Extrafine 149S

[alfredop]

With all the love that extrabroad nibs are having here, I feel the necessity to show a couple of extrafine nibs which are on two of my 149s (there is a third with a medium nib). As you can see from the writing (sorry for the Italian language), both these two nibs have an Arabic (or architect) behavior, with horizontal lines thicker than vertical ones.

 

 

In my opinion this type of nibs is perfect for math

 

 

Alfredo

[BlueSquiggle]

I've a beaten up old 149 (from the late 80's I think) that has an EF nib and it is absolutely wonderful to write with and as you say the horizontal strokes are thicker than the vertical giving a lovely change to the look of your handwriting. It's a sadly neglected nib size on here since many people on here seem to prefer the fat broads Montblanc produce.

[fromthecrowd]

Thank you for the post! Very informative. Excellent performance with this rather dry ink. Beautiful lines!

[Grzgrz]

With all the love that extrabroad nibs are having here, I feel the necessity to show a couple of extrafine nibs which are on two of my 149s (there is a third with a medium nib). As you can see from the writing (sorry for the Italian language), both these two nibs have an Arabic (or architect) behavior, with horizontal lines thicker than vertical ones.

 

tmp_18062-_20161216_2327392030751520.JPG

 

In my opinion this type of nibs is perfect for math

 

tmp_18062-_20161226_143653-463367560.JPG

 

Alfredo

Thank you for your post. Very cool comparison. Last liked a broad nib, but for a long time I would also like to have 149 EF nib. Apparently nibs 149 EF write very well, especially smoothly and without scraping. All the time I wonder. It is true, as you compare your two nib EF?

 

I've a beaten up old 149 (from the late 80's I think) that has an EF nib and it is absolutely wonderful to write with and as you say the horizontal strokes are thicker than the vertical giving a lovely change to the look of your handwriting. It's a sadly neglected nib size on here since many people on here seem to prefer the fat broads Montblanc produce.

Do you can compare your own pen to modern nib EF 149? I'm very curious of such a comparison.

[Mastiff]

Thanks for the post. I recently bought a new EF, and strangely, and in contrary to what is commonly said, mine does not display the 'Arabic' tendency in the slightest. You can see my writing sample below. May I ask when your pen was purchased and whether it is possible that newer pens do not have these characteristics anymore?

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/302510-whats-your-most-recent-mb-purchase-2016/page-36

[alfredop]

Thank you for your post. Very cool comparison. Last liked a broad nib, but for a long time I would also like to have 149 EF nib. Apparently nibs 149 EF write very well, especially smoothly and without scraping. All the time I wonder. It is true, as you compare your two nib EF?

 

Do you can compare your own pen to modern nib EF 149? I'm very curious of such a comparison.

Well, the two pens are not exactly equal and number 2 is much more smooth, but I'm not the first owner and I suspect that the first one was a little bit abused. I cannot compare with the modern ones because both of mine are very old (they should date between 1980 and 2000).

 

Alfredo

Edited December 26, 2016 by alfredop

[alfredop]

Thanks for the post. I recently bought a new EF, and strangely, and in contrary to what is commonly said, mine does not display the 'Arabic' tendency in the slightest. You can see my writing sample below. May I ask when your pen was purchased and whether it is possible that newer pens do not have these characteristics anymore?

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/302510-whats-your-most-recent-mb-purchase-2016/page-36

From your photo it seems that effectively the modern EF nibs lost their Arabic character, my pens are both very old so as it is not possible to understand if this is a general fact, or it is your pen a little bit different. nevertheless I can see that your EF nib is more on the EF side, and this could be a good news for people like me that write very small.

 

Alfredo

[jmccarty3]

I have an EF 149 that was given to me some years ago. The nib is a 14K with a split ebonite feed. It writes a little dry with Montblanc Midnight Blue, but puts out a line about the same width as a Sailor HF. The nib is a little scratchy, but that can be fixed by a nibmeister. It's a very nice pen for those times when you need an EF.

[Kalessin]

The "Arabic character" found on some of MB's EF or EEF nibs might be caused by how the nib tipping is ground and hand-finished, rather than being something that was done on purpose.

[alfredop]

The "Arabic character" found on some of MB's EF or EEF nibs might be caused by how the nib tipping is ground and hand-finished, rather than being something that was done on purpose.

This is possible, by the way I've also a 146 with an EF nib (bought from an authorized dealer with an F nib, and then asked for an exchange to EF to the local boutique), and also in this case the nib gives the same Arabic effect.

 

Alfredo

Edited December 27, 2016 by alfredop

[Grzgrz]

Well, the two pens are not exactly equal and number 2 is much more smooth, but I'm not the first owner and I suspect that the first one was a little bit abused. I cannot compare with the modern ones because both of mine are very old (they should date between 1980 and 2000).

 

Alfredo

 

 

I have an EF 149 that was given to me some years ago. The nib is a 14K with a split ebonite feed. It writes a little dry with Montblanc Midnight Blue, but puts out a line about the same width as a Sailor HF. The nib is a little scratchy, but that can be fixed by a nibmeister. It's a very nice pen for those times when you need an EF.

Thank you very much for your answer.

[Obyekt]

Hello, I see you're also using a fountain pen to write mathematics and physics (looks like some kind of modified version of Maxwell's laws). I'm also doing a bit of vector algebra like yourself (systems theory in my case, so lots of nifty little vectors and other matrices going on ). I'm looking into buying an MB146F as my next daily writer. Do you think an F MB nib will hold up for writing subscript which in turn has subscript and/or superscript (damn these relative axes!)?

Edited January 3, 2017 by Obyekt

[Tom Kellie]

~ Obyekt:

 

In my work it's necessary to write mathematical/physical formulae with superscripts.

It's also a daily requirement to add notes in written Chinese (中文).

In both cases I've found that Montblanc EF nibs perform such tasks with ease.

I switched from an F nib to an EF nib, which noticeably improved the precision of writing smaller notation.

Tom K.

[max dog]

Modern Montblanc EF has the arabic effect, some more so than others. That's why MB EF are my favourite EFs. I have a 145 EF with the same arabic effect. Gives nice character to my extra fine writing. I liked it so much, I exchaged the M nib on my 146 Solitaire to an EF as well. I get the arabic effect more on certain papers. There is a nice pinned post in the forum that describes the different Montblanc nib width characteristics. The illustration below is from that post.

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/131613-montblanc-nib-sizes/page-6

 

 

 

 

Edited January 3, 2017 by max dog

[Tom Kellie]

[Obyekt]

~ Obyekt:

 

In my work it's necessary to write mathematical/physical formulae with superscripts.

It's also a daily requirement to add notes in written Chinese (中文).

In both cases I've found that Montblanc EF nibs perform such tasks with ease.

I switched from an F nib to an EF nib, which noticeably improved the precision of writing smaller notation.

Tom K.

 

Thanks for the advice, I have heard similar stories from other sources and will keep this in mind.

[alfredop]

To write mathematics with subscripts and superscripts I prefer a Montblanc EF nib. Of course you can use also an F nib, but in that case I would resort to a Pilot or Delta pen.

 

Alfredo

[jsph]

this is really funny timing. i've been explaining to my daughter why our little quest for an extra-fine (late '60s / early '70s) 149 has been going on so long and will probably continue on for a while: because while on the one hand you're admittedly starting from looking for a relatively rare thing -- a vintage pen still with all its original parts etc (ebonite, plastic threads, etc, not exchanged out by mb service the last >40 years) -- they're not all _that_ rare, you do see a number of them on sale every week, just on ebay for instance, and really what's been the big disappointment week after week is finding pen after pen after pen that's essentially that dream pen, right down to the long tines 14c nib or the triangular french 18c version, but _always_ it's got a medium nib, a B, an OB, or at best a fine, but virtually never an extra-fine.

 

... and it's just a matter of looking for an extreme thing, and that means there are just that many fewer ones to choose from, but like you guys have been talking about here, for some reason it's just that much worse because it seems like most 149 customers have not been extra-fine customers, much more likely medium and bold customer, which maybe makes sense based on it being such a huge pen (you'd call that a proximal explanation, maybe) or on it being historically such a status symbol aristocracy upper-management pen and not a college-student-taking-notes pen or accountant-balancing-the-books pen, which... sigh. my daughter was even saying what that dumb voice in my head started saying after a few weeks of this disappointment, which was maybe i could just change how i write -- write bigger! -- and pick up one of the many mediums and fines (really, a fine, because a fine 149 writes what all my life i would call a medium line) that keep popping up, but honestly, there's no way that's going to work out, i just can't do it, and i really am taking a lot of notes every day, and these work best on 5mm x 5mm (i.e., five squares per inch) graph paper. so... it's nice to hear about at least a small portion of the 149 fan club that's specifically an extra-fine 149 fan club.

 

... and the discussion of the hebrew/arabic/architect flavour is really interesting, too -- not that i mean it's the first time i'm hearing about this or experiencing it. it's a great look as far as line variations go, and it's an interesting statement about how the nibs are made. as far as i remember, it's happening not as a really intended thing -- i.e., it's not the case that a top-down decision has been actively made that, all of a sudden, when you go from fine to extra-fine, we at montblanc believe you would also appreciate a switch from symmetric to hebrew/arabic/architect line variation -- but rather (and i'm trying to remember where i came across this; a comment by binder? a lament by some other pen celebrity? i don't remember) it's happening because the extra-fines are being made from blanks and iridium nib tippings that are not really much / at all different from the fine nibs, but that the line is made into an extra fine specifically from grinding the very tip of the nib inward from the left and right sides, not all around in every direction. so, you get a surface touching the page that's still about as long (from the nib's tip toward the feed) as it would be if it were still a fine (which is what you see in the wider lines produced when the nib moves left/right / horizontally on the page) but is thinner/narrower now, so that strokes that move up and down on the page (along the axis from the tip of the nib toward the feed), those strokes are thinner because the sides have been ground inward.

 

this was a lament by someone, i think i remember, because they were saying it's a cheap / lazy way to make an extra fine, rather than having a different taper to the whole nib's nose and/or having a different size/amount of tipping material that would from the beginning and naturally be an extra-fine / smaller than the fine they intend to produce -- which is a very good point, cuz just look at, e.g., a pilot medium versus fine versus extra-fine and you'll see the whole nib is different, not just the very tip, and so a pilot extra-fine really does not have any architect flavour to it -- and that if you make extra-fines this way, it's not so legit, it's lazy. ... but i say it gives such a sexy line variation, if i got an extra-fine 149 and found it writes architect-y, i would take that was a feature, not a bug, a bonus, not a drawback. i mean, at this point, i would be way happy with the quest coming to an end with either kind of extra-fine 149, hebrew/italic or not hebrew italic, but if i had to choose, some of that architect-y flavour would be pretty tasty. i think, in the dream world, what would be really amazing is a hebrew/italic extra-fine that has an extra-fine (not fine) line in the horizontal strokes and an extra-extra-fine (not extra-fine) line in the vertical strokes. that would be pretty slick. ... which i think is the point, because the really interesting thing would be to compare the horizontal strokes of an extra-fine 149 with the horizontal strokes of a fine 149, and if they were pretty much close to the same thing, then they are kindof getting away with not making the extra-fines as narrow (in both directions) as they could be, but just sortof narrower, fifty percent of the time, just when you're making vertical strokes, which could partly lead to the extra-fine line not being so much more eye-poppingly narrow as compared to the fine. ... but what do i know? i've never held a 149 outside of a montblanc store or pen show -- and never held a vintage one. sigh.

[zaddick]

Jsph- why all the angst? Why not buy the pen you want with an M or F and have it ground just how you want it? Buy the starting pen cheap enough and spend another $40ish to get the nib set up with the stroke characteristics you want and the flow rate you want. Unless you enjoy the hunt then happy hunting.

[jagwap]

While I'm sure it may not be as satisfying as a FP nib, for technical stuff I use the Montblanc M artfineliner. Unlike the other finliners it takes an extra fine refill, and is the best I have yet used for my notes and diagrams. I am an electronic engineer and have to make notes, mathmatical formulae, mechnical sketches and electronic circuits every day.

 

It has supplanted my favourite, a Rotring drawing pen 0.25mm.

 

I suggest you try it. It should cost around the same as a nib change.