Nakaya Long Cigar

[flipper_gv]

You can always smooth out the nib and increase the flow yourself. It's not hard. But, it's frustrating as hell doing it on a pen of this price. I know, I had to do it on my m1000.

[jchch1950]

have you tried different inks?

[lgsoltek]

The only thing I don't like about my Nakaya, it's the nib. It's a soft medium, but it's basically hard as nail. I heard somewhere that Nakaya don't actually produce hard vs soft nibs specifically. They just produce a bunch of nibs and test their hardness, and stamp those softer ones as "soft".

Also it has a medium to dry flow, even when I've specified in my order to set the pen to a wetter flow.

The nib itself is rather toothy, with a lot of feedback, maybe that's what Uncial perceived as "scratchy". I wouldn't call mine scratchy, but it surely isn't butter smooth. And all that is aggravated by the medium flow.

I'd say that this nib behaves rather like Platinum nibs, given the affinity of the two brands I'm not surprised.

 

I find that with a very wet ink (eg. the Blackstone inks), I can coax a better writing experience out of it.

Edited March 31, 2017 by Lgsoltek

[Uncial]

Before working on the nib with the mylar papers (very, very fine grade) the medium nib was very unpleasant to me and completely unusable. I had used both a Noodler's eel ink and a highly lubricated Sailor ink (among many other inks), both of which I knew improved writing experience quite significantly in other pens. In the Nakaya and its medium nib before the mylar work, it made no noticeable difference. Having now used the mylar it's not perfect, but if I stick to inks like those I mentioned above and what I tend to think of as 'thick' inks I can actually get some use out of the pen.

 

It is essentially a personal preference thing I guess, but that nib (pre-work) was not a nib type that I would ever want to use again. It was a source of frustration to me that so many reviews declared very loudly that the nib was incredibly smooth and so few reviews ever mentioned that it might be a nib with feedback and even those that did (I really had to hunt them down after I was so shocked by the original 'fine' nib), didn't really get to the core of just how significant the feedback can be; which is a pity. It's a lesson learned, that one person's butter is another person's grit.

[ralfstc]

I've had a few Nakayas, and when I got my first expected, like the OP, that it would be a sublime experience. I have a light hand and like a wetter nib, and also prize smoothness. A "draggy" nib bothers me deeply. I sold my Nakayas because I just didn't like writing with them (and obviously forgot and bought another because they ARE beautiful and cool).

 

A couple of years ago I went to Japan with my son, and bought a Nakaya as a souvenir (which he'll get when he turns 21). It was a Neo Standard, and I really liked the feel in the hand, but the nib still felt like something you weren't actually meant to write with. I sent it to Oxonian, my favourite nib tweaker, and it came back transformed. Still skinny (it's an F) but great fun to use. Having a nib that matches the look of the pen (that is, that fits my tastes in nibs!) has turned an expensive white elephant/souvenir into something I look forward to giving to my son in the knowledge that he can use it and enjoy it for the rest of his life.

 

Moral of the story: Uncial, consider sending the pen to Oxonian, and you'll see that Nakayas really can work well for light handed folk like you and me.

 

Ralf

[Uncial]

......but the nib still felt like something you weren't actually meant to write with......

 

 

You phrased that far more beautifully and succinctly than I have managed with all my wordy responses here. That sums up my feeling about it exactly.

Thank you for the recommendation. Would you mind sending me the details of Oxonian by pm? I won't be making contact with him in the immediate future because I've pumped soooo much money into this pen sending it backwards and forwards through the post with insurance that every time I look at it now my wallet cries, but in the near enough future it would be nice to have the details to hand.

[rwilsonedn]

I think this thread drives home the point that if you have high expectations for a pen, you need to write with it before you buy. That is not always possible, but the alternative is potential disappointment. There are so many variables that go into one's perception of a nib--the material, shape, and finish of the tip, the way the nib body transmits vibration and yields to pressure, the paper and ink combination, ink flow rate, and perhaps most important, one's hand. Especially with finer nibs, it seems as if some vendors shape the nib so that a very small variation in angle or rotation of the pen sets an edge of the tipping material into the paper, entirely changing the feel. Similarly, pressure can make a huge difference. One person with exact and constant pen alignment and a very light hand might feel a nib entirely differently from another person who holds the pen at a slightly different orientation or uses just a bit more pressure. Since it is not possible to convey all this information in a review, there just is no substitute for trying the pen in a normal writing position, in your hand, on your paper, with your ink.

ron