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I posted a review of this pen in the Pen Reviews forum. It may be of interest to those looking for an inexpensive pen with which to learn italic handwriting. Here's a linki: William Mitchell Italic Fp: A Nice Choice For Italic Learners Enjoy! David

I've mainly been using a dip pen for sketching, to ensure that my strokes are surer when I sketch and that I get more comfortable with long strokes, curved strokes, etc. However, since I joined FPN, I've been itching to try my hand at calligraphy. A friend gifted me an old nib from their stash of different unused, it turned out to be a William Mitchell Round Hand 3. Here is my very first attempt at a Round Hand script, And here is the nib, I plan to, - Practice with either graph paper or ruled sheets as an aid - Figure out if I can work with cursive in this script - Look up IAMPETH and Zanerian to print out a reference script Any suggestions about how I could improve the script (apart from regular practice)? A few questions about the nib, - I also noticed some green deposits on the nib, which I'm guessing is rust. Does anyone know how I can get rid of it without ruining the nib? I'm in India, and unsure of sourcing materials that might be sold off the shelf elsewhere, so homemade or self made solutions/ideas would be a plus. - As you can see from th holder, the cork is quite stained (it has blue and black inks in them) because I am currently dipping it straight into a small mouthed/necked bottle and do not always know when to stop dipping. Any ideas how to clean the cork? - I'm currently using a stock dye based black fountain pen ink (Bril), I've read that adding arabic gum to this will help when using dip pens. Will this affect the nib in any way?