Italic nibs...

[Donald594]

Hi FPNers!

 

I'm back, from a long forum vacation, and I'm buying a vanishing point saturday, and sending a pen off to be binderized (my Laban Mento). My Laban mento feels great in my hand, and is a beauty, but it likes to skip and doesn't have a good flow. So... I don't know if I should get it ground, adjusted, or what. I am thinking about turning it into an italic, but after a bad experience with a 12 dollar office depot calligraphy pen set, i'm afraid it will be scratchy. So... I hear Richard makes all of his nibs buttery smooth upon return, but is it possible for an italic nib to be smooth like a good lamy 2000? Also... How do you hold them. I was just going to PM Ann Finley about this, seeing as she's the italic writing master, but I just want to get everyone's opinion about this.

 

Thanks in advance

 

 

 

Donald Lee

[jimk]

is it possible for an italic nib to be smooth like a good lamy 2000? Also... How do you hold them.

 

Italic nibs are generally more fussy than ball type nibs about how you hold them. Most pens are pretty close to cylindrically symmetric - you can rotate the pen about the long axis (the axis running from nib tip to back end of barrel) and the pen will feel pretty much the same in your hand. But that rotation will put a different part of the nib in contact with the paper. A regular ball type nib will write nicely across a wide range of angles. A crisp italic will only write with that angle in a very narrow range - a good italic nib can be buttery smooth as long as you stay in that sweet spot, but a crisp italic will get very scratchy and stop writing when you rotate the pen away from that sweet spot. A cursive italic will be in between, fussier than a regular ball type nib but more forgiving than a crisp italic.

[jimk]

you can rotate the pen about the long axis (the axis running from nib tip to back end of barrel) and the pen will feel pretty much the same in your hand. But that rotation will put a different part of the nib in contact with the paper.

 

I made a drawing to make this more clear. The upper rounded nib can write at a wide range of angles. The lower nib is an italic nib - it won't tolerate much deviation from the sweet spot. Once the slit gets lifted too far off the page, the flow of ink will be interrupted - oops!

 

http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r6/kukulaj/sweetspotsizes.jpg

[Rainwalker]

Nicely done!

 

Thanks.

[simonrob]

Hi FPNers!

 

I'm back, from a long forum vacation, and I'm buying a vanishing point saturday, and sending a pen off to be binderized (my Laban Mento). My Laban mento feels great in my hand, and is a beauty, but it likes to skip and doesn't have a good flow. So... I don't know if I should get it ground, adjusted, or what. I am thinking about turning it into an italic, but after a bad experience with a 12 dollar office depot calligraphy pen set, i'm afraid it will be scratchy. So... I hear Richard makes all of his nibs buttery smooth upon return, but is it possible for an italic nib to be smooth like a good lamy 2000? Also... How do you hold them. I was just going to PM Ann Finley about this, seeing as she's the italic writing master, but I just want to get everyone's opinion about this.

 

It depends what sort of italic you want and how you hold a pen. If you're right-handed, I suspect you would find what RB calls a stub suitable (or maybe even a cursive italic). Or if you hold a pen like I do (left-handed underwriter) you may prefer a left oblique stub or cursive italic. You should discuss all this with RB, who will also likely tell you that it won't make any sense to do any of this to your pen unless he can cure the skipping and fix the ink flow (I bet he can, but you never know...).

 

Simon

 

[RevAaron]

I don't know which $12 Calligraphy set you tried, so I could be off-base here... but the $6 Sheaffer No-Nonsense calligraphy pen I have is very smooth. No tipping, and it writes so large you can't use it to write per se, but it works very smooth. If your calligraphy pen is scratchy I suspect you're holding it funny- and cursive italic will likely be just as scratchy if held in the same way. Binder might do good work, but he can't Micromesh away the laws of physics.

[EventHorizon]

I have a Vintage Waterman 32A with a 14k italic nib and once I got used to the proper angle it became a beautifull writer. I will never be able to use it for a signature and still have to move a little slower than a "normal" nib but would recommend spending some time with one.

[WillAdams]

I used a Platignum Fine Italic plain steel nibbed calligraphy pen as my main pen for almost 2 decades (until the point where the body had worn away so much that the cap started falling off when the pen was in my pocket) --- while the pen's tip had worn away to a 45 degree angle or so, it still wrote fine and I still use it as a backup desk pen.

 

William