Expensive Fountain Pens Iridium Tip Real Or Just Generic Name?

[rb120134]

Hi,

I own 2 Graf von Faber Castell Classic fountain pens,

the Macassar with a Ruthenium coated nib and the Heritage Limited Alexander with a 18 carat bi coloured nib, both pens have an Iridium tip, it says so at the Graf von Faber Castell official website, now is Iridium real Iridium or just a generic name for a hard metal alloy? GvFC pens are quite expensive so I am curious wether it is something with an Iridium component, or it is a blob of real solid Iridium? I also asked Graf about nib wear if I would be writing a whole life with the pen, their initial answer:

 

 

"Sehr geehrter Rob,

 

vielen Dank für Ihre E-Mail.

 

Das Material nützt sich nicht ab, auch wenn mit einem Füllfederhalter Leben lang geschrieben wird.

 

Die Iridium Spitze ist eine Hartmetalllegierung und daher kaum abnutzbar.

 

Wir hoffen, dass wir Ihnen mit dieser Information behilflich sein konnten.

 

 

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Best regards

 

Stefanie Bauer

Customer Care Center"

To be clear, "Spitze" means tipping, it is the tip of the nib, the little Iridium blob.

I emailed GvFC a second time to see of I could maybe get something loose about nib wear, this was their second reply:

 

"

Sehr geehrter Herr Barels,

 

vielen Dank für Ihre Rückmeldung.

 

Wir können Ihnen bestätigen, dass sich bei optimaler Nutzung die Feder nicht abnutzt.

 

Generell weisen wir darauf hin, dass wir auf unsere Schreibgeräte zwei Jahre Garantie geben.

 

Wir hoffen, wir konnten Ihnen mit dieser Information behilflich sein.

 

 

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Best regards

 

Claudia Schaklies

Customer Care Center"

 

To be clear, "Feder" means nib, the entire nib unit. So they truly stand behind that their nibs wont wear out. I also only use Rhodia paper which is very smooth paper. Both my pens write flawlessly without any pressure. I am still curious wether the Iridium tip is pure Iridium or just some hard metal alloy?

 

 

[Bo Bo Olson]

They haven't used pure iridium since shortly after 1900. The so called 'iridium' tipping is a compound of hard rare earth/platinum groupe....some at one time had tungsten.

What they have now I don't know, but there was a few posts with various compounds that companies changed often in the '20-30's and later, where the companies were looking for the cheapest compound that would last the then normal life of a full 8 hour a day 266 days a year nib, which was 7-10 years.

 

With the fact everyone owns so many pens it's going to be hard to wear out a nib in one's life....in we are no longer One Man, One Pen.

 

Way back @ 1850 or up to 1880's, they tried ruby tips. When they started using Iridium in @ the 1890's the 'original' trade name was a diamond point......even if it was 'just' iridium.

 

Iridium comes from that astroid that helped kill off the dinosaurs. It laid a layer of iridium of 1 to 2 inches deep at various places around the earth. In Italy and later Turkey there were strip mines for the 1-2 inch thick iridium layer.

But it was much too expensive so other hard metal compounds of the platinum group eventually replaced iridium.

Like Q-tip, Kleenex ....Iridium remained as a generic name for the compound of the tip.

To prevent someone from thinking I'm really talking about iridium, I use 'iridium'.

[Tweel]

It's an alloy, wholly or primarily of metals in the platinum group of the periodic table. It could contain iridium. Osmium is another likely candidate, as is the same element, ruthenium, with which the nib is plated.

 

Definitely no rare earths, such as neodymium etc.

Edited May 25, 2019 by Tweel

[Tweel]

I should add, it's not just expensive fountain pens that have this tipping. It's nearly universal across nationalities, brands and price points, so there's nothing unique about Faber Castell's use of it.

Edited May 25, 2019 by Tweel

[Bo Bo Olson]

A long time ago, two-three generations ago, the metals you don't call rare, were called rare earths...in they were rare, not easily found where the normal suspects hang out.

They seem to have become more common....like in China or Afghanistan...............Don't see a whole lot in Utah, Nevada or Arizona.

 

Iridium strip mines were only in Italy and Turkey before the turn of the century before last....where else I don't know. Had iridium been common there would have been iridium strip mines all over the place and no one would have had to invent tipping compounds.

 

A bit before 1922 a Heidelberg Professor came up with a Osmium compound patent he sold to the Boehler brothers who named their fountain pen company after it....Osmia.

....and neodymium defiantly is rare, in I didn't have that word in my mind at all.

[Tweel]

A long time ago, two-three generations ago,  the metals you don't call rare, were called rare earths...in they were rare, not easily found where the normal suspects hang out.

 

[Bo Bo Olson]

So back in B&W TV days in Jr. High chemistry....rare earths were perhaps a wider meaning than today.

 

Bib-bip went the pointer on the Element chart, "not on the test, they are "rare earths"".....so we messed around with burning hydrogen. Pretty sure the short lived elements over uranium got more play time. Some were right new.

[Tweel]

The meaning that "rare earth" has today is the same meaning it has always had, dating back to the late 18th or early 19th century.

 

Maybe your junior high science teacher hadn't actually studied science, but was pressed into service to do that job.

[BaronWulfraed]

https://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/59023

 

1965 C. S. G. Phillips & R. J. P. Williams Inorg. Chem. I. ii. 46 There occurs a group of 14 elements, the lanthanides or rare-earths, in which the 4f sub-shell is filled.

 

 

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/rare_earth

 

Definition of rare earth in US English:

rare earth

(also rare earth metal, rare earth element)

noun Chemistry

• Any of a group of chemically similar metallic elements comprising the lanthanide series and (usually) scandium and yttrium. They are not especially rare, but they tend to occur together in nature and are difficult to separate from one another.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Thanks.

 

Nickle knowledge, or stuff you can't make money with tends to stick in my mind, while all the rest flows out my ears.

After all, who cares if Arky Vaughan had a lifetime batting average of .318 and never took his bat off his shoulder until after the second strike..(Helps to have once had a baseball card of his.)

Claimed it made him concentrate more.

[sidthecat]

There’s something evocative about having a wee bit of what did in the dinosaurs at the business end of one’s pen.

Maybe it is mightier than the sword, though I wouldn’t bring one to a duel.

[BaronWulfraed]

Heh... While what the dinosaurs turned into became the rest of the pen?

[OMASsimo]

We had the exact same discussion in a different post very recently. You can look it up here:

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/303540-nibs-with-osmium-ruthenium-platinum-or-electrum/

 

At the end of the thread I posted links to two very interesting blog posts in which tipping materials of various pens from different periods of time were analysed scientifically. The result was that in nib tippings from the 1950s/60s onward they did not find any iridium anymore. And once again, iridium is a transition metal of the platinum group and not a rare earth element. And as was stated above, this is not a new thing but a scientific definition since the periodic table was settled in the early 1900s.

 

But back to the main topic, the tipping will easily last a lifetime (maybe a couple lifetimes more) if you don't damage the nib in other ways of have the habit to write on sanding paper. No need to worry at all.

Edited May 30, 2019 by OMASsimo

[Honeybadgers]

Osmium is a common tipping material for alloys nowadays.

Edited June 1, 2019 by Honeybadgers

[OMASsimo]

I don't think so. Please read:

 

http://www.nibs.com/.../wheres-iridium

And a follow-up:

http://www.nibs.com/...k-about-iridium

[SchaumburgSwan]

 

I don't think so. Please read:

 

http://www.nibs.com/.../wheres-iridium

And a follow-up:

http://www.nibs.com/...k-about-iridium

 

 

Hi Omassimo.

Very interesting! Thanks a lot for these fantastic articles.

Did You ever analyse how the design of gold alloys for fp nibs changed over the times?

Best regards

Jens

[OMASsimo]

 

Hi Omassimo.

Very interesting! Thanks a lot for these fantastic articles.

Did You ever analyse how the design of gold alloys for fp nibs changed over the times?

Best regards

Jens

 

Hi Jens,

 

I'm glad that you enjoyed the articles. Though, in fact, I am a chemist by training, I did not do any analysis myself, I'm a pure theoretician. But others obviously did.

 

Gold alloys are another interesting question. The central point here is elasticity rather than resistance to abrasion. There is an interesting article by Richard Binder about that topic:

 

http://www.richardspens.com/ref/ttp/materials.htm

 

And I can confirm his point from experience. The nibs I appreciate the most for their writing properties are all 14 K gold nibs from the 1930-1960s. But it's not only material, it's also nib design and mechanics that have a huge impact. Modern nibs are rather different and it hardly matters anymore if you have a fancy 18 k gold nib or a really well-made steel nib.

[Honeybadgers]

I also suspect that a lot of tipping problems came from early days where the welding of the tipping itself was dirty (either no or inadequate shielding gas), fluxes weren't as good, and welding techniques were still very fledgling. Tipping failures in cheaper nibs was common. Nowadays, even on very cheap pens, the process of welding the tipping ball is so cheap and easy (also recall that welding machinery, materials and resources required to run them would have been OBSCENELY expensive, hence the cheaper esterbrook folded tips) and the procedures for doing so are so well known and established that tipping failures are rare. I've only had one modern nib chip, an UEF 3776.

 

As to gold alloys, being a biochemist in school himself, I'd be curious to see even an x ray spectroscopy of a vintage flex nib. As soon as I'm to that point in my classes where I'll be in a lab with one, I'm absolutely taking in 5-10 vintage flex nibs for spectroscopy, even if it's just an "inaccurate" gun type. I am highly suspicious that these nibs were flexible not due to the shape as much as they alloy itself being created specifically for elasticity and to not work harden as much as it would if it had high quantities of copper in the alloy. Gold sheet made specifically for fountain pens would be an expensive process and require the cooperation of a foundry/mill willing to set aside a chunk of time and resources to make, whereas off the shelf 14k and 18k sheet are made more for long term durability, rigidity and abrasion resistance, so harder wearing components in the gold would take precedence. As a result, nibs are using stock sheet and trying to add flexibility through shape instead of through alloy. Because I've seen some amazingly flexible vintage nibs with short, thick, stubby little tines that would be rock hard nails if they were recreated with modern materials.

Edited June 1, 2019 by Honeybadgers

[OMASsimo]

The tipping was soldered rather than welded in the good old days. I'm not sure about today but I'd think this is still the case.

 

I have never seen any flexible (meaning semi-flex upwards) vintage nib made of thick material. Sometimes nibs have varying thickness (rare and expensive) and may become thicker toward the tip. But in general, vintage nibs are made of very thing gold sheets. I have a goldsmith who repairs cracked nibs for me. He just recently soldered an original 18k Bayard nib from 1932/33 for me and was flabbergasted how thin the material was. Of course, 18k is less flexible than 14k gold and this isn't even a flex nib, barely semi-flex. So, I think that besides alloy and thickness of the material, the most important influence on flexibility of the tines is nib design. Keep in mind that there are also soft nibs with little to no tine spread. From all my observations I think it's mainly mechanics.

 

One more point. If you are really interested in the components of nib alloys, AAS (atomic absorption spectroscopy) would be the way to go. It's a standard qualitative/quantitative instrumental analysis method available in most professional analytics labs.

[Honeybadgers]

The tipping was soldered rather than welded in the good old days. I'm not sure about today but I'd think this is still the case.

 

That explains a lot why tipping failed.

 

I think they're laser welded now, but even if they're still soldered, flux and soldering techniques have progressed even more than welding in the past 50 years.

Edited June 1, 2019 by Honeybadgers