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Nib Size And Ink Drying Out


loganrah

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Do you find that there is a correlation between larger nibs (the size of the nib itself, not tipping/line size) and ink drying out with the pen uncapped faster?

I tend to sit thinking with my pens uncapped quite a bit. This never causes problems with my smaller nibbed pens, but it does seem to cause issues (skipping, hard starts, darker ink colour) with larger nibs. I'm wondering if this is just coincidence (I don't have that many pens, so it could be some other feature of particular ones), or if it is the nib that makes the difference?

It makes intuitive sense to me that a larger nib, and consequently more feed outside the body of the pen, would be likely to dry out faster. But I'm interested in whether others have the same experience?

While I love the look, and sometimes softness, of big nibs, this might be a point in favour of smaller nibs for me that is worth taking into consideration when buying.

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It's an interesting point and I have had the same experience. My Platinum Carbon Desk Pen with a small in size Medium nib never seems to dry out but some (not all) larger nibbed pens do occasionally dry up. Whilst it could be a combination of many things: design/size of the nib/feed, atmospheric conditions, type of ink etc. it would be nice to narrow it down.

 

If I get time I might do an 'unscientific' :) test on this, I have a handful of TSWBI Eco's all loaded with different inks (mostly Medium nibs) so I might uncap them, write a couple of lines and then see how long it takes them to hard start.

 

Al

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I try not to think too much; it gives me strange ideas. :unsure: On the odd occasion that I do so, I simply cover (not screwed and tightened) the nib with the cap, regardless of nib size. Because nibs dry out if left uncapped. Point being that changing your habit would be less expensive than changing your pen collection. Limiting yourself to smaller nibs would also change the character of your collection.

Add lightness and simplicate.

 

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I try not to think too much; it gives me strange ideas. :unsure: On the odd occasion that I do so, I simply cover (not screwed and tightened) the nib with the cap, regardless of nib size. Because nibs dry out if left uncapped. Point being that changing your habit would be less expensive than changing your pen collection. Limiting yourself to smaller nibs would also change the character of your collection.

 

Changing habits would definitely be less expensive, but that needs to balanced against usability as well.

 

I think another consideration is how easily the pen screws into its cap (when it is a screw cap, as most of the pens I regularly use are). My Pilot Falcon screws on in an amazingly smooth motion, you can basically give it a spin with your thumb and momentum carries it the rest of the way. That makes me much more likely to cap it while I'm thinking. Whereas my Platinum 3776 requires more conscious effort (not like its hard on anything, I just can't do it so absent mindedly as I can with the Falcon).

 

 

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I have the same experience. Small-nibbed pens (like the pre-2016 model Parker Urban) I can leave for 10-15 minutes uncapped, no problem. But larger-nibbed pens are dried out withing 2-3 minutes uncapped.

 

But anyway, one is not supposed to leave a fountain pen uncapped for too long...Nothing more annoying than a dry start.

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Do you find that there is a correlation between larger nibs (the size of the nib itself, not tipping/line size) and ink drying out with the pen uncapped faster?

No. I don't find my Pilot Capless 18K gold nibs 'drying' (sufficiently to cause 'hard starts') faster than the nibs on the Pilot Elite 95s (14K gold), Pilot Custom Heritage 91 (14K gold #5 nib) or Pilot 'Hannya Shingyo' (18K gold #10 nib) when uncapped and exposed.

 

It makes intuitive sense to me that a larger nib, and consequently more feed outside the body of the pen, would be likely to dry out faster.

Sorry, but I don't automatically assume or concur that there is "more feed outside the body of the pen" for larger nibs per se, especially when you take into account different designs (Pilot Capless versus Pilot Custom versus Pilot Elite versus Jinhao 51A hooded versus ...).

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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No. I don't find my Pilot Capless 18K gold nibs 'drying' (sufficiently to cause 'hard starts') faster than the nibs on the Pilot Elite 95s (14K gold), Pilot Custom Heritage 91 (14K gold #5 nib) or Pilot 'Hannya Shingyo' (18K gold #10 nib) when uncapped and exposed.

 

 

Sorry, but I don't automatically assume or concur that there is "more feed outside the body of the pen" for larger nibs per se, especially when you take into account different designs (Pilot Capless versus Pilot Custom versus Pilot Elite versus Jinhao 51A hooded versus ...).

There is another variable I was not accounting for, nib design. All my nibs are 'standard', i.e. not hooded, not retractable, not integrated. For nibs of a standard design I'd say the feed size almost always correlates with with nib size.

 

But it may well not be the amount of feed that is exposed which matters. The distance from the end of the feed to the tipping could well be just as important.

 

I'm just spit balling on this one, wanted to see what other people's experiences are.

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I try not to think too much; it gives me strange ideas. :unsure: On the odd occasion that I do so, I simply cover (not screwed and tightened) the nib with the cap, regardless of nib size. Because nibs dry out if left uncapped. Point being that changing your habit would be less expensive than changing your pen collection. Limiting yourself to smaller nibs would also change the character of your collection.

 

Agree, slipping a cap on the pen even if a screw pen, is basic 101 fountain pens........

I'm not into huge nibs.....though I once had an 8 or 10 on a no name pen, that I gave away to my ex-baker's kid (was also where I got rid of the inks I didn't like)......it was just too big for my eyes.

 

I'm more into 3-4-5 sized nibs on the whole. But again I prefer standard or medium-large pens on the whole.

I have a nice MB 234 1/2.....4 1/2 is the nib size and balances that standard sized pen.

 

You do have semi-flex nibbed pens..... B)

They tend to be #4-5 often enough....and I've nothing against a medium-small pen that posts well with a #3....as long as they write well.

If one alternates nail stub and CI from EF up to BB.......there are some 45 different nibs in various flex rates..................and a number will be middle sized nibs for middle sized pens......balancing the eye to the pen's nib.

In reference to P. T. Barnum; to advise for free is foolish, ........busybodies are ill liked by both factions.

 

 

The cheapest lessons are from those who learned expensive lessons. Ignorance is best for learning expensive lessons.

 

 

 

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I tend to sit thinking with my pens uncapped quite a bit. This never causes problems with my smaller nibbed pens, but it does seem to cause issues (skipping, hard starts, darker ink colour) with larger nibs. I'm wondering if this is just coincidence (I don't have that many pens,

There is another variable I was not accounting for, nib design. All my nibs are 'standard',_...‹snip›...

I'm just spit balling on this one, wanted to see what other people's experiences are.

 

OK, not to be pushy, but which pens specifically do you have?

 

Do you have a Pilot pen (e.g. Custom 74, Custom Heritage 91 or Custom Heritage 92) with a 14K gold #5 nib, another (e.g. C742, CH912 or Custom Kaede) with a 14K gold #10 nib, and another (e.g. C743, CH823 or CH845) with a 14K gold nib, with which you can fill with the same (bottle of) ink that you have, and write on the same sheet of paper, to support your hypothesis while eliminating differences in:

  • manufacturer
  • nib design
  • nib material
  • ink
  • paper
  • environmental factors (ambient temperature, humidity, etc.)
  • user
by checking whether or how they're susceptible to skipping and hard starts if left uncapped (and untouched) for 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, 150 and 180 seconds?

 

How about a Sailor pen with a 1911-imprinted medium-sized 21K gold nib (as an option on some Sailor Profit Standard, aka 1911 Standard or 1911 Medium, pens), another one with a large-sized 21K gold nib (on a Profit21 aka 1911 Large, or full-sized Professional Gear) and yet another with an extra-large-sized 21K gold nib (on a King of Pens variant)?

 

If you're not even testing the pens you have by inking them with exactly the same ink and testing them side by side in the same session, then frankly you haven't done enough testing within your power to support your hypothesis that you admittedly are "spit balling" and asking others to support or 'disprove' anecdotally by their user experience. That's assuming you actually want to get to some semblance of objective truth, and prefer to have your hypothesis summarily invalidated if it isn't true and can be easily disproven, even if that on its own takes you no closer to a 'formula' for estimating the likelihood of 'issues' (which you attribute to drying-out while uncapped) arising and identifying the key variables in that 'equation'.

 

My Pilot Falcon _...‹snip›... my Platinum 3776 _...‹snip›...

 

I don't think those two make sense as data points for comparing the effect of nib sizes on the likelihood of (or rate of developing) symptoms of issues you attribute to ink drying while uncapped, but I note that you were talking about ease of capping the respective pens.

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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But it may well not be the amount of feed that is exposed which matters. The distance from the end of the feed to the tipping could well be just as important.

 

That's also my observation.

 

I own a Waterman's Hundred Year with a #18 nib (quite big) and it's the one that gets dry the soonest probably not because is the biggest (that also means it has the widest feed and the widest ink film, but because it's a looong length from the end of the feed to the nib's point. Its feed is also quite primitive, not much more than an ebonite "chunk" with a simple channel.

 

I have other pens with not that much shorter nibs but with the feed ending nearer to the point which take longer to dry.

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If you're not even testing the pens you have by inking them with exactly the same ink and testing them side by side in the same session, then frankly you haven't done enough testing within your power to support your hypothesis that you admittedly are "spit balling" and asking others to support or 'disprove' anecdotally by their user experience. That's assuming you actually want to get to some semblance of objective truth, and prefer to have your hypothesis summarily invalidated if it isn't true and can be easily disproven, even if that on its own takes you no closer to a 'formula' for estimating the likelihood of 'issues' (which you attribute to drying-out while uncapped) arising and identifying the key variables in that 'equation'.

 

 

Sure, if I was looking to confirm or support this hypothesis in a robust way I would need to control for a whole bunch of variables. Unfortunately I do not have the needed pens to do so (nor the money to purchase them just for this experiment).

 

I was, instead, trying to draw on the collective (though admittedly anecdotal) experience of forum users to see if there is even any plausibility to the hypothesis. Having a bunch of uncontrolled anecdotes in favour of a hypothesis is not good evidence. But having no anecdotal evidence in favour of it when, if it was a major factor you would expect to find such evidence, is some reason to believe it.

 

I'm just being a good Bayesian here. My credence that bigger nibber leads to faster dry out (H) conditional on a lot of people on this forum reporting a similar experience (E+) is higher than my credence in the hypothesis if no one on this forum had a similar experience (E-). I.e. P(H|E+) > P(H|E-). All I wanted to do was check for E+ or E- and conditionalise to get a better estimate of P(H). (I'm happy to fight about whether Bayesian statistics is any good, or whether my prior that P(H|E+) > P(H|E-) is reasonable, but only on the weekend when I don't have so much work to do).

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I'm just being a good Bayesian here. My credence that bigger nibber leads to faster dry out (H) conditional on a lot of people on this forum reporting a similar experience (E+) is higher than my credence in the hypothesis if no one on this forum had a similar experience (E-).

 

But my 'problem' is that 'bigger' in this context across different brands is ill-defined, even if you knowingly haven't taken into account the feed (plastic vs ebonite as material, and whether it's made or 'tuned' to be particularly wet, say to support flex or stub nibs), the width of the tine gap, geometry and curvature of the nib, flexibility-by-design, etc.

 

That's why I'm suggesting that, even if you're asking others to provide you with anecdotal 'comparative' input, it's still more sensible to ask if someone could compare (preferably unmodified, factory-condition):

  • Pilot Custom #5, #10, #15 (or even #30) nibs
  • Sailor 1911-imprinted medium-sized, large-sized and extra-large-sized nibs
  • Pelikan nibs on M400, M600, M800 and M1000 pens

so that 'bigger' actually has the expected meaning (by reasonably ignoring differences in other variables).

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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