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@penwarrior32The OP answered this question upthread.

@MercianMontblanc boutiques have a reputation of stocking sample writing paper that exhibits feathering and other undesirable effects when subjected to the nib of a fountain pen, yielding unreliable line width comparisons.

Wondering how is the writing experience. Do you intend to ink the pen? Beautiful pen!!!

@marlinspikeI must confess that as an enthusiast of Vacheron Constantin, and an admirer of their vintage ultrathin skeletonised manual calibre 1003 and automatic calibre 1120, I have never been seduced by Montblanc’s watches, save for their aforementioned 1999 skeleton model. But it is good to know that negotiation for Montblanc watches is possible, knowledge which might come in handy were I to consider gifting a pen-and-watch combination for a Montblanc connoisseur.

Indeed! For some reason I thought the were 80 or 90 pages, not sheets. Thank you!

In terms of actual sales I believe the pen has always been worth a fair bit more than the watch. The best thing about Montblanc watches is if you can find the one you want at a seller who wants it gone within 1 year, you can get a great price.

Ah, Visakhapatnam! Site of yet another, er, glorious recent performance by the England cricket team 😁 35 degrees Centigrade, while being too hot for me to feel comfortable, should not be hot enough to threaten the plastic of a Parker 45’s grip section. But I would still advise you to not leave one in a parked car on a hot summer day!

@da vinciNot to mention that it is, to date, the only skeleton pen model by Montblanc with such a delicately thin metal overlay to better showcase every other engraved metal surface on the pen.

Well, English has Celtic, Brithonic, Latin, Old German, Danish/Old Norse, Norman French, Dutch, middle German, and now Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, and Patois elements. There are undoubtedly some others that I’ve forgotten. The odd smatterings of Persian and Greek for example. I reckon it ain’t just our Celtic maternal lines that were, er, happy to give a warm welcome to (& learn enjoyable tricks from) exciting new tongues….

Isn’t kanwrite shipping from USA now?

Just asking people here in Vizag causes them to say a 2 rupee pen is better or 0.024 dollars. But it is definitely not 50 degrees here it’s around 35 ish

Are you insinuating that our ancestral Celtic mothers 'slept around'?

The Duofold Vacumatic pens (aka ‘Duovacs’), with the transparent material between the coloured celluloid stripes are, IMO, some of the prettiest pens ever made!

@marlinspikeAfter having released the 75 Years of Passion and Soul Skeleton Watch to accompany the Skeleton Pen (the pen being recently received after a five-year wait by @mosh_2k7), one would have thought that Montblanc would be recognised for horology, but I suppose a single model, no matter how spectacular, was insufficient.

I agree! The English word ‘nib’ is related to words for the ‘beak’ or ‘bill’ of a bird, which words also get used colloquially for ‘nose’. It seems to have developed because the shape of the cut end of a quill used for writing slightly resembles the shape of the end of the bill of a goose or swan or duck. English is the unattributable child of many fathers. This often means that it is capable of expressing fine variations in meaning that other languages simply cannot*, but its jumbled-up heritage also makes its spelling conventions a ludicrously-idiosyncratic nightmare, and make it - in many ways - a Silly language! 🤪 * E.g. whereas English has ‘brain’ available for the grey ‘hardware’ and ‘mind’ available for the ‘software’, French has only cerbeau, a word for the ‘hardware’, and no separate word for the ‘software’.

Oh bummer. It was an interesting color, if a little on the dry side. Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

Waterman Edson, green with a fine point and the original converter. Actually only semi-impulsive acquisition as I have considered this one of my grail pens for quite a while. happily traded three other pens of less interest for the Edson.

Actually, may I ask @clint1 what model of pen that is? If it’s a ‘LeGrand’ from the ‘Around the World in 80 days’ series, Montblanc’s website currently only lists nib options of ‘M’ or ‘F’ - there is no ‘EF’ option listed! In which case I would suggest that your nib may be an ‘F’ (nominal width 0.5mm), rather than a ‘M’ (nominal width 0.62mm). And, if I were you, if you think that your pen writes with too-broad a line, I would go back to the store where you bought it, and suggest to the Manager that his sales staff need to be trained on the details of the products that they are selling! To be fair, that model is listed as sold out online, and it is possible that some stores may still have older stock of the ‘Around the World’ LeGrand pen, which may in fact have come with ‘EF’ nibs. One way to check this would be to take your pen back to the store, and to dip-test it in comparison with some ‘LeGrand’ pens from the standard ranges with ‘EF’, ‘F’, and ‘M’ nibs. All of the LeGrand pens are meant to have nib grades of the same widths. I.e. a standard LeGrand’s ‘EF’ nib should be the same width as the nib on an ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ LeGrand that has an ‘EF’ nib on it. And the ‘F’ nibs should be the same, the ‘M’ nibs should match, etc. Edit to add: Any ‘EF’ nib on any LeGrand pen is supposed to have a nominal width of 0.43mm. Whilst manufacturing tolerances might result in a ‘wide’ ‘F’ nib being of a similar width to a ‘narrow’ ‘M’ nib, there should always be an obvious difference in width between any ‘EF’ nib and any ‘M’ nib from the same model line.

great pen to repair, exploded view shown below with some necessary parts/equipmment

Me too, except the refill is a Montblanc blue

What a fabulous pen, and a magnificent addition to your collection! The engraving on the nib is a stand out feature.

In that case, I too would be minded to describe the nib on your pen (if I were e.g. intending to sell it) as being “a western ‘M’ nib”. Or maybe an ‘F’. Although, to complicate things further, if that paper happens to be a very absorbent one, and so tends to make inks ‘spread’ on it, the nib itself may be a narrower one. And the same (spread) may also occur if you are writing with an ink that is very free-flowing, or ‘wet’. And, to add even more variables into the mix, it’s true that some pens have wider grinds than others, such that their ‘F’ is the same width as the ‘M’ on another pen. E.g. a Pelikan M1000 with a nib marked ‘EF’ would write a line of a similar width to some Japanese companies’ ‘M’ or even ‘B’ nibs! Then one has to account for the variation that occurs between nibs that are marked with the same size, due to natural variation in manufacturing… 🤪 Did the ‘M’ nib you tried in the store write with a much wider line than this one? Do you think than a store employee might have accidentally put a pen with a ‘M’ nib into a box marked as ‘EF’? (Actually, if your pen has a serial no. on it, Montblanc might be able to tell you what nib they put on to that particular pen at the factory.) Ultimately, the main question is this: are you comfortable with its width?

@jmccarty3Perhaps you may be able to view images of the same model, though a different example, here, instead: https://www.stilusaurea.com/portfolio/montblanc-149-skeleton-75-anniversary/