Variation In Nib Sizes

[Pub]

Can someone explain or have a good idea why there is a variation in actual nib sizes?

 

To be specific, I have noticed that a Cross 0.7 tip rollerball is thinner than a 0.7 in a Parker refill. Surely one of them is wrong?

 

And when it comes to FP nibs, why is nib sizes not universal? I mean a medium nib in a parker is more like a broad compared to a Cross medium.

And when speaking about Japanese nibs, I have read that they all come out thinner - so a medium is more like a fine or something like that. But who defines which way round they should be?

 

I am totally confused.

[AustinMalone1999]

Each company decides. It is really weird. Personally, I bought one of every size Lamy Nib and use those as ''true'' sizes. It makes it much easier to just pick a standard. As your collection grows, you can not compare everything to everything. Basically if a SUV is a little bigger from Chevrolet than from Buick, you don't call it a van right? You call it an SUV because the manufacturer said to. I call my medium nibbed Pilot Metropolitans Fine Nibs. The Fine Nib Metropolitan? Extra Fine.

 

It's just one of the many imperfections of the Fountain Pen Community.

[lzykramer]

I am new here as well. But I will try to answer some of your questions. There are no universal nib sizes, every pen company's nib sizes vary. Even within the company the nib size may vary, for example Pelikan M1000 Extra Fine is not the same as M600 EF.

 

You can have a look at nibs.com, they have nib tipping size chart.

 

Japanese nibs tend to run finer compare to western nibs apart from Aurora, their medium is more like a fine in western standard.

 

Finally it depends on the papers and ink you use, if the quality of paper is bad then the line would appears to be bigger and wetness of the pen is also important.

 

Hope this help

[ac12]

The nib size problem like clothes size is it is manufacture specific.

And even then there is change over time. The old Parker F is not the same as the current Parker F, it is smaller. I understand this is similar to the old Lamy and the current Lamy nibs.

But you hit the answer w/o realizing it. Fountain pens for the most part are XF,F,M,B, not 0.3, 0.5, 0.7. And the letter sizes were determined by the companies MANY years ago. One company does not care about another company, so the fact that their F does not match another companies F is of no concern to them. In fact it is not in their best interest to make it easy for their customers to switch to another brand.

 

This is the same for shirt and jacket sizes (I take a S or M depending on the brand), or women's dress sizes (my wife is a 4, 6 or 8 depending on the brand).

 

Letter sizes are relative sizes, not absolute sizes.

[BT-7274]

There's also the issue of quality control. Even with one manufacturer, sometimes, the accepted range of tipping width can be wide enough just so that a very fat fine nib is the equivalent to a thin medium. As a result, I ended also simply basing all of my observed line widths off of a single pen as a basis - a medium nibbed, Sheaffer Targa. If a pen writes thinner, it's a fine or extra-fine, if it's wider, a broad, and onwards.

[ac12]

To make this more quantifiable, I measure the width of the tip of most of my pens with a dial caliper (measured down to 0.001 inch)

That way I KNOW how wide the tip is, regardless of the marked size.

 

However, the width of the ink line is also dependent on the profile of the tip.

A sphere will have a narrower ink line than a cylinder or slab shaped tip, presuming same ink, paper and ink flow.

[Pub]

Coming from a Ballpoint and Rollerball where I have noticed variation in refills from different manufacturers yet both claiming to be 0.7 I just thought it was universal when it came to FP's.

 

Personally I prefer a medium nib (Lamy, Cross) but Parker folks on Amazon are saying that a medium on the Sonnet is more akin to a broad these days. That would copy their refills in Ballpoint and Rollerball where I have noticed the same.

 

Traditional Asian writing is bold so I don't know why they have sized down - a Medium comes out a Fine etc. If anything I would have thought they would of had it the other way..

 

What all this does mean is that you have to be careful what nib size you choose when ordering. Something which nobody new to FP's would know.

[Pub]

By the way you are right about the clothes sizes being different. I am a bit thinner when I shop on holiday in America than I am in the UK. I can almost shave off 2 X's on shirt sizes in Walmart lol.

[pajaro]

When I first bought a Montblanc, a saleslady at a pen store told me that European nibs ran wider in each nominal size than American nibs. Later on I found out that Japanese nibs ran narrower than American nibs. It's the way it is. Rail about if you will. Nothing changes. Get used to it. Discuss X company's fine nib runs y mm. You will get used to it after a while. The pen companies make nib sizes as they think proper, to the confusion and consternation of the buyers. It's too bad they don't make an industry standard and adhere to it. I find that some manufacturers have one standard for one series of pens, and another seeming standard for another series of pens. Sometimes I wonder if they are just trying to stir the pot and keep the user community guessing. It does seem to induce you to buy more nibs in an effort to draw your own baseline for a product line you like.

[BillZ]

This is why I prefer to get my pens from Dromgoole's in Houston vs. on-line. I am able to actually write with the pen before I buy. I have seen

variations within brand,too so once I find a pen I like I buy it not one "just like it". I buy pens to use as writing instruments first and

foremost so nib size and line width are paramount in my choices.

[inkstainedruth]

To make this more quantifiable, I measure the width of the tip of most of my pens with a dial caliper (measured down to 0.001 inch)

That way I KNOW how wide the tip is, regardless of the marked size.

 

However, the width of the ink line is also dependent on the profile of the tip.

A sphere will have a narrower ink line than a cylinder or slab shaped tip, presuming same ink, paper and ink flow.

Just to muddy the waters even further, the line you make may be very dependent on the ink used, and how wet or dry the nib is. For example, I have several Parker Vectors with F nibs. One is a firehose (writes as wet -- or wetter, than another Vector with an M nib!); one is very dry writing; and a third is somewhere in between.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[ac12]

 

Just to muddy the waters even further, the line you make may be very dependent on the ink used, and how wet or dry the nib is. For example, I have several Parker Vectors with F nibs. One is a firehose (writes as wet -- or wetter, than another Vector with an M nib!); one is very dry writing; and a third is somewhere in between.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

I know what you mean.

I did an ink test of Noodler's Emerald City Green. A really nice green.

BUT, the ink line out of my F nib Morriset looked like it came from a B nib. The ink was soooo wet that it blotted on all 4 of my test papers, creating a WIDE ink line. I almost rejected that ink, till it tried it in a DRY Pilot 78G. That dry pen was able to choke/restrict the ink flow enough to not blot.