Can You Make A Nib Write Finer?

[perrins57]

Has anybody ground or polished a nib so that it writes finer?

 

If yes, any tips or can I just try using a polishing pad to remove some tipping material and make the nib end sharper/finer?

 

Thanks

[Fountainer]

Yes, do that! Just take the cheapest pen for the first try and take time and loupe for the job. Plan first where you take off material and go slowly and test the pen often. People do these operations and you probably find some instructions somewhere. Sometimes the nib tip needs reshaping anyway when it's too worn down or doesn't work well because of scratchiness or the baby's bottom phenomenon. Why not making it smaller same time if desired.

[penrivers]

Hey, here just an aficionado so take my advice with a grain of salt.

If your nib tip is rounded like an sphere take off the up and down portions of the sphere and let just a flat surface.

You can do it with a dremmel or an Arkansas Stone, with paper I think it will take to much time.

Then atack both left and right sides in that surface until you get the desired size. Finally, smooth with finest sand paper.

If your nib tip is alredy flatened you don need advice , you just reduce both left and riht sides with Arkansas Stone or sand paper.

[sotto2]

Just try turning the nib upside down.

[cellmatrix]

before you start grinding away on it, try these two simple steps first:

 

1) use a dry ink like an iron gall, on good quality paper like clairefontaine - just doing this will give you noticeably thinner lines.

 

2) if this is still not satisfactory, get a jewelers loupe and look to see how spaced apart the tines are, if there is daylight between them, try carefully pushing them closer together, while keeping the tines aligned.

[Beckwith]

before you start grinding away on it, try these two simple steps first:

 

1) use a dry ink like an iron gall, on good quality paper like clairefontaine - just doing this will give you noticeably thinner lines.

 

2) if this is still not satisfactory, get a jewelers loupe and look to see how spaced apart the tines are, if there is daylight between them, try carefully pushing them closer together, while keeping the tines aligned.

 

I agree you can play with the tines before doing any grinding. Another tip is to push the tines down toward the feed a bit - they naturally come together on most pens when pushed down, and apart when pushed up away from the feed. (You may want to remove the nib from the feed to do all of this.)

 

You also want to try to leave a triangular space between the tines, so that the widest part is closest to the section, and the point is where the tipping is.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Stop using only super saturated mono tone inks, often very wet.

Try two toned shading inks......which do well in F or M.

 

You didn't say what nib size was too wide...western EF, or Japanese EF?

[perrins57]

Thanks for the advice everyone.

I like Japanese F or EF nibs. I was going to first experiment with a Chinese med and if that works, my Pelikan EF if nowhere near as fine as I was expecting, but being a 14k nib I didn't want to experiment with that one first.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Japanese pens are made for tiny printed script.

Western nibs are made for cursive script and were in place for @ nib size before the Japanese made their first pen in 1912.

Western nibs are wider in they are not miss marked a size like Japanese nibs. Sailor is the Fat Japanese nibs, Pilot the Skinny ones.

Japanese F=western EF give or take....and the Japanese EF = XXF western.

 

Each company has it's very own standards, and modern western pens tend to be wider and more blobier than semi-vintage or vintage nibs, in modern nibs have to be made so ball point users can use one with out wasting three minutes learning how to hold a fountain pen.

Japanese pen are not made for ball point users. a plus point, so are not so fat and blobby.

 

You hadn't said, which pen was too fat for you.