First Choice For Flex Nib..

[Butrflis]

I prefer vintage, cartridge or converter. I will consider all however.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Let me get rid of my pet peeve..................are you talking about regular flex? Semi-flex? Maxi-semi-

flex? Or Superflex?

Many toss out the word flex.....which is as vague as saying a car has a powerful motor.

A semi-nail is a flex nib, it flexes twice as much as a nail.....2X vs 1X.

 

As far as I can tell there is no vintage semi-flex in cartridge/converter***, defiantly no superflex.

 

The new Conklin seems with the cermatic coated nib seems a very good semi-flex or better.

 

***I don't know about Aurora cartridge pens, in they made semi-flex in piston until @ 2005, and are now making them again in piston.

They are a narrow toothy nib....

 

How many pens do you have?

What flexes do you have? Do you have just nails? Do you have a semi-nail like a P-75.

What about a old springy regular flex Sheaffer, Esterbrook or Pelikan 200?

I think you should get one of them before thinking about moving into semi-flex or super-flex.

 

The springy vintage/semi-vintage /200 regular flex, has a nice comfortable ride, a clean line and in F&M (a falsely disrespected nib width) are good for two toned shading inks on 90g or better paper.

 

I think a nail in EF and B is a good start....then F&M in regular flex.

 

I do think one should work one's way up the flex ladder. Regular flex first.

 

Semi-flex is a wetter nib that can drown shading unless ink and paper match is well done.

I think most people hit semi-flex and are still Heavy Handed. Steel or 14K semi-flex like '50's-70 German pen are robust enough to withstand that. I was still Heavy Handed in spite of having regular flex nibs........how much worse my Heavy Hands would have been had I been coming just from Nail/semi-nail, I don't know.

It took me some 3 months to lighten my Hand, so I wasn't always maxing my semi-flex OB Pelikan 140....which has a 3 X tine spread.

 

I think you should go to dip pen nibs before even thinking of superflex.....why ruin a rare vintage nib because you have Jack Hammer Hands?

Cheap and some like the 99-100-101 Hunt nibs make a Wet Noodle, look uncooked.

 

The Zebra G nib may be a good first one, in it is rather stiff for a dip pen nib....from my understanding. I do have dip pen nibs a bit stiffer than those Hunts; more flexible than the Zebra G.....including stiff ornamental nibs.

Edited December 15, 2017 by Bo Bo Olson

[jar]

Buy the seller rather than the pen. There are perhaps a dozen sellers that actually have a clue what a flexible nib is.

 

Try the following sources and also the ones I forget to bring up.

 

Main Street Pens

Pendemonium

Vintage Pen dot Net

Vintage Pens dot com

Fountain Pen Hospital

Bertram's Inkwell

Dromgoole's

Fahrney's

Nibs dot com

Peyton Street Pens

 

Also, do not believe 99% of the flex stuff you see on the internet, it is not flex but just abuse.

Edited December 15, 2017 by jar

[Butrflis]

Thank you all for your replies!

I can relate to head smack moments...I am an Emergency doc and explaining things can get frustrating when one deals with someone who is stubborn stupid. I am not unwilling to learn.

I habe several pens. Some I would say are nails...others a bit more flexible. Here are what I have:

Several of each

Waterman c.f.

Waterman Master

Waterman super master

Parker 180 (I'd say def nails :-) However they work great at my job)

Edison nouveau premiere

Twsbi eco (not as nailish as parkers but still stiff and work great at work)

Perhaps you could tell me if any of these rate on your scales of flex and if so where on scale.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Sorry I can't help you, I have basically, '50-70's/82-97 German pens and only a couple modern ones, and the vintage English Empire Parker Jr. Duofold is semi-flex and the Australian made Snorkel maxi-semi-flex factory BB stub.

Do have some "new/cheap" Nail Parker's but that don't count.

Edison could be regular flex.....he will make you a semi-flex nib if you ask.

 

The Waterman pens............I don't know....I don't know when they were made so can't guess if they are regular flex or semi-nails.

Anything made after mid - 90's I'd guess as semi-nail. Before a slight chance at regular flex.

 

The only Waterman I had out side my 52's was a '80-90's Graduate/Kulture...one of the two...a chrome finger print trap.....nail. That I sold rapidly. I stayed away from them after that.....nail, and also on German Ebay there were few older Waterman pens to be had.

[Butrflis]

Oh yes I forgot to mention. I prefer slimmer pens if possible.

[Runnin_Ute]

The best option for a flex newbie might just be to try it out first using a dip pen. About $2 each for nibs. Total up front cost as low as $10. Why spend hundreds of dollars for something you aren't going to like? Especially if you can do it for a fraction. Plus you are only out a couple of bucks if you happen to spring a nib. Not hundreds.

[AAAndrew]

Slim, vintage, flexible? Here's one of my favorites.

 

 

I only have about 60 different favorite types, 150 semi-favorites, and the other several hundred types in my collection are just ok. Did I mention there are a lot of different kinds to choose from?

 

 

Oh, and they even come in gold.

 

[Noihvo]

[ReadyFireAim]

Personally, I'd buy a Noodler's Creaper to practice with.

 

If you want to check out some cool vintage stuff, this is a nice place.

 

https://willowstrongpens.com

 

BTW...Most of the best flex fountain pens are sac or eyedropper filled.

Edited December 16, 2017 by Bordeaux146

[mitto]

Waterman 52s and some Swan pens.

[sidthecat]

If you like slimmer pens, look into Wahl ringtops. There’s a lot of them on eBay right at the moment, mostly gold-filled, and they often have great nibs. Posted, they’re long enough for most hands and you can wear them.

[SpecTP]

check out Pelikan 400nn. I got 2 from the local pen show and they are lovely flex.

[Arkanabar]

Dip.

Seriously, start with dip pen, like a Zebra G or some of Speedball's dip pens. You can buy a dozen pretty cheap, so you don't have to worry about springing them.

I'm going to translate what Bo Bo means by flex or regular flex, semi-flex, and maxi-semi-flex. These categories aren't all that precise, and I generally have little to no interest in flex, so my ability to slot various modern pens into them is suspect. I'm still sorting out what I really like in terms of girth, weight, length, and materials.

Regular Flex means you can get some spread, perhaps enough to double line width, with pressure. Examples include Pelikan's current M2xx steel nibs, Noodler's Ahab/Konrad/Nib Creaper, and possibly Pilot's Falcon nibs, and who knows? Maybe the nibs that Fount Pen Revolution sells as "flex."

Semi-flex requires half the pressure of regular flex, and can provide 3x line width. It's possible that the FPR "flex" nibs count as semi-flex; the reviewers on fprevolutionusa.com often say that the FPR flex nibs are a lot more flexible than Noodler's. Modified nibs, like the Tomahawk mod or Ease My Flex mod, may count as semi-flex.

Maxi-semi-flex requires only a quarter of the pressure of Regular Flex to provide 3x line width.

Superflex is the classic "wet noodle" where the weight of the pen can easily double line width, and the spring limit is probably around 4x line width.

 

Once you can write on an unfolded sheet of 20lb copy paper held only in your off hand, you likely have a light enough touch that you need not worry about springing any of these flex nibs in ordinary writing.

Edited December 19, 2017 by Arkanabar

[AAAndrew]

What Arkanabar said. Without meaning to open the whole "measuring flex" can of worms, I'll just point out that "flex" is more than the width you can spread the tines without damaging the pen. The other aspect is "spring" and "snap", i.e. how easy is it to spread the tines, and how quickly they come back together. Both of these affect the writing experience. In the olden days, they called this the pen's "action." The kind of action you want depends on the type of writing you're doing. If you are doing calligraphy or highly ornamented writing, then you want a gentle spring and good snap. For everyday writing, or Spencerian, you want a slightly stiffer "spring" and very good "snap."

 

You get the best spring and snap from a steel pen. As a material, spring steel is very good at bending and coming back to the original position. Gold has to be carefully alloyed to create that kind of response, and it's never quite as good as steel. But, steel corrodes and gold nibs are tipped so they're smoother. In ye olden times (like the mid-late-19th-century), gold pens were for wealthy people and used only for correspondence, not ornamental writing. You could buy five years' worth of steel pens for the cost of one gold one, but enough people thought it was worth it to support a number of gold pen makers.

 

In the early years of steel pens, when the comparison with quills was every more immediate, there was even one more aspect of writing which was often mentioned, and that was softness of the pen itself. This refers to a spring in the body of the pen, not just in the tines. Some tried to accomplish this with large cut-outs of the sides of the nib, others, starting with Myer Phineas' 1853 patent, cut slots across the top of the pen to recreate this kind of "give" to the body of the pen. The modern equivalent was the double spring pen, like the Esterbrook 126. The critics and advertisers talked about this softness making it easier on the hand for extended writing.

 

So, flex, the spreading of the tines, is only one aspect, albeit the easiest to see and measure, of any flexible nib-writing experience. And that's why I have a lot of different vintage nibs. Each one embodies a slightly different combination of all of these factors.

[welch]

The best option for a flex newbie might just be to try it out first using a dip pen. About $2 each for nibs. Total up front cost as low as $10. Why spend hundreds of dollars for something you aren't going to like? Especially if you can do it for a fraction. Plus you are only out a couple of bucks if you happen to spring a nib. Not hundreds.

 

Exactly!

 

Flex-nib writing is meant to be slow...otherwise, you can't create the beautiful letters. Traditional fountain pens rarely had flex nibs, since people aimed at quick and clear writing. The popular Sheaffer triumph nib and the tubular Parker 51 nib were stiff because that's what the market demanded. That's what practical writing required and what most people learned to do...right down until now.

 

Try a stick pen instead. As mentioned, you might find you dislike flexible nibs, and then you won't have wasted so much money. While pen companies quit making flexible nibs after 1950, at least in the US, calligraphic artists continued to demand flex nibs on their dip pens. "Flexible" is not a lost art for them; for a genuine flex nib fountain pen, yiu need to search out expensive vintage pens or trust what modern nib makers have tried to re-create.

[ReadyFireAim]

Flex-nib writing is meant to be slow...otherwise, you can't create the beautiful letters.

 

I just wrote this pretty darn fast for another thread with a $16 pen.

 

The problem with a dip pen is you can't take it everywhere and goof around with it when you have time to kill.

I always have an el-cheapo flexy pen in my pocket to play with.

 

Just that little bit of practice during "wasted time" is enough to really pay off.

 

[jandrews]

 

I just wrote this pretty darn fast for another thread with a $16 pen.

 

The problem with a dip pen is you can't take it everywhere and goof around with it when you have time to kill.

I always have an el-cheapo flexy pen in my pocket to play with.

 

Just that little bit of practice during "wasted time" is enough to really pay off.

 

IMG_0661.JPG

 

 

that's lovely. What is the name of that 16 dollar flex you used? I have been using the flex nibs from Fountain Pen Revolution for a while and am loving it, but I'm looking for a nib I don't have to lean into so hard.

 

Thanks!

[ReadyFireAim]

 

 

I have been using the flex nibs from Fountain Pen Revolution ...I'm looking for a nib I don't have to lean into so hard.

 

This will slide right into a Himalayan assuming you got the FPR ebonite feed with it.

https://www.gouletpens.com/noodler-s-nib-creaper-2-steel-nib-flex/p/N18090

Not nearly as much pressured is required to flex it.

 

FPR runs specials on Himalayans every once in awhile for $20 if you don't have one already.

 

For something really special, you can grind the Creaper down to XXF or have someone do it for you.

[Butrflis]

What Arkanabar said. Without meaning to open the whole "measuring flex" can of worms, I'll just point out that "flex" is more than the width you can spread the tines without damaging the pen. The other aspect is "spring" and "snap", i.e. how easy is it to spread the tines, and how quickly they come back together. Both of these affect the writing experience. In the olden days, they called this the pen's "action." The kind of action you want depends on the type of writing you're doing. If you are doing calligraphy or highly ornamented writing, then you want a gentle spring and good snap. For everyday writing, or Spencerian, you want a slightly stiffer "spring" and very good "snap."

 

You get the best spring and snap from a steel pen. As a material, spring steel is very good at bending and coming back to the original position. Gold has to be carefully alloyed to create that kind of response, and it's never quite as good as steel. But, steel corrodes and gold nibs are tipped so they're smoother. In ye olden times (like the mid-late-19th-century), gold pens were for wealthy people and used only for correspondence, not ornamental writing. You could buy five years' worth of steel pens for the cost of one gold one, but enough people thought it was worth it to support a number of gold pen makers.

 

In the early years of steel pens, when the comparison with quills was every more immediate, there was even one more aspect of writing which was often mentioned, and that was softness of the pen itself. This refers to a spring in the body of the pen, not just in the tines. Some tried to accomplish this with large cut-outs of the sides of the nib, others, starting with Myer Phineas' 1853 patent, cut slots across the top of the pen to recreate this kind of "give" to the body of the pen. The modern equivalent was the double spring pen, like the Esterbrook 126. The critics and advertisers talked about this softness making it easier on the hand for extended writing.

 

So, flex, the spreading of the tines, is only one aspect, albeit the easiest to see and measure, of any flexible nib-writing experience. And that's why I have a lot of different vintage nibs. Each one embodies a slightly different combination of all of these factors.

Outstanding explanation..truly. I'm someone who usually has to "see and do" anything another tries to explain simply because most cannot convey information well with the written word. Your explanation made perfect sense. Edited December 20, 2017 by Butrflis