Cross Century Fountain Pen With Fine Nib V Extra Fine Nib

[kavanagh]

Dear Colleagues,

 

I just bought a black and gold Cross Century Fountain Pen with a Fine Nib ( not the Cross Century II ).

 

I wanted to ask:

 

1) It's slimmer than a Cross Townsend, but is it still comfortable to hold for long periods as a workhorse pen?.

2) Is the fine nib okay or any significantly different than the extra-fine nib ?.

3) I heard a lot about the medium nib ( how it's a very wet gusher ) and hence stayed away from it. Does the fine nib write very wet on all variety's of paper ?.

 

Any experiences appreciated.

[Jerome Tarshis]

Answering the questions in numerical order:

 

(1) I did not find the Century too thin to write with, but I don't know what is meant by "long periods of time." When I was young I worked for an insurance company, filling up large work sheets with small numbers, hour after hour. It was Dickensian in many ways except that we had electric light and more modern plumbing.

 

Nobody in corporate employment works like that any more. So although I might be using a pen intermittently all morning or all afternoon, it wasn't Dickensian copying-out of small numbers. As a writer I wrote words, and often paused between sentences or paragraphs. The real question is, do *you* feel comfortable writing with that pen in your circumstances?

 

Nobody can tell you. It's your pen and your life. Many people find the Century II and the Townsend too slim for them. I am entirely all right with using a Century or Century II or Townsend, or for that matter a Montblanc SlimLine or an Aurora Hastil. Other people would vehemently disagree. (To begin with, my favorite pen is the Parker 51 Demi.)

 

(2) For me the fine nib should have been labeled extra-fine. I can write with it, but I'd rather put down more ink. I think of the Century's medium nib as equivalent to the fine nib of many other modern pens. But they vary. I am all right with medium.

 

(3) I do not think of the fine nib as writing very wetly. But then I think of the medium nibs as wet enough to use, though not as firehoses or gushers. And I speak as one who writes on cheap paper. When I've written on Clairefontaine or any other super-slick paper, pretty much any nib wrote like a fine nib.

[pajaro]

The fine is pretty thin, and the medium is wet and much more broad. I manage to use the black and gold trim original Century from the early 1980s with the medium nib even now sometimes. Even if it does close up the "e" and such. A sentimental favorite. I used to let friends use this pen. I thought it was sufficiently rugged.

[kavanagh]

Thank you guys for the advice

[1nkulus]

The XF is 0.2mm and the F is 0.4mm line widths.

 

I find all Cross too slim even though I own a few, only the Peerless is on the EDC list.

The Townsend I use once every 2-3 weeks.