Titanium Vs Gold Vs Steel

[ek-hornbeck]

I'm considering buying a Conid pen, which raises the question of what kind
of nib I should get: steel, titanium, gold, or rhodium-plated gold.

After much browsing of the internet, I still cannot get a real sense of
the tradeoffs between titanium and gold nibs (aside from price considerations,
that is -- those are clear).

So, I'm wondering if anyone can answer these two questions:

• Why would I want a titanium nib instead of a gold nib?
• Why would I want a gold nib instead of a titanium nib?

Let me add a few points about my own use of pens to set context. I am not a
calligrapher. I use fine-point nibs to write notes, work out ideas, do
mathematics and write correspondence. So I don't play the game of flex-nib
line variation when I write.

Likewise, I'm not going to be drawn into the game of chasing after vintage
nibs. I don't have time for that. At some point, you have to draw a line (no pun

intended) and get back to thinking about the text you want to create, as opposed

to the tool you use to create it. Everyone chooses their own cutoff point; this is

where I have mine.

On the other hand, I enjoy writing with a nib that has a little bit of spring
or compliance to it, as opposed to a stiff "manifold" nib that would be good
for making carbon copies. It's much more enjoyable to write with the former

kind of nib; those are the pens to which I keep returning.

I have noted a comment by Stephen Brown in his review of a ti-nibbed Conid
pen that titanium nibs don't give much warning when they are flexed close to
their limits, which seems a little dangerous and undesirable to me.

In short, I can't tell if titanium nibs have any actual advantages, or if they
are simply the new, exotic toy that pen fanatics are trying these days -- the
new thing, not necessarily the better thing.

I am tuning the small details of the Conid pen I am going to buy using a
"100-year pen" criterion. That is, a Conid pen seems like the kind of thing
that would write well 100 years after it is made, something one's grandchild
could use. Replace a few o-rings every few decades and it ought to hang in
there indefinitely. So, for example, I'm not going to get black "stealth"
coating or "panthera oro" gold plating on the furniture of the pen; that is
something that could be scratched or brassed off over a century time horizon.
For similar reasons, ebonite barrels and sections are out: delrin and acrylic
are clearly much, much more stable.

OK, so how does this apply to nib material? Well, steel is clearly the
material that is the most susceptible to corrosion. Titanium is pretty
resistant (although possibly prone to stress-induced over-flexing failure,
possibly due to someone unused to fountain pens picking up your pen and
wrecking it accidentally). Pure gold is, of course, very resistant to
corrosion and oxidation -- but that's not what a 14K gold nib is. A 14K gold
nib is really only about half gold; the other half is made of non-noble metals
that *are* susceptible to corrosion, right?

So, it seems to me (non-metallurgist that I am) that a rhodium-plated gold nib
is probably going to be the nib that is most resistant to time and corrosion.
Especially if you run difficult, non-pH-balanced inks through your pen.

(Granted, in a Conid pen, there is this one other big chunk of metal exposed
to the ink: the bulkfiller's piston, which is "merely" titanium. On the other
hand, the piston is not an exposed, external part of the pen. It lives a
quiet, protected life inside the pen, and doesn't have anything like the
stressful, tip-of-the-spear life that a nib has. It's also a much thicker
piece of metal.)

One other comment about steel vs. ti vs. gold vs. rhodium: Richard Binder has
a web page on his site stating that rhodium is more wettable than gold, which
is more wettable than steel. (Titanium did not make his list. His page is
pretty explicitly negative on the subject of titanium nibs -- but then, Binder
seems to be somewhat negative on the whole subject of flex-nib writing, which
makes his comments more specifically useful for me, given the way I use pens.)
In any event, this wettability issue would again seem to give the advantage
to rhodinated gold nibs, over gold nibs and steel.

OK, those are my questions and my initial approximations to answers. Can
anyone provide any further insight or guidance?

-EKH

[maus930]

I have several pens with Titanium nibs -- mostly Stipula -- I like them very much -- smooth and nice flex

[Out0Mind]

So, I've sort of fallen in love with titanium nibs as a normal writer as my handwriting is awful, I can't write calligraphy, and I have absolutely no abilities in flex. For me, the fear of over-flexing a TI nib is low, as I'm not really trying to flex the nib so much as have a lovely, smoothe, bouncy feel as I write across the page.

 

I have a TI Fine Stub on my Conid Slimline Bulkfiller and a TI Fine on my Conid Kingsize CAISO. The feel is so smoothe and just bouncy enough, that the pen has, what feels like, a lot of forgiveness and makes up for the majority of the inadequacies of my handwriting. Because of the innate flex, though, the pen is more wet than you might expect for a given nib width.

 

I'll say this, though: if you want a unique pen that is incredibly well built with a unique nib that will give you more bounce and flex than you're used to without being excessively so, you can't go wrong.