Leonardt 400 Series, 'ornamental' Dip Pen Set

[pe2dave]

Background. After a first (largely failed) attempt at rubrication, I

wanted something aking to a paint brush, for ink.

 

penset is the actual thing I bought,

though I bought from ebay and only paid UK 7.50. Not exactly Pelikan

money.

 

Leonardt, the manufacturerare where they are made. Some

good kit there IMHO

 

 

 

Boy are these things weird! Or at least nothing like I've ever seen

before. The principle I guess preceeds the biro? It attempts, and

largely succeeds, in laying down an even line, no matter in what

direction the pen moves. The caveat is that the pen angle must remain

constant? This is done by means of taking a nib, bending it so the end

of the nib forms a disk which is laid on the paper. The nib 'split'

(tech term?) continues to make the disk into two halves, hence

allowing ink to flow to the disk. Another tweak, intentional or not I

don't know, the underside of the disk is concave? This means that ink

can flow into this tiny recess, and hence gain flow onto the paper. Is

that clever or is that clever! Anyway, the review.

 

The set of nibs is marked 1,2,3,4 and 5. I believe that this relates

to the diameter of the disk? So the smallest line I can draw is 1mm,

quite wide. The widest is huge and starts to impact the choice of

paper which can be used with these nibs. That brings my first caveat,

this pen set is a support tool, not a prime writing/drawing

instrument? If you want variant line width, this won't give it to you.

 

First Impressions:

 

I'd got goods to the value I'd paid. As I try more dip pens I'm

slowly becoming more enamoured of them. They do precisely what they

say on the tin. Anyway. Opened it, fitted a nib to the (rather long

for me, 7.5 inches, with nib mounted) holder and dipped in some Calli

red. I'd tried the 1mm first. It wrote like a pen! Not silky, but

being small, no problem. After recent threads on one forum, I'm

slowly moving over to the tripod hold, and the angles on this pen

push you back to having the holder rest in the fleshy part between

thumb and forefinger. I'm tempted (but not just yet) to tweak the

angle to make it steeper. I've a nasty feeling that might just upset

the ease with which the correct angle is maintained to keep the disk

on the paper.

 

Five nibs for (about) ten dollars US. Sounds good to me.

 

Appearance and Design. Simple. That's it. The reservoir has clearly

been worked out by Leonardt or whoever they got it from (same as

the Brause nibs), and holds enough for a line at 1mm, a couple of

letters (full ink flow) at 5mm. Enough, basically. The nibs are

workable out of the box, but I've recently started to learn to

fettle them and hence that's just what I did.

 

Weight and Dimensions: Weight, no problem. Light as a

feather. Dimensions? Mmm. I'm not a fan of a long holder, so

I'll probably cut this one down to six inches or so. 7.5

inches, top to nib. Flickr

Image of the holder and side view of a nib.

 

Nib and Performance:

Flickr

View of two of the nibs. I took some fine micro-mesh to the

larger one (hence I noticed the dip in the underside). Without

that, it didn't glide over the paper quite so easily. After that,

no problem, even the larger ones. Doing something useful with

such a width is another aspect that I guess will take some

getting used to. As with any ink, if you want to retrace a line

you need to be quick. That's what I wanted these pens for,

substantial thickness lines (my goal is to become nominally

proficient at rubrication) which were repeatable and not

directional. For that they do the job.

Flickr

 

image shows an example, a doodle really. I managed a full ine

with the one millimetre nib, four characters with the three

millimetre nib, the word 'many'. The green at the bottom is (I

think) the 4mm? Because it is so wide, I could fill in the spaces

quite quickly.

 

Filling System: I didn't have much problem with the filling system. No

syphon, no lever, no piston... no nuffink in fact! Just dip

the ... I will need to learn how to use these properly. Once

dipped (fully) the nib is overloaded. Wipe it and most comes

off, leaving the reservoir full. With the larger nibs, this is

really rich and very wet. I need to wipe the nib to stop the

'dry', 'wet' sequence in lines, where the drying nib is lifted

and a full nib is replaced. I'm told the scribes used a piece

of chamois for this. I think that's a waste of goats, but I'm

sure I can find something. I used two inks. Calli red (a

dipping ink), and Private reserve Sherwood Green, a fountain

pen ink. I didn't notice the difference.

 

 

Cost and Value:

Low (compared) and good. What more can I say.

 

Conclusion.

I think these are going to be a valuable addition to the toolkit.

 

 

Dave