First Pelikan!

[addylo]

Hi all! I just jumped into the FP pool and decided on the M400 as my first. I'm one month in as a new owner and am loving it so far. I've already got a matching R400 on its way across the pond. Happy to be a member of the club!

 

[langere]

Good to have you! Pelikans are great pens, I agree.

 

Erick

[Driften]

Congrats!

[inkstainedruth]

Congratulations! Although you may discover that they um, tend to, well, flock.... (And Pelikan breeding is a somewhat *expensive* endeavor....

I love the M200/M400 size pens. What's the nib on yours?

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[gmathio]

Great first Pelikan choice ! Congrats !

[addylo]

I love the M200/M400 size pens. What's the nib on yours?

 

I went with a fine even though I had read before buying that they run wide. Kind of wish I had listened to my instincts and gone EF but there will always be other pens. In fact, I'm seriously considering adding an M200 with an EF nib as a daily carry pen.

 

A pic just for fun.

 

Edited August 27, 2018 by addylo

[ENewton]

I also just acquired my first Pelikan, after more than twenty years of using fountain pens. It's a 140, and so far I've just dipped it.

 

I look forward to discovering the special qualities of Pelikan for myself.

[1nkulus]

Good start.

 

Only 600, 800, 1000 to go.

Far more if you go down the embellishment route.

[BillH]

Hi all! I just jumped into the FP pool and decided on the M400 as my first. I'm one month in as a new owner and am loving it so far. I've already got a matching R400 on its way across the pond. Happy to be a member of the club!

 

 

 

Great photo of a great pen! Thanks for sharing. And welcome to Pelikan Collectors Anonymous

 

[Bo Bo Olson]

Modern Pelikans are @ 1/2 a width wider than semi-vintage or vintage. (Often many folks start off with Japanese pens, so all western pens are 'wide'....Just as some find all Japanese pens to be narrow.) I find Pelikan to be no wider than Lamy, and not so wide as MB.

 

As for wet.....they are not with Pelikan 4001 inks they were developed for.

Other wet or wetter inks will of course write wet, on a pen designed for dry inks.

 

 

Posted it has very, very good balance ( the 400NN has a slight tad better balance...only took me two years so to decide that .). Is long enough posted to have great balance. If you fear mars....which I have not had on my Pelikans and I have a good hand full of vintage ones, use a bit of Carnauba car wax, the one with no petroleum additives.

I wax my pens every three or so years.

 

Your nib is a butter smooth semi-nail. A great advantage of Pelikan is you can swap nibs.

If you and or when you do .

You can buy later, the thinner semi-vintage nibs from the no piston ring M400, '82-97 that are a very nice springy regular flex, or later, a '50-65 semi-flex nib that fits that pen.

 

The gold plated or even plain steel 200's springy regular flex are a bit narrower and very good springy regular flex nibs. Very much cheaper and just as good as gold semi-vintage regular flex nibs.

 

I must have 15 16+ Pelikans, perhaps more. I've not counted Inked I have 8, 8 or so not inked. Bound to be a couple more somewhere ...Ah...not counting the one I'm now using.

 

Of course that took a decade, so there is no rush.....enjoy your new 400 for a while.

 

You didn't say what width you have.

Pelikan 4001 inks which the feed and nib were designed for, will make it write thinner, wetter inks wider.

The better the paper the thinner it will write.

[sargetalon]

Great pen. Congrats! Excellent way to get into the brand. Enjoy.

[invisuu]

Congrats. Thats a great pen.

[stephanos]

Congratulations.

Now, quick: hide your wallet!

[Minty]

Dear Lone Star Stater, from an Appalachian-American,

Congratulations on your Pelikan. We wish you many years of great service. I got my 1st one in 1986, an M200 for $40 American & still use it every day. It has been fed Pelikan royal blue ink only. Love your leather diary also. Midori?

 

Don't start vast projects with half-vast ideas.

[DrCodfish]

 

I went with a fine even though I had read before buying that they run wide. Kind of wish I had listened to my instincts and gone EF but there will always be other pens. In fact, I'm seriously considering adding an M200 with an EF nib as a daily carry pen.

 

A pic just for fun.

 

 

 

Good plan! Especially as the nibs of the M20 and M400 models are interchangeable and really easy to swap out.

 

[Bo Bo Olson]

First every company has it's very own standard of nib width, so if you are comparing pineapples to pears....well. I have an antique chart that shows Waterman is narrower than Pelikan....all the way down to EF where Pelikan is narrower............pre-Japanse on the market.

 

Then within that company standards, is tolerance/slop.......one pen could be a skinny F, the very next one a fat F....and no one's eye is that sharp to tell the difference between a fat EF and a skinny F or a fat F and a skinny M.....in that company.

Each company overlaps the other. Parker didn't want to make a skinny nib like Sheaffer, or their customer could make a horrible mistake and buy a Sheaffer....back in the One Man, One Pen days.

 

I expect the new number nib to vary just as much....a 1.0 nib could just as well be a 1.0 or a 0.9 and be Well inside of tolerance...in anyone's factory.

 

Many people started with Japanese pens, they make a very good cheap one. So their eyes are Mark 2 Eyeball calibrated. Japanese nibs are made for tiny printed script.

If you print it's a best buy.

They were a nitch pen until the late '90's, so scaled their size marking down to their tiny script.

 

I started with American and later semi-vintage and vintage German pens, so my Mark 1 Eyeball is calibrated to flowing cursive proper width. If you don't print, may be best.

 

Is Pelikan wide to overly narrow marked Japanese, yes. 1/2 a width wider than semi-vintage, or vintage Pelikan. Those EF's are closer to some one's "Japanese Norm."

I don't find Pelikan any wider than Lamy, and both are narrower than modern MB.

 

Aurora has always been the narrowest European pen....close to Japanese narrow.

 

The narrower the nib, the smaller the sweet spot...........narrow nibs are not good on laid paper.

M is disliked for some reason, but is smoother than F....

"

"Using MB Toffee back when I was newer. I like shading inks.

 

F was light with dark trails.

M was 50-50 in shading , breaking my anti-M prejudice I picked up here on the com.

B was dark with light trails."""

 

I'd not worry too much about Pelikan being wider, one could always be radical and write larger. Wider than collage lines are good for Western M nib pens....Japanese B.

There are free templates where on can make collage, middle or wide lines on a sheet of paper. One can make lines quite wide enough for B or BB nibs if one wishes. Or even narrower than collage for those who like a Japanese XXF....or baby spiderweb.

 

I find western M&F good for two toned shading inks. I do not find western EF or Japanese F, to be all that good with shading inks.

Real narrow nibs, demand vivid mono-toned boring supersaturated inks, just to be seen.

 

So narrow or wide has to do with what you want your ink to do.

Glitter and sheen require wider nibs.

Pelikan 4001 the ink Pelikan pens are designed for is a dry ink.

Once, before Noodlers, Waterman was considered a wet ink. Now there are some Noodler users that think Waterman is a dry ink.

So using some of the many Noodler inks that are so wet that Waterman is dry in any version of a Pelikan, will make it write wide.

Paper makes a width of difference also.

 

So one should ask those who say Pelikan writes wide, are they Mark 2 calibrated, do they use Noodler's inks and cheap 80g copy paper?

 

If you demand only thinner than Western EF or super thin nibs, do not buy Sailor, that is the Fat Japanese nib, buy only Pilot the Skinny Japanese nib. The thin Aurora is supposedly close to Fat Sailor width.

Edited August 29, 2018 by Bo Bo Olson

[biancitwo]

My first Pelikan was an M400 green stripe, with a M nib. I bought it from Rick Propas, a foremost authority on Pelikan. I loved it so much I now own 15, including 11 vintage Pelikans dating from 1933 - 1959. They are wonderful. All of my modern ones have been italicized by Pendleton Brown. Exquisite. You will love your first and the many to follow.

[Misfit]

Yours looks gorgeous. I like the green color but don’t have one. Mine are blue and brown. Maybe one day (who am I kidding... these pens breed. There’s a topic about this!)

[truphae_inc]

Super classy pen!!

[vinnied]

congrats on a nice purchase

I do confirm the flock phenomenon