...some Vintage Bock Nibs

October 14, 2018

left 2 right:

~80s Senator piston filler with old 14K ~F nib, very little flex, on the dryer side
~60s Ultraflex (German) safety pen with wet semi flex 14C F nib
Indian ebonite piston filler by Gama with diy feed and stubbish wet 14K semi flex M nib
~60s no name French piston filler with wet 14k semi flex ~M nib
2x Böhler piston filler with not-wet-not-dry 14K semi flex F nibs

All of them feel surprisingly nice, some of them are extremely good writers. I recommend: if you find one grab it!

October 15, 2018

I agree.

What everyone forgets is Bock makes different levels of nibs, and those who buy into the myth of only in house are best forget, you get what you pay for.

You don't think that Twsbi, paid for top quality Bock nibs...and with all the problems of Viscounti, they don't pay for best either. Delta did, in there was never any reports of bad nibs from them. There's a huge list of top ranked companies that use Bock nibs.

I think Omas..., went from good to poor nibs....while using Bock nibs. They cheaped out.

Twsbi went to JoWo....are they actually better??? At low end...are all JoWo nibs the same, or do they only make one level?

Don't know, just know there are as many Bock haters today, as there were MB haters a decade ago....and rumor and myth never die.

Buy cheap, get cheap, buy good and no one here every hears of it.

Do read my signature....on Bock nibs. The factory is right down the road from me.

Bock made nibs for Pelikan for about a decade or more, late '90's to 2010 or so. .....and the folks here complained. Now they have exactly the same complaints about in-house made Pelikan nibs.

The 1000's nib was the last one pulled in house.

...AH, HA!!!!! That could explain why some of the 1000 nibs are semi-flex and others only regular flex..................could be a bit wrong, but it makes sense, to why some 1000's are semi-flex, like the one I tested 8-9 years ago that was semi-flex, having brought a good semi-flex pen with me to compare. And the newer 1005 regular flex that I have.

Folks with semi-flex 1000's would have to chime in to when they think theirs was made.

Until then I'll WOG, that the good 1000's nibs were made by Bock.

Degussa also, made the nibs for Geha (which are a slight tad more springy in semi & maxi-semi-flex than Pelikan. (Two posters I respect reported that, so I tested my same era Geha&Pelikans; they were right.), along with many others. Both Degussa and Bock made the later Soennecken nibs.

A noobie will believe the most mythical BS in the universe. The myth, only in house nibs are any good.

I had some old junker pens, and pulled the nib and feed. One was a Degussa, the other a Bock......never 'heard' of either, a decade ago when new....my hand was actually over the trash can , when I decided they didn't take up much space.

Those two were steel. Semi-flex for the Bock....not that I knew a thing then about semi-flex.

I do have a gold Bock semi-flex.

The problem is those working pens I have, I'm satisfied with the nibs.....but come the day....I have two Vintage Bocks and had a slew of Degussa superflex, Easy Full Flex nibs, that I gave around, having gotten them as a gift.

Lots of companies made nibs for other companies or for 'department' store pens, like Osmia; which became Degussa in 1932, MB, did also. ...made the early Pelikan nibs. (MB at one time had some 40 or more sub brands. So MB nibs with other markings can be found all over, but most don't know that.)

In there were some 120 pen manufacture/assembler companies in Germany in the '20-30's, I'd bet Soennecken also made nibs for others.

Rupp made great nibs....I have only one, a very maxi-semi-flex. The other two times I ran into pens with Rupp nibs.....some one with deeper pockets won them on German Ebay. Rupp made nibs from 1922-70.

Bock got into making nibs in '36. Osmia started in '22 also, but not having an office supply company supporting the pen division, like MB, Soennecken, Pelikan, later Geha, were always broke, so owing money for the gold they got from the gold company Degussa had to sell their pen factory.

The workers refused....refused to move 70km-45 miles to a new work place.....so Degussa made nibs on Osmia's machinery, with once Osmia nib men....as they remained in Heidelberg.

One place I read Degussa stopped making nibs in 1970, and in other place in 1990..

In @ 1950 Faber-Castel, maker of second tier pens only, finished buying up first tier Osmia....and still used the Degussa/Osmia nib.

Edited October 15, 2018 by Bo Bo Olson

October 15, 2018

I have an old Reform pen with an old Bock nib. A nice writer - here's a picture of it.

October 15, 2018

My War very sturdy Reforms, have common War CN nibs, of no particular worth. Reform was in the '30's such a great export pen, that right after the war, foreign importers sent cash in advance to let him buy up supplies.

That Bock is after the war. Bock started in 1938, in the summer of '38, A. Hitler stole the gold used in making gold nibs, and like the US it was illegal to own gold coins.....US from '33. So Bock had to go CN.....production of fountain pens stopped in the summer of '43. March a directive came out, no more fountain pens as of May.

I would have expected Reform to have bought Degussa nibs which were real good, the same one's Osmia had....or Bock.........or Rupp. All Heidelberg nib makers.

In most of my Herlitz also made nibs for it's Heidelberg.pens, are nails or regular flex; so I'd not expect Reform to have gone to them. My War pen nibs are semi-flex, but not marked with the Degussa mark.

I'm not sure who made the nibs for the Mercedes pen company also in Heidelberg.

Heidelberg was once the pen capitol of the world...for brands made there.

Wearever was then the biggest pen manufacturer in the world. The Hero of it's day.

One of these days I'm going to get one of the Reform very early '50's pens, which design wise was as some 10 years in advance. When advised to make cheaper pens to combat ball points in the mid-50's, he refused and closed his factory, rather than make a substandard pen.

Later selling it to Mueschler, also a Heidelberg company, but they made third tier pens. The 1745 is from them. In @ 1990 they sold their factory machines to China. So the 'made in Germany' 1745 that you can sometimes get for 2 for E5-6.00 on Geramn Ebay, are made in China, and shipped to Germany. One carton has the pen body, the other the cap. Someone screws them together so they are 'made in Germany.'

I have a plastic box, W.Germany Mueschler NOS Reform fountain pen & Ball point and Pelikan ink labeled Reform. In the nib is a nail, it will stay NOS. A black nib, which was as far as I know rather rare before 1990.

Once in a hurry....I bought a cheap gold colored Mueschler Reform pen...later I discovered the cap was metal the body plastic........how ever it was the first spade nib (14K) I'd found that was semi-flex. It could have been a Bock nib. In as I mentioned above, I do have a couple semi-flex Bock nibs.

Because no one was bragging their semi-flex spade nibs...I'd stayed away from them on German Ebay.

Edited October 15, 2018 by Bo Bo Olson

October 19, 2018

The old Reform pen came to me with a busted nib, and I had the Bock nib mounted on it. Sorry for the confusion.

October 19, 2018

I had a "slew" of Reforms. 21745s, a P-20 and P-25 or what ever those names were for slightly longer 1745's in black.( I paid E10& 12 fro them...have seen them offered for more....not that much longer at all!!!) All the nibs were the vintage narrow regular flex F but one 1745's F was actually an EF. It was my main editing pen until I got my EF marbled brown 200.

I gave the rest to my god son in the States.

For the price....2 1745's for E-6, for regular flex F, can't be beat.

Regular flex is/seems hard to find....many don't know what they are and have vintage US pens in that flex, but I don't go to the US pen sub-forums to see if that is discussed. It's not on the main board.

It was called regular flex in it was the regular issue way back when before nails took over, in 70080's??? By the '90's for sure.