe I should get on that!) but believe me, this is the case.

This is where things start to get murky. Most retailers will tell you that gold nibs give you a softer writing experience because, well, the nib is made out of gold. Their reasoning (if they are actually trying to come up with a logical explanation. If not, that would be blatantly lying to sell a more expensive pen and that, in my opinion, is despicable) is that since gold is one of the softest metals, this characteristic of the material exhibits itself in the writing characteristic of the nib. Most people will also tell you that gold nibs are more flexible because gold is a very soft metal.

This is WRONG!

Before I get into a more technical explanation, I want to show to you that this is wrong through very specific examples. But before that, a couple of definitions so that we are all on the same page:

Flexible nib

: A nib that can

easily

spread its tines

under pressure

and as a result produce noticeable line variation

AND

get back to its initial shape when that pressure is removed.

This definition is by no means complete and I’m sure some of the people that happen to read this will say that most nibs would be flexible by this definition and that simply is not the case. Please don’t get angry, I agree. But this simplified definition is enough for the purposes of this discussion and when you come to think of it no one knows what exactly makes a nib a flexible one (maybe we all should try to decide on this in the future) and some people will call a nib flexible while others will say that the same nib is a nail (an inflexible nib).

Soft nib

: A nib that gives you a more “bouncy” writing experience.

Alright, this definition is even more vague than the last one but there is even less agreement on what a soft nib is. But, in general, if the nib gives you a “suspension” effect (much like in cars), it is said to be a soft one.

Again, these definitions are not scientific, nor do they aim to be. They are “good enough” for this discussion and if you want to hunt me for the lack of definiteness, please don’t.

Back to my promise of examples. Historically, the most flexible nibs have been used for calligraphy and indeed the most flexibly nibs ever produced have been produced for use with pen holders. Here are some vintage and modern examples of flexible nibs:

 

Make no mistake, these are the most flexible nibs ever produced and they would be considered flexible by any sane person’s indefinite flexibility standards/definitions. I say “sane” because an insane person might just as well define a flexible nib to be incapable of producing line variation.

I know that these are not fountain pen nibs, but compared to them even the most famed vintage fountain pens with the most amazingly flexible nibs would flee and hide in their corners.

They also share another characteristic: they all are steel nibs!

That’s right, these meager nibs are not made out of gold. Calligraphers hunt these nibs for their work and none of them include a trace amount of gold in them.

As far as extremely unscientific ways of proving a point goes, this should rank pretty high but I hope that it will at least be enough to either make you read the remainder of this post or to make you take claims on gold and flexible nibs with a huge grain of salt.

The SCIENTIFIC PART (or at least the more scientific part)

There is a lot of talk about gold being a soft metal, which is technically true, and that is where I’ll start.

First and foremost, let me state here that I’m not a materials engineer and that my knowledge on properties of materials is by no means extensive. Having said that, I understand enough to be able to draw meaningful, correct conclusions that are applicable in my daily life. Feel free to correct me if anything I say is incorrect scientifically. But like I’ve said, for those of use not experts in materials science, the information should be correct enough to reason about fountain pen nib materials.

In materials science, people are concerned with how “hard” a material is, among other things, instead of their softness. When it’s said that gold is a “soft” material, what is meant is that it is not a “hard” material.

That’s all good and dandy, but I hear you asking: “What is hardness?” The following is a from Wikipedia’s page on hardness:

Hardness is a measure of how resistant solid matter is to various kinds of permanent shape change when a compressive force is applied.

The keyword from the above, for the purposes of our discussion, is “permanent shape change”. Which leads me to our next topic: Deformations!

A cursory look into material deformations

Basically, when we talk about deformation characteristics in a material, we are talking about the shape change characteristics of that material under various forces. There are three main types of deformation:

Elastic deformation: Very simply put, this is reversible deformation which means that as soon as you remove the force on the material, it will go back to its initial shape without any lasting effect. You want your fountain pen nib to go through elastic deformation, that is you don’t want it to be permanently deformed. Come to think of it, you want all of the materials involved in the production of a fountain pen to go through elastic deformation only. You will see why.

Plastic Deformation: Simply, this is irreversible deformation, meaning that the material will not snap back to its initial shape fully when the applied force is removed. In the fountain pen world, this maps to a sprung nib. You do NOT want this to happen.

Fracture: As is evident from the name, this means that the material has broken which is (obviously) irreversible. You also do NOT want this to happen and thankfully the materials used in nib production are generally pretty ductile with the notable exception of glass nibs.

Materials engineers have a diagram called stress-vs-strain diagram which shows the elastic and plastic regions of a materials pretty clearly.

 

The point marked with yield strength is an important one, beyond this point any deformation will have a plastic deformation component which means that the shape of the material will have changed permanently.

This is very important. When people talk about gold being a soft material, they mean this, that its yield strength is low and thus it is easy (relatively of course) to plastically deform it.

Since we want our nibs to keep their shape when we “flex” them we need a material that has a large elastic region. If you have stuck with me so far you are probably wondering: “But from what you say gold is not a good material because it is easy to plastically deform it, how and why has it been used this long for nib production?”

Aha, that is an excellent point! This is due to two production techniques:

1. Using alloys
2. Strengthening mechanisms

 

Using Alloys a.k.a Why Don’t we Have 24K nibs

Alloys can exhibit different, more desirable properties compared to their constituent metals. 14K gold is 58.5% pure, which means that there are other metals inside it. This usually makes it harder to plastically deform and that is why we don’t have 24K nib.

For the record, pure gold is so soft that you can easily dent it with your fingernail. You don’t want something so soft as a nib material for your pen.

Strengthening Mechanisms

I’m not going to go very deeply into this because there are numerous ways to do this but more importantly I’m not knowledgeable enough about them. Suffice it to say that work hardening (i.e. forging) a material can improve its yield strength.

Last Note on Scientific Stuff

Have you every wondered why all nibs have iridium tipping material? Because iridium is a very hard material and can resist deformations a lot better than gold could (or steel for that matter).

Wrapping Up a.k.a TL; DR

OK, I have talked (written) a lot and it is time to wrap up. gold is a very interesting material that one characteristic that makes it THE foremost nib material throughout the history of the fountain pen: it is very stable! Meaning that it won’t corrode or rust and when you notice that fountain pens are actually pretty wet and sometimes acidic (ink) environments you will see why it has been used so much.

On the other hand, do not let anyone fool you that since a nib is made of gold it will write more smoothly/softly or be more flexible. Material properties of gold shows us otherwise. A steel nib can be much more flexible and much softer compared to a gold nib, simply because it was produced to be that way.

Keep in mind that fountain pens with gold nibs will usually offer a better writing experience because they are usually produced with greater attention.

Thank you very much for reading. I hope I have been able to clear up the biggest misconception about gold nibs. I would love to hear your thoughts on this and would appreciate your feedback on my very first blog post!

Until next time,

Can

 

[Wolverine1]

Thanks for posting this very informative article.

[KBeezie]

The short dirty version : Gold does not = smooth/soft/flex, there are firm hard gold nibs, and there are soft gold nibs, just like there are firm steel nibs and soft steel nibs. Most modern nibs lean firm.

[kapanak]

I believe most modern nibs are firm because of two simple reasons: Less failures for warranty claims, and the ubiquitous nature of rollerball and ballpoint pens. A third and fourth reasons would be the almost universal lack of skills for using flexible nibs and the nonexistence of the necessity to use fancy scripts that require flex.

[savingbirds]

Just a few notes for an otherwise informative post:

 

• 24k gold nibs do exist, though are very uncommon (here's a review of one)
• Iridium is not used today at all (even in an alloy) due to its extremely high cost. Osmium and platinum alloys are much more common. But your point about needing a hard tipping still holds

 

What makes a nib flexible isn't only its gold content. You have 14k nibs that are flexible as well as nail-like. I feel like aside from other metals in the alloy (both gold and stainless steel), the main factors contributing to flexibility is nib thickness, tine length, and tine shape/curvature.

 

I also don't think any retailer is purposely trying to overvalue an expensive pen due to gold content. I'd give them the benefit of the doubt of trying to explain a price difference to the common buyer.

 

Steel is also a very hard material to work with and to my knowledge, there doesn't exist a comparable alloy to a vintage gold flex nib. It's good that you bring up steel dip nibs, but note that even the highest quality dip nibs last for a couple of months at most and are very prone to microfractures and rusting. The amount of chromium needed for a steel alloy to be considered "stainless" leaves little room left for other softer metals. So you either have a flexible steel nib with a short lifespan, or a stainless steel nib that can't compare to a gold nib.

 

Keep at your new blog! I'd love to hear about what you have to say next!

[KBeezie]

What makes a nib flexible isn't only its gold content. You have 14k nibs that are flexible as well as nail-like. I feel like aside from other metals in the alloy (both gold and stainless steel), the main factors contributing to flexibility is nib thickness, tine length, and tine shape/curvature.

Some flexible nibs have 0% gold.

 

Also a number of the vintage nibs were not machine-made, and gold is easier to work with by hand than steel.

[pajaro]

You have those who prefer gold and those who don't. When I was growing up the gold nib wasn't as expensive as it is today, and so naturally it was used often in many pens of moderate value. This thread is a good rehash of what has been beaten into the dust here. I suppose it has to be gone over from time to time for the benefit of those coming onto the scene, because they might be confused by gold versus steel.

[canibanoglu]

Thanks for posting this very informative article.

 

Thank you very much! I appreciate your feedback

[canibanoglu]

The short dirty version : Gold does not = smooth/soft/flex, there are firm hard gold nibs, and there are soft gold nibs, just like there are firm steel nibs and soft steel nibs. Most modern nibs lean firm.

Ha, that is a great summary! Thank you very much!

[canibanoglu]

I believe most modern nibs are firm because of two simple reasons: Less failures for warranty claims, and the ubiquitous nature of rollerball and ballpoint pens. A third and fourth reasons would be the almost universal lack of skills for using flexible nibs and the nonexistence of the necessity to use fancy scripts that require flex.

You might have a point here. Ballpoint users really dig into the paper and they usually carry this on to fountain pen use (which is one of the reasons why I don't let people try my pens). The slow demise of handwriting also plays a part like you said.

[canibanoglu]

Just a few notes for an otherwise informative post:

 

• 24k gold nibs do exist, though are very uncommon (here's a review of one)
• Iridium is not used today at all (even in an alloy) due to its extremely high cost. Osmium and platinum alloys are much more common. But your point about needing a hard tipping still holds

 

What makes a nib flexible isn't only its gold content. You have 14k nibs that are flexible as well as nail-like. I feel like aside from other metals in the alloy (both gold and stainless steel), the main factors contributing to flexibility is nib thickness, tine length, and tine shape/curvature.

 

I also don't think any retailer is purposely trying to overvalue an expensive pen due to gold content. I'd give them the benefit of the doubt of trying to explain a price difference to the common buyer.

 

Steel is also a very hard material to work with and to my knowledge, there doesn't exist a comparable alloy to a vintage gold flex nib. It's good that you bring up steel dip nibs, but note that even the highest quality dip nibs last for a couple of months at most and are very prone to microfractures and rusting. The amount of chromium needed for a steel alloy to be considered "stainless" leaves little room left for other softer metals. So you either have a flexible steel nib with a short lifespan, or a stainless steel nib that can't compare to a gold nib.

 

Keep at your new blog! I'd love to hear about what you have to say next!

 

Thanks for those two points. I hadn't seen a 24K nib before, that was informative but I doubt I would dare apply any pressure on that nib like the owner from the post you linked.

I also didn't know that iridium is no longer used as a tipping material. I will make sure to edit my post accordingly.

 

My point is that the amount of gold in the nib plays absolutely no role in whether the nib is a flexible one or a smooth one. The main reason why gold is used so much in nib production is due to its stability, it doesn't corrode which is extremely important in a fountain pen.

 

You are right about steel nibs corroding and since they have no tipping material their tips get pretty rough very quickly as well. With the current technology I don't think working with gold or steel has much difference anymore, after all no one works on them anymore, the nibs are simply shaped by punching. The only part where humans touch them is actually the tuning/QC part (if that even happens).

 

Thank you very much for your kind words! I have quite a few things that I would like to write about in the future and I hope I will be able to add some useful information for everyone.

[canibanoglu]

You have those who prefer gold and those who don't. When I was growing up the gold nib wasn't as expensive as it is today, and so naturally it was used often in many pens of moderate value. This thread is a good rehash of what has been beaten into the dust here. I suppose it has to be gone over from time to time for the benefit of those coming onto the scene, because they might be confused by gold versus steel.

 

I agree with you but I don't think the increase in gold price is reflected fairly in the increase in fountain pen prices. After all the amount of gold used is very, very small. I expect this to be mainly riding the new wave of fountain pen use trend.

 

Gold (or alloys of it) makes perfect sense as a material choice in a fountain pen nib, especially in the past because it is easy to work with and it is very stable. But these days it doesn't offer a lot, stainless steel can be worked almost as easily as gold with current technology and it is stable enough for use in a fountain pen. I myself would prefer a gold nib after a certain price but I know full well that this is not a very logical preference and I don't expect the pen to be much better because it has a gold nib. A lot of newcomers do think that sadly

 

Thank you very much for your kind comment, I really appreciate it

[Olya]

The claim that gold is better because it's smoother and/ or more flexible has been disputed many times, but people still ignore that and claim they take gold nibs because they are smoother and softer... Let's not forget that the tipping material is most important for smoothness and durability and on gold nibs the tipping is not gold as far as I know.

 

The best thread on that topic has to be where someone wrote to (I think) Sheaffer and asked straight out whether gold is better for writing and the condensed reply was pretty much that gold nibs are vanity, nothing more. I don't begrudge people buying gold nibs, have some myself and will purchase more, but let's not make it out to be more than it really is. Gold also rose in prominence during one of the WW (II?), because steel was needed for the military and they could not afford to waste the material on anything else that was not necessary, so they started increasingly to use gold. Or so I read somewhere.

 

Found the old Sheaffer thread https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/291573-gold-versus-steel-nibs-an-old-answer-from-sheaffer/

 

And here is a short, but the most important excerpt from the original post

 

"[...] I wrote to Sheaffer. This is the answer I was given.

 

The advantages of the gold nib are primarily aesthetic and ego satisfaction. The only functional differences we can detect are: (1) The gold nib is a little softer and more flexible, a feature which may cause the user to perceive a "smoother feel" and (2) the ink flow is a little freer.Identical construction results in slightly "wetter" writing than with the stainless steel nib. The tipping material...is exactly the same on both so the part touching the paper is the same in each case. [...]"

[KBeezie]

The main "loose" benefits of a gold nib :

 

1) It does not corrode (the big one, though modern stainless steel nibs have come a looong way)

2) Does not tarnish (usually, though I've seen plenty of 14k nibs tarnished, but you can clean that off without hurting the nib, depends on the alloy)

3) Easier for a nib worker to repair (ie: welding cracks, etc)

4) The 'prestige', not something I see as a benefit exactly, but it's important to some

 

What goes does not give : Smoothness (the part that touches the paper is rarely gold nor steel) gold would wear down way too quickly if it was not tipped with an extra hard material.

Edited July 1, 2016 by KBeezie

[corgicoupe]

This source turned up in another thread on this topic. https://fountainpendesign.wordpress.com/

 

This was written by a materials engineer who worked for Pelikan [i'm guessing] in the 1980s.

 

Start with these topics to get a good basis:

• How to… for Nibs
• Stresses and Strains
• Nib Mechanics
• Material Technology

And these:

• Nib Manufacturing
• Nib Materials
• How to… for Nibs

Hopefully, folks will come to understand more about fountain pen nibs.

[canibanoglu]

This source turned up in another thread on this topic. https://fountainpendesign.wordpress.com/

 

This was written by a materials engineer who worked for Pelikan [i'm guessing] in the 1980s.

 

Start with these topics to get a good basis:

• How to… for Nibs
• Stresses and Strains
• Nib Mechanics
• Material Technology

And these:

• Nib Manufacturing
• Nib Materials
• How to… for Nibs

Hopefully, folks will come to understand more about fountain pen nibs.

This is amazing, thank you very much! Naturally he explained everything much better than I could ever hope to

[bokchoy]

You are right about steel nibs corroding and since they have no tipping material their tips get pretty rough very quickly as well.

 

Don't steel nibs have tipping as well?

[NinthSphere]

 

Don't steel nibs have tipping as well?

 

That was in response to a post talking about steel dip nibs, which in most cases won't. Not all steel fountain pen nibs are tipped either.