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Fountain Pen For Copperplate


NuteralG

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I am in love with the copperplate style of writing , and have practised for 2 months now with a standard nib / cheap pen from a store in my town. I cant get thick downward strokes so my writing just looks like thin copperplate all the time. So can people recommend good cheap pens that are good for thick down ward strokes and thin side wards strokes . Im going to be using it at school so dip pens wont be the best there. Any help is appreciated :)

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Noodlers pens are your best bet.

"Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts." - Patrick Rothfuss

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The problem with Copperplate and similar is, you need to use a nib that will flex. Not all dip pen nibs will flex, and very few fountain pen nibs will flex.

 

Second is that you need to hold the pen such that the downstroke is mostly in line with the pen. A diagonal or side stroke when flexed is hard on the trailing tine, and can spit/splatter ink if you are not careful, and will fatigue the nib faster.

 

Cost is the problem. A GOOD flexible fountain pen is NOT cheap. They start from about $125 USD and go up fast.

And if you damage the nib, very easy if you are a beginner, a replacement nib will cost you about what you paid for the pen.

 

The best that I can recommend is a Desiderata pen. That is a fountain pen body with a Zebra G dip pen nib. And it so happens that it is cheaper than most decent flexible fountain pens. The Zebra G nib being a chrome plated dip pen nib, will have to be replaced every month or so, as it WILL corrode when in constant contact with ink. And the tip will wear down, like any dip pen nib. But the Zebra G nib only costs about $2 each or less.

 

And forget the Noodler's pens. It is a gamble if you will get one that works 'out of the box.' My experience is that you won't. 2 out of 2 duds.

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Desiderata is currently sold out of pens...

 

An Esterbrook J with a flex nib was recommended to me, but it may not be cheap depending on your budget.

"Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts." - Patrick Rothfuss

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I have the Esterbrook flex nibs, and they are pretty hard. Just like a Noodler's nib. And the Esterbrook 9xxx flex nibs command a rather high price of about $50+, IF you can find them.

 

Another option, is Fountain Pen Revolution. Though I have not tried their pens, so I have no idea of their Quality Control. Nor how the pens write. Their flex nibs look very similar to a Noodler's nib. I put one of their nibs into an old Wearever, and it wrote quite well. But was not as fine as a dip pen nib.

Edited by ac12

San Francisco Pen Show - August 28-30, 2020 - Redwood City, California

www.SFPenShow.com

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My best luck in this arena has come from taking a Desiderata and installing a Victorian era gold dip nib (with iridium tipping) along with a Skyline feed. Victorian gold dip nibs are a good choice because, in my experience, they are almost always somewhat flexible, have very fine tips, and won't need replacing (Given the scripts these pens were made to write, it makes sense they'd be great for CP). Unfortunate aspect is it will take a lot of hunting and experimenting to find a good combination.

 

You'll also want to use an Iron Gall ink like Registrars ink as, in my experience, only IG inks can get the quick transition from wide shading to slim hairlines; other ink, like noodlers, blurs the transitions and doesn't really do hairlines at all.

 

You can use other pens of course for this transplant but I find the Desiderata is great for this because

-There is a lot of room in the cap for the long tines of a dip nib.

-It's very tough and will stand up to experimentation abuse quite well.

-Holds a lot of ink.

-Feed isn't so big that you'll be hunting for the larger, and therefore, rarer dip nibs.

 

Desiderata uses a 5.5mm diameter feed, so you'll want a nib that is that wide at the base and has a rounded curvature. You'll certainly need to heat set the feed.

 

One downside is that, like all straight holders, you'll be fighting the nib a bit vs and oblique holder.

Edited by Synnove
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its suitable just have to write in a way where letters can be differentiated or you just draw an alphabet for people to refer to , and anyways I just like writing with fountain pens in general

Edited by NuteralG
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I consider Copperplate as impractical to use to take notes during class. Way too SLOW to write.

More practical to use during breaks and study hall for fun.

San Francisco Pen Show - August 28-30, 2020 - Redwood City, California

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My teachers normally go slow anyways so I have time to take 10 minutes on one word

What level of school are you in? I could barely keep up with most of my bio professors in college using a laptop. It was a struggle in chem, etc. when I had to write my notes and I write fairly quick when I have to for note taking purposes.

"Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts." - Patrick Rothfuss

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My teachers normally go slow anyways so I have time to take 10 minutes on one word

 

IMHO, if you are doing this in class, you are not paying attention to the teacher.

In class, you should concentrate on the class.

Do your fancy writing in your spare time.

 

As OM said, you should be preparing for college and good and fast note taking, or you will be badly surprised.

San Francisco Pen Show - August 28-30, 2020 - Redwood City, California

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In year 8 ,13 Years old so... Got a long way till college or university :).

 

Also I was kidding with the 10 mins on one word , I normally in most lessons will write 2 -3 pages in sorta copperplate (minimised flourishes)

 

Anyways Ive been interested in modifying a jinhao x750 or x450 to work with a G nib. Im just thinking the feed wont be able to keep up with the amount of ink the nib will want ,so I will constantly have hitching or would the feed be able to keep up?

Edited by NuteralG
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In year 8 ,13 Years old so... Got a long way till college or university :).

 

Also I was kidding with the 10 mins on one word , I normally in most lessons will write 2 -3 pages in sorta copperplate (minimised flourishes)

 

 

Grade 8, in the US, that would be 4 years + a fraction (current year) to university.

If you don't develop GOOD study habbits now, it will be too late by the time you hit university. And good study habits don't come quickly. And I can tell you that from my own person experience.

In the US and I would guess the UK, pre-university grades are evaluated for acceptance into university. So you are going to be on trial in a year or two.

San Francisco Pen Show - August 28-30, 2020 - Redwood City, California

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Dude, kid's in here to learn about fountain pens. Not many 13 year olds doing that and a lot of them can't even write cursive. Good for you, NuteralG. Just know that it gets harder to keep up and write neat once you get to college. Particularly if you go into science and it's worse at bigger universities where you're just a number to professors.

 

Anywho - I know a lot of people have modified pens to take dip flex nibs, but I'm no expert on it. Someone might chime in or you could try over in the nibs section.

Edited by OmegaMountain

"Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts." - Patrick Rothfuss

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Here's the old nib guy talking. (my collection is of vintage dip nibs, specializing in the nibs used for school, work, etc..., but I also know my way around copperplate)

 

What I suspect you're looking for is the cool variation in line you get from copperplate. What you need is a rapid writer. Do what the old folks did 100+ years ago when they were in the same situation. They went with fine stubs. Anyone who had to write quickly and write copiously, used a stub. This is why the old dip stubs are named after professions that did a lot of writing: Lawyer, Probate, Judge's Quill, Congressional. You don't want a sharp italic, you want a fairly soft stub with rounded corners. A TWSBI stub is good, and with the huge ink reserves it should be perfect for class.

 

Now here's where you go old-school with the stub that that will give you the nicest modulation of line. Instead of holding the stub at a 45-degree angle to the direction of writing (the lines on the page), like you would for writing italic, keep the nib parallel to the line. You'll need to rotate the paper a bit, but you'd have to do this with a flexible pen. Keep your arms in to your sides and the alignment should be natural. Do this, write in cursive, and you will look like Copperplate Light.

 

Writing with a flexible pen is much harder and slower as you are moving not just in two dimensions, across the plain of the paper, but also in a third dimension, up and down off the paper. It takes more time, skill and practice to write even half as fast as a nice stub.

 

To show the difference, here's an example I wrote last year. On the left is a small dip stub (Esterbrook 239 Chancellor) , on the right is a pointed, semi-flexible pen. (can't remember, but I think it was an Eagle E840 Modern Writing) I wrote it and it took me a minute or two to remember which side was which.

 

fpn_1461765040__stub_pointed_comparison.

 

Go with a stub. You won't regret it. Get a smaller stub, or have a nib meister grind down a 1.1 to a .8 or so smooth cursive stub.

 

My $0.2 cents worth.

 

“When the historians of education do equal and exact justice to all who have contributed toward educational progress, they will devote several pages to those revolutionists who invented steel pens and blackboards.” V.T. Thayer, 1928

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"No one is exempt from talking nonsense; the mistake is to do it solemnly."

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Dude, kid's in here to learn about fountain pens. Not many 13 year olds doing that and a lot of them can't even write cursive. Good for you, NuteralG. Just know that it gets harder to keep up and write neat once you get to college. Particularly if you go into science and it's worse at bigger universities where you're just a number to professors.


Yes he is here to learn about fountain pens.

But he should also not get carried away with fancy writing, to the detriment of his studies.

In my book, flourishing during class is as bad as doodling, he is not paying attention to the teacher.

 

As the saying goes, "there is a time and place for everything."

San Francisco Pen Show - August 28-30, 2020 - Redwood City, California

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Yes he is here to learn about fountain pens.

But he should also not get carried away with fancy writing, to the detriment of his studies.

In my book, flourishing during class is as bad as doodling, he is not paying attention to the teacher.

 

As the saying goes, "there is a time and place for everything."

 

I agree with this 100%. Now is the time to learn good solid study habits. Don't do it like I did and dink around and get say a C or C+ average..... because the lower the GPA is, the higher the score you have to have on your SAT's and ACT's. And then how do you compete with the guy who has better grades AND the higher test scores?

It makes it tough.

 

I ended up going the Community College route then transferring. Even as good as I did I was probably only a C+ or B- student by the time I graduated from college. And my GPA in college was higher than it was in high school.

 

To bring back on topic....

 

Why not use a stub nib of some sort. It is easy to use, you can get line variation and a narrower one you can probably write nearly as quickly as a round nib. And speed is important when taking class notes.

Brad

"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind" - Rudyard Kipling
"None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its cussedness; but we can try." - Mark Twain

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Great suggestion, AAAndrew! And beautiful writing samples, by the way. You make your point very evident.

ron

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