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21K, 22K And Even 23K Nibs?!?


awa54

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Dip pen nibs are intended to be disposable: they are expected to wear out with use rather fast (say, between a week and a month with normal use). It just doesn't make any sense to make them in gold unless they are for very special uses (like rare, luxury signing or personal writing for someone who doesn't normally write by him/herself).

If you are to be ephemeral, leave a good scent.

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Sort of. Yes, dip nibs were disposable but I doubt the rate of a week to a month. It would have been too wasteful in an era when wastefulness wasn't an option - quite unlike today. And as far as I know, the major problem was corrosion rather than mechanical failure. Tipped gold nibs were made for dip pens but were expensive and didn't have the spring and flex properties of steel nibs. That's probably why they never got very popular. The game changed with the introduction of fountain pens because the nib couldn't be swapped easily anymore due to the feed. Up from then, the corrosion resistance of gold nibs started to outweigh their less favourable flex properties. And then, upon the decades, the aim for flexible nibs decreased and now it's probably only for the connoisseurs well represented here on the forum. I think that it became clear throughout this thread that a lesser gold content is beneficial for spring and flexibility of gold nibs. Of course, there are other tactile properties of nib materials as well which enter the equation for the (subjectively) optimal nib.

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Actually in or about 1880, the normal clerk, used a stiffer nib, and there was a business script that the later Palmer system evolved from. A clerk stood 12 hours a day writing on a sloped desk. His writing had to be readable and fast.

There were many learn at home books, including writing. In one wanted a stand up for 12 hours writing job....white collar.....

At first, High School paid for by the parents, was considered adequate for a job as as a clerk, by the late 1870's more was needed. Business collages popped up out of the ground like mushrooms. Normally a course took 12 weeks. Some real character I have in my western did it in 6 weeks, so only paid half price.

 

Spenserian was for the middle class and above, and was a good signature script..........to show one was educated, and had had time to learn to write pretty. Writing letters to friends. It was not used in business in it was hard to read, and slow...even then time was gold money.

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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and the jewelry industry often isn't concerned with the physical attributes of the gold beyond allergens (like you said, Ni content) and appearance. So you aren't going to see stock made for jewelers that is made to be ductile. Aut the jewelry industry highly outweighs the fountain pen nib industry, so the fountain pen industry has to buy what is likely jewelry grade stocks, whereas back in the day, the fountain pen industry was king, and they could actually commission their own alloys from foundries.

 

Also, no fountain pen I've ever seen uses "white gold" alloys. They're only rhodium, platinum, or ruthenium plated. Again, cheaper and easier to just use one type of sheet stock.

 

Gold basically doesn't work harden, either, at 14 karat. It's why steel flex nibs fracture but vintage gold ones don't unless they're pushed way beyond their mechanical limits. If gold work hardened, flex nibs would stress fracture at the breathers with regular use, and we just don't see that often.

 

Unless I hear hard proof (I'm still waiting on access to my university's X ray spectroscopy gun to test my theory, but I'm a chemistry major, not a material scientist) that JoWo and bock have their sheetstock made from a custom alloy, I simply don't believe that there's otherwise no good reason modern flex nibs just can't hang with vintage in flex and maintain snapback.

First off, yellow and white gold do work harden, so does silver for that matter, though not anywhere near as hard as steel, 14k white is used almost exclusively for clasp tongues because it has the most potential to be made "springy". Most gold and silver sheet and some wire is delivered fully annealed (most ductile form) for best workability, in fact many bench jewelers prefer to work in 18k yellow and platinum due to the increaed malleability over lower karat and white gold alloys.

 

I would assume that if records are available from past nib manufacturers that any metal supplier could easily create or re-create nib tuned alloys, they'd have to be pretty exotic to be beyond affordability for the likes of a Bock or Jowo...

 

As far as white gold nibs go I own several 18k white gold nibs, two or three by Pilot and at least one each from Platinum and Sailor, they're all fairly rigid by Japanese standards.

 

Vintage flex nibs *do* stress crack at the breather, the reason we don't see this as often probably has something to do with the more complex geometry of many of those vintage nibs, they usually had variable thickness in the nib body and often a down-turned tine end to redirect the tines up and away under pressure, but with the flex occurring farther back in the wing/ear area, rather than all along the length of the tine.

 

 

 

Take a look at dip pen nibs current snd old ... just how many of them are gold ?

Steel and bronze dip nibs were the disposable gel pens of their time, higher quality dip pens did have tipped or un-tipped gold nibs, two of the three gold dip nibs I own have long tines and EF tipping for Spencerian writing with full-on wet noodle flex, the other is an un-tipped stub, none have karat marking or any hallmarking beyond a maker's name and nib size.

David-

 

So many restoration projects...

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Jewellers certainly care about the mechanical properties of gold alloys -- eg. fine chains or delicate settings for precious stones -- and there has been quite a bit of study on the subject. For example, see McDonald and Sistare, 1978.

 

Nonetheless, modern steel is the best material to make any kind of flexible or springy component such as a fountain pen nib. Stainless spring-steel with a high degree of corrosion resistance is widely available these days.

 

Yes, gold and its alloys are inherently softer, but they are easily pushed beyond their elastic limit. If you want a soft nib then use thinner steel.

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Well, most often there is more than just one (mechanical) property required to be fulfilled by a material. I think there are good reasons why in the golden age of fountain pens the 14k gold nib was so much appreciated (with the already mentioned exceptions of 18k due to official regulations). It doesn't matter so much for modern nails but to my feeling it makes a big difference for vintage nibs. Flexibility is only one component in the equation and I yet have to find the (semi)-flex steel nib that feels as good writing as the many gold nibs I have and use. Of course, a well-made steel nib easily outperforms a mediocre gold nib. But I have excellent gold nibs in mind.

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First off, yellow and white gold do work harden, so does silver for that matter, though not anywhere near as hard as steel, 14k white is used almost exclusively for clasp tongues because it has the most potential to be made "springy". Most gold and silver sheet and some wire is delivered fully annealed (most ductile form) for best workability, in fact many bench jewelers prefer to work in 18k yellow and platinum due to the increaed malleability over lower karat and white gold alloys.

 

I would assume that if records are available from past nib manufacturers that any metal supplier could easily create or re-create nib tuned alloys, they'd have to be pretty exotic to be beyond affordability for the likes of a Bock or Jowo...

 

As far as white gold nibs go I own several 18k white gold nibs, two or three by Pilot and at least one each from Platinum and Sailor, they're all fairly rigid by Japanese standards.

 

Vintage flex nibs *do* stress crack at the breather, the reason we don't see this as often probably has something to do with the more complex geometry of many of those vintage nibs, they usually had variable thickness in the nib body and often a down-turned tine end to redirect the tines up and away under pressure, but with the flex occurring farther back in the wing/ear area, rather than all along the length of the tine.

 

 

 

 

Steel and bronze dip nibs were the disposable gel pens of their time, higher quality dip pens did have tipped or un-tipped gold nibs, two of the three gold dip nibs I own have long tines and EF tipping for Spencerian writing with full-on wet noodle flex, the other is an un-tipped stub, none have karat marking or any hallmarking beyond a maker's name and nib size.

 

I'm going to point back to where I said "basically", and "we don't see that very often" which is, for all intents and reasonable use purposes, indicative that 14k gold will not work harden when subjected to normal, regular use in a fountain pen. Don't put words in my mouth, particularly when I explicitly stated otherwise.

 

Work hardening is plastic deformation. it requires sufficient strain to cause the crystal lattice of the structure to "slip" a few atoms. This is my wheelhouse of study. These strains are not going to be reached as long as the nib is not abused. Cold working is a very, very specific process that not even steel really reaches easily, though it can occur if you are pushing it to the limits. When stainless, high chromium steel (modern stainless steel for example) hits a point where a vintage flex nib is just barely cracking its knuckles, it's going to work harden, but lots of stainless steel nibs never work harden either. You wear out stainless dip nibs pushing them beyond 4mm at the tipping well before they reach any degree of work hardening.

 

Variable geometry is not some black magic. It can be obtained by stamping and then annealing, and very little hand finishing would be required. Your logic dictates that the only reason we don't have vintage flex nibs anymore is because pen makers are just lazy. Ignoring aurora's flex nibs, which are all hand ground, or all the myriad of other, less successful methods of adding flex that don't even come close to vintage. They use hyper long tines and even then, the flex isn't very good, nor is the flex from any maker, and we see side cuts in JoWo's flex nibs similar to dip pens, which also suck, thinning of nibs works (I have a custom JoWo by FPnibs that will easily flex with a wet noodle) but the snap back is far inferior

 

If geometry was all that was going on, all Bock or JoWo would have to do is laser scan a vintage #2 and #5 nib, scale it to fit one of their #5 or #6 housings, start stamping those suckers out and they'd immediately have a hit product.

 

Stress fractures occur, yes, but nowhere near as common as we'd expect. How many members here, using their vintage flex pens correctly, have stress cracked a nib? It's very uncommon. We find these pens, yes, but the likelihood of someone with fists of ham or a child playing with something they found in grandpa's desk being the root cause for that is much higher.

 

You've done nothing to change my mind about the metallurgy being the core cause.

 

Jewellers certainly care about the mechanical properties of gold alloys -- eg. fine chains or delicate settings for precious stones -- and there has been quite a bit of study on the subject. For example, see McDonald and Sistare, 1978.

 

Nonetheless, modern steel is the best material to make any kind of flexible or springy component such as a fountain pen nib. Stainless spring-steel with a high degree of corrosion resistance is widely available these days.

 

Yes, gold and its alloys are inherently softer, but they are easily pushed beyond their elastic limit. If you want a soft nib then use thinner steel.

 

Toughness, hardness and luster are not ductility.

 

Lotta serious misinformation here.

 

If what you said was true, we'd be seeing them everywhere.

 

Problem is modern stainless steels aren't as ductile as is necessary because the chromium required to make them stainless also makes them harder. And when your item has to flex with 200g of force, you're in such thin material territory that you simply can't run a lower carbon, higher chromium content material. Otherwise, we'd see these materials in modern dip nibs and fountain pens. Because god knows, steel, even custom alloys, are cheap by comparison.

Edited by Honeybadgers

Selling a boatload of restored, fairly rare, vintage Japanese gold nib pens, click here to see (more added as I finish restoring them)

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If geometry was all that was going on, all Bock or JoWo would have to do is laser scan a vintage #2 and #5 nib, scale it to fit one of their #5 or #6 housings, start stamping those suckers out and they'd immediately have a hit product.

 

 

 

You only forgot that the market for such nibs is tiny compared to "normal" customers who probably won't appreciate a really flexible nib. I think it's economy rather than ability that rules companies like Jowo, Bock, and the pen makers producing their own nibs.

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Problem is modern stainless steels aren't as ductile as is necessary [...]

 

Badgers, are you saying stainless spring steel can't be rolled thin enough?

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...fully annealed (most ductile form) for best workability...

 

 

Please accept my correction, this should have read "most malleable", not "most ductile".

 

 

 

I'm going to point back to where I said "basically", and "we don't see that very often" which is, for all intents and reasonable use purposes, indicative that 14k gold will not work harden when subjected to normal, regular use in a fountain pen. Don't put words in my mouth, particularly when I explicitly stated otherwise.

 

Work hardening is plastic deformation. it requires sufficient strain to cause the crystal lattice of the structure to "slip" a few atoms. This is my wheelhouse of study. These strains are not going to be reached as long as the nib is not abused. Cold working is a very, very specific process that not even steel really reaches easily, though it can occur if you are pushing it to the limits. When stainless, high chromium steel (modern stainless steel for example) hits a point where a vintage flex nib is just barely cracking its knuckles, it's going to work harden, but lots of stainless steel nibs never work harden either. You wear out stainless dip nibs pushing them beyond 4mm at the tipping well before they reach any degree of work hardening.

 

Variable geometry is not some black magic. It can be obtained by stamping and then annealing, and very little hand finishing would be required. Your logic dictates that the only reason we don't have vintage flex nibs anymore is because pen makers are just lazy. Ignoring aurora's flex nibs, which are all hand ground, or all the myriad of other, less successful methods of adding flex that don't even come close to vintage. They use hyper long tines and even then, the flex isn't very good, nor is the flex from any maker, and we see side cuts in JoWo's flex nibs similar to dip pens, which also suck, thinning of nibs works (I have a custom JoWo by FPnibs that will easily flex with a wet noodle) but the snap back is far inferior

 

If geometry was all that was going on, all Bock or JoWo would have to do is laser scan a vintage #2 and #5 nib, scale it to fit one of their #5 or #6 housings, start stamping those suckers out and they'd immediately have a hit product.

 

Stress fractures occur, yes, but nowhere near as common as we'd expect. How many members here, using their vintage flex pens correctly, have stress cracked a nib? It's very uncommon. We find these pens, yes, but the likelihood of someone with fists of ham or a child playing with something they found in grandpa's desk being the root cause for that is much higher.

 

You've done nothing to change my mind about the metallurgy being the core cause.

 

 

Toughness, hardness and luster are not ductility.

 

Lotta serious misinformation here.

 

If what you said was true, we'd be seeing them everywhere.

 

Problem is modern stainless steels aren't as ductile as is necessary because the chromium required to make them stainless also makes them harder. And when your item has to flex with 200g of force, you're in such thin material territory that you simply can't run a lower carbon, higher chromium content material. Otherwise, we'd see these materials in modern dip nibs and fountain pens. Because god knows, steel, even custom alloys, are cheap by comparison.

 

 

Honeybadgers, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth or attempting to play at being an engineer (on TV or otherwise), but I can tell you from hands-on experience that when 14 or 18k white or yellow gold (and sterling silver) are even lightly hammered or slightly compressed they become noticeably harder and more resilient as compared to the same piece of metal that hasn't been given this treatment. I can also say with the certainty of having seen it countless times, that gold and silver parts that rely on this "work hardening" lose that hardness when repeatedly cycled through their elastic range (perhaps when that range is exceeded? I have no way to test that) and that after several cycles of re-hardening by hammering or compression these same parts (usually clasps or safety latches) will develop stress cracks and eventually break. I know that steel has much higher parameters in strength and elasticity (at least the alloys suitable to nib/spring making), but I assume that gold, when made in a configuration that doesn't push the material past it's limits can hold it's own by virtue of nib makers' long experience and good design... .

 

The point I was attempting to make (and failing utterly to do so) is not that gold nibs are subject to failure from work hardening, so much as that gold nibs *must have* correct mechanical properties to give good feel and springiness, this would almost certainly rely on a measured amount of work hardening in the manufacturing process, since fully annealed gold of any karat purity, white or yellow is much more malleable compared to rolled/hammered/drawn material... and heat treatments only soften these metals unlike steel.

 

As far as vintage flex nibs vs. all the modern "soft" or "flex" nibs *I have seen*, I'll say that the vintage versions (gold or steel) *often* have more complex geometry by a wide margin, frequently varying the tine to body thickness ratio significantly to redirect the area of flexure away from the free length of the tines back in to the body of the nib (which tapers to its thinnest at the tail). All of the modern *factory* solutions seem to rely on thinning the *width* of the nib ears/shoulders at the base of the tines rather than the thickness, which remains consistent all the way up until just before the area where the tipping is attached, *or* simply lenthening the tines to allow more total deformation before damage occurs. The best vintage designs encourage tine splay while maintaining better tipping alignment with the paper (those rigid down-turned tine tips) and send the flexure farther back into the body of the nib where that flex can be accomplished in a more distributed way. IMO, this is probably not copied by modern nib makers, not because of ignorance or inability to reproduce that sort of design, but due to increased cost over a "normal" nib combined with the comparatively small demand for that sort of writing characteristic by *average* users. If I'm reading you right, I think the only thing we're disagreeing on there is the reason that there aren't any faithful repros of vintage flex nibs on the market today?

Edited by awa54

David-

 

So many restoration projects...

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Omassimo,

"""Flexibility is only one component in the equation and I yet have to find the (semi)-flex steel nib that feels as good writing as the many gold nibs I have and use."""

 

Try a steel nibbed Osmia or Osmia-Faber-Castel, if it has a small diamond on the nib (mostly with the nib size inside the diamond) it is semi-flex, if it has a large diamond and mostly Supra or just Supra on the nib it is maxi-semi-flex.

 

I find those Degussa made Osimi nibs to be = be it gold or steel. Both are great!

 

1932 Osmia which never had an office supply company at it's back like Soenecken, MB, Pelikan or Geha, had to sell it's nib factory to Degussa the silver and gold manufacturer for debt; who continued making the Osmia nib and nibs for everyone else.

Do try some. :notworthy1: :thumbup:

 

The rare Geha 790 steel nibs = the gold of course.......not the school pens in they were made for ham fisted school kids.

 

In a time when money and I were not strangers, I was a fool gold snob when it came to Osmia, there were times when I did not bid on models because it had a steel nib.....therefor according to those who never owed an Osmia steel nib not any or as good.

 

Those Pelikan CN war nibs are not all semi-flex or better either, mine is only regular flex. :angry:

 

 

Ah, ha, just saw you really like the Osmia nib, in the Faber Castel 3 in a diamond thread....better late than never. :unsure:

Edited by Bo Bo Olson

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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Bo Bo, only in short because it's kind of off topic here, I collect Osmias and one of the reasons for it is their outstanding nibs. I have only two with steel nibs, a 52 and a Progress 72s, but to my feeling these nibs fall noticeably behind their 14k versions. It's not the flexibility that would be different, especially the #2 nib in the 52 has very similar flexibility to my other 14k #2 Osmia nibs e.g. in my 552. But the response of the nib while writing still feels different to me. It simply responds differently to the paper, particularly when not writing on super slick Rhodia or Clairefontaine or Life. There are more tactile properties to a nib than just the spring and flexibility as you know.

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A good thing to think of....I should ink one of my Osima gold nibs and try again to see what you are talking about. In it appears I'm missing something subtle. Always willing to learn.

 

I am still very impressed with the Osmia steel nibs.............. the Geha 790 steel nib (Degussa made) which would have been close to the Osmia was good too, but I swapped it for a pen* quite a while back.

*The Geha School pen nibs also made by Degussa are not much better if, than the Pelikan 120's; still a very nice regular flex. The Geha 790 gold nib is a slight tad springier than the Pelikan 400's. (I have both in semi&maxi. A couple of respected posters reported that fact, so I checked it out and it is so.)

 

I only have 7-8 Osmia's...about half and half in gold and steel. Right now I'm using a well girthed medium-large BCHR mdl 76 with a Supra (maxi-semi-flex) steel EF 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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Badgers, are you saying stainless spring steel can't be rolled thin enough?

 

to maintain its characteristics as a nib, yes. Otherwise, why wouldn't fountain and dip pen makers use it?

 

Again, I'm not a materials scientist, but spring steel is cheap. and if I could come out with a killer flex nib by just having the foundry roll the stock to a thin enough gauge (which wouldn't be an expensive task by comparison to a custom gold alloy) and stamp that stuff out for $0.75 a nib, I'd dominate the flex nib market. JoWo has clearly tried to work with flex, doing that derpy little side cut into their nibs like a comic G, and we've seen custom nib makers like FPnibs who thin the thickness of the 14k and draw back the shoulders, gain the flex but lose the snap.

 

There's something about the alloy. I'm all but convinced of it. As soon as I get my hands on an X ray Spectroscopy machine of some kind at the university I'm transferring to, I'm putting a vintage flex nib and a few modern 14k nibs to the test. I was bored after class today and asked my professor if I could do it with the IR spectroscopy machine, and she said yes, so I compared a sheaffer wet noodle from the 20's and a modern platinum 14k nib, but IR is no good for elements, so it was a bust, like she said it'd be.

Selling a boatload of restored, fairly rare, vintage Japanese gold nib pens, click here to see (more added as I finish restoring them)

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Honeybadgers, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth or attempting to play at being an engineer (on TV or otherwise), but I can tell you from hands-on experience that when 14 or 18k white or yellow gold (and sterling silver) are even lightly hammered or slightly compressed they become noticeably harder and more resilient as compared to the same piece of metal that hasn't been given this treatment.

 

This is the crux of my point. You have to induce a shear displacement in the material, which literally "shifts" the atoms in the crystal structure over. This is done with compression or hammering. Flexing is different from hammering. They're very different forces, and are handled in industry with completely different alloys of various materials. gold resists shearing, and thus work hardening, far better.

Edited by Honeybadgers

Selling a boatload of restored, fairly rare, vintage Japanese gold nib pens, click here to see (more added as I finish restoring them)

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to maintain its characteristics as a nib, yes. Otherwise, why wouldn't fountain and dip pen makers use it?

 

Again, I'm not a materials scientist, but spring steel is cheap. and if I could come out with a killer flex nib by just having the foundry roll the stock to a thin enough gauge (which wouldn't be an expensive task by comparison to a custom gold alloy) and stamp that stuff out for $0.75 a nib, I'd dominate the flex nib market. JoWo has clearly tried to work with flex, doing that derpy little side cut into their nibs like a comic G, and we've seen custom nib makers like FPnibs who thin the thickness of the 14k and draw back the shoulders, gain the flex but lose the snap.

 

There's something about the alloy. I'm all but convinced of it. As soon as I get my hands on an X ray Spectroscopy machine of some kind at the university I'm transferring to, I'm putting a vintage flex nib and a few modern 14k nibs to the test. I was bored after class today and asked my professor if I could do it with the IR spectroscopy machine, and she said yes, so I compared a sheaffer wet noodle from the 20's and a modern platinum 14k nib, but IR is no good for elements, so it was a bust, like she said it'd be.

 

Sometimes, it's a good idea to listen to your professors. Why did you think that IR spectroscopy would tell you anything about an alloy? I think your best bet would we AAS which is a standard tool nowadays. And I really would be interested in your results.

 

 

This is the crux of my point. You have to induce a shear displacement in the material, which literally "shifts" the atoms in the crystal structure over. This is done with compression or hammering. Flexing is different from hammering. They're very different forces, and are handled in industry with completely different alloys of various materials. gold resists shearing, and thus work hardening, far better.

 

Again, listening to others sometimes is helpful. awa54 is right about the work hardening of gold, it's alloys, and many other metals (like copper to name a prominent one). In fact, work hardening is the only way to harden gold and it's alloys and it's used heavily in the jeweller's industry. I think what you refer to is that plastic deformation is required to work harden metals while in normal use of nibs only elastic deformation should occur. But the hardening of gold nibs occurs during the rolling and stamping of the raw gold sheets simply by these two required processes in the production of a gold nib.

 

I don't know what is your point about steel alloys and flex nibs. One could buy basically any specialty steel one could wish for and roll it to the desired thickness. I think it's not the availability of materials but much rather the design of the nib that makes for poor modern flex nibs. Vintage flex nibs which are meant to produce line variation by flexing need quite a special geometry so that the tines go outward and not only upward with a mild degree of pressure. My impression is that modern designs fail in reproducing this property to a satisfying degree because the complicated geomety isn't reproduced. Nib makers 100 years ago did know quite a bit already about mechanics.

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Returning to the original premise of the thread; my 22k yellow gold nibbed Platinum President arrived a couple days ago and while it isn't "in the rotation" yet due to a broken inner cap (hopefully replaceable by Plat., but identical to the concurrent BelAge model, so a parts donor shouldn't be too hard to find if needed), but I have written with it and compared it directly to the identical steel nibbed BelAge.

 

The result is that in a rigid nib (or near rigid, as neither is *quite* a nail), there's no difference in the feel of writing with the 22k vs. the stainless nib. This is pretty much expected, but nice to have confirmation of... what really *did* surprise me was that the 22k nib does actually have a hint of spring and softness, feeling pretty much like a rigid 18k or well done steel nib despite the fact that it's only 8.4% alloying metals. Given that jewelers' 22k alloy is so soft (even in die-struck rings), I'm assuming that Platinum carefully chose some non-standard alloy component(s) that allows their 22k to attain much higher hardness during the forming process.

 

On the subject of modern steel nibs that have nice spring and useful flex, the EF nib unit I bought for my Pelikan 205 has a great range (F to BB) and firm, but easy to modulate flex. It may be a fluke though, as the F, M and B nibs I also have in that series are stiffer and don't offer anywhere near the proportionate line variation.

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David-

 

So many restoration projects...

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""""The EF nib unit I bought for my Pelikan 205 has a great range (F to BB) and firm, but easy to modulate flex.

It may be a fluke though, as the F, M and B nibs I also have in that series are stiffer and don't offer anywhere near the proportionate line variation."""""""""""""""

 

Defiantly a fluke and IMO if you push that nib to such extremes often...you will spring it. EF to B would be 'more' than enough................

Can you write at BB...or even B?

(I can't write at 3X with regular flex nibs....including my 200's not even the W. Germany one.

If you can write at M from EF would be a very nice fluke.

 

It is a regular flex nib...that when well mashed will give 3X a light down stroke...one of course can not write with it so mashed to 3X.....not like a semi-flex.

....even semi-flex and maxi-semi-flex vintage '50-65 nibs are also 3 X nibs....in pressing them past there can lead to springing the nib.

Some do that regularly, because they think a semi-flex pen is a flex pen....in they don't understand there is a word semi------ before the word Flex and semi=almost.....I rant about this often. Semi-flex is a flair pen that gives you line variation On Demand..... It is not a superflex nib and shouldn't be pressed to those widths.

 

Have fun with that nib.....Richard Binder has a great article on metal fatigue. After reading that I stopped stressing my superflex nibs.....such as my 100n goes 5 X tine spread from EF to B, I take it only to M or 4X.

The two of my Wet Noodles that will do the rare (outside of on You Tube or Ebay where you get pre-sprung nibs for your convenience) 7X tine spread. I strive to never take the nib more than 6X.

 

I do have superflex nibbed pens of the flex rate under Wet Noodle, Easy Full Flex that goes the 'normal' 5-6X, I do strive to not max those nibs either. One can after a while feel where it is being pushed. The less it is pushed the better.

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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Sometimes, it's a good idea to listen to your professors. Why did you think that IR spectroscopy would tell you anything about an alloy? I think your best bet would we AAS which is a standard tool nowadays. And I really would be interested in your results.

 

Bordom and curiosity. She encouraged me to do it just to get more experience with the machine's interface, since we're using it in most of our synthesis reactions this quarter, and point out to me seemingly small variances that are really just background noise.

 

I'm still a newbie with spectroscopy, so I didn't know if it would be able to see anything. I figured not, since it's a tool for measuring covalent bonds themselves, but wondered if elements themselves had any visible result.

Edited by Honeybadgers

Selling a boatload of restored, fairly rare, vintage Japanese gold nib pens, click here to see (more added as I finish restoring them)

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Sometimes, it's a good idea to listen to your professors. Why did you think that IR spectroscopy would tell you anything about an alloy? I think your best bet would we AAS which is a standard tool nowadays. And I really would be interested in your results.

 

 

Again, listening to others sometimes is helpful. awa54 is right about the work hardening of gold, it's alloys, and many other metals (like copper to name a prominent one). In fact, work hardening is the only way to harden gold and it's alloys and it's used heavily in the jeweller's industry. I think what you refer to is that plastic deformation is required to work harden metals while in normal use of nibs only elastic deformation should occur. But the hardening of gold nibs occurs during the rolling and stamping of the raw gold sheets simply by these two required processes in the production of a gold nib.

 

I don't know what is your point about steel alloys and flex nibs. One could buy basically any specialty steel one could wish for and roll it to the desired thickness. I think it's not the availability of materials but much rather the design of the nib that makes for poor modern flex nibs. Vintage flex nibs which are meant to produce line variation by flexing need quite a special geometry so that the tines go outward and not only upward with a mild degree of pressure. My impression is that modern designs fail in reproducing this property to a satisfying degree because the complicated geomety isn't reproduced. Nib makers 100 years ago did know quite a bit already about mechanics.

 

 

this conversation is really going nowhere in a hurry. None of us know enough specifically about the details, and I've made my point clearly enough.

 

I disagree wholeheartedly with your evaluation of "we just don't have good flex nibs because the shape sucks" because there is clearly market demand, and if all that was required was just stamping out something identical to a waterman pink, someone would have done it by now, and we wouldn't have dozens and dozens of totally different interpretations that are universally maligned by the community with regards to flex performance in comparison to vintage. If JoWo really just needed to change their molds to get vintage flex, they wouldn't have changed their molds to this just to get super unimpressive flex.

 

447f530b4f0b6433110c7d74b63d4203.jpg

 

There is nothing complicated about stamped geometry. A waterman pink wasn't chiseled from a solid 14k ingot by a nib wizard. If that were the case, modern CAD systems could actually improve the perfomance over old nibs with ease. See 1980's stealth aircraft design versus modern (Straight edges because geometry compound curves are too complex for human minds alone, and once a computer could do the calculations, everything got real rounded, real fast.) The hand finishing work would be similar to what aurora has for its 14k flex nibs.

 

I'm not wasting any more time in this thread. Nobody, myself included knows for sure. In the next year or two I'll have access to the tool that will either prove or disprove my hypothesis, and there's nothing more that needs saying.

Selling a boatload of restored, fairly rare, vintage Japanese gold nib pens, click here to see (more added as I finish restoring them)

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