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Titanium Ti, Atomic number 22 was discovered by William Gregor in 1791, Cornwall, GB. Martin Heinrich Klaproth a Prussian chemist named it Titanium after Titans (a group of 6 Male and 6 Female Pre Olympian Greek Gods). It was in 1932 William Justin Kroll introduced the Kroll process thus making Titanium available for commercial use. As of 2021, the four leading producers of titanium were China (52%), Japan (24%), Russia (16%) and Kazakhstan (7%). Titanium is known for its high strength to weight ratio making it a strong metal with low density and anti corrosive properties. The melting point for Titanium is 1,668 °C making it one of the hardest material to work with for a FP nib. To the best of my knowledge, Parker after multiple unsuccessful attempts in tipping a Titanium nib came up with the Parker T1, The first Titanium nib pens in 1970 and the limited edition Parker 75 sporting Titanium nibs in the following years. The Parker T1 was discontinued in 1971. Bock is currently the leading manufacturer of tipped Titanium nibs but it’s always a pleasure to see Made in India Ti nibs moving up the ladder.

I have been using fountain pens since 1976. That time it was primarily hero pens and mostly locally manufactured moulded pens, the brand names I find hard to remember. Most of these pens were of two filling categories only, sac filler(mostly made in China) and ED. Thereafter I graduated to Parker and continued using a few of them till 2019 on and off. Meanwhile got facsinated by Ballpens, netters, jitters, Gel pens, roller pens etc. Came 2018. I still had three Parker Vectors, one each for using Blue, black/green and red inks respectively. I came across an article on Ratnamsons and history of fountain pen turned in india. This made me search for manufacturers in India and I thought of reviving my love for Fountain pens. Thus I jumped headfirst in acquiring all I could lay my hands on and in the process became friends with many turners and became aware of their products too. Subsequently I graduated to use of flex nibs and dip nibs. I got interested in calligraphy fonts and cursive writing. That will be a different post. Currently I will focus on three pens from different brands using flexible nibs Magnacarta Emotions with stock flex steel nib, Kanwrite heritage with KANWRITE Fine flex steel nib and LOTUS pen with Kanwrite 14k Gold flex nib. The LOTUS pen is part of a limited edition initiative by Fountain pen lovers of India with 50 pens only made . These three pens when I started flexing, I realised that even in steel flex nibs, the amount of pressure required to assert pressure was different. It required lot of efforts to flex Magnacarta vis a vis KANWRITE Heritage. The LOTUS pen with gold nib was but easier.