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Which Paper To Use With Xxxxxf Needlepoint Nib?


strawberry

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I have a fountain pen with xxxxxf needlepoint nib that writes very well on very smooth papers, given that I use zero pressure on the nib (a.k.a. the pen Zen technique), which I have trained myself to do with all my fountain pens. I have a sample of Tomoe River paper here and like it a lot. But I can`t get TR in Germany, so I`m looking for an alternative in shape of loose sheets - some fountain pen friendly copier/printer paper would be ideal for me for I write and draw on a daily basis and using up 50 sheets of paper is nothing. I am through HP, Soennecken and Papyrus papers already and they all don`t do it for me, especially not with such a fine nib. What I want from a good paper is that the surface is smooth and the lines I`m drawing on it don`t bleed through or get narrower or wider in any way. And that`s why the aforementioned papers aren`t my cup of tea.

Are there any other brands of printer or copier paper out there that fulfill my recommendations plus are available in Europe?

 

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Perhaps Rhodia because it's made and based in germany... or try getting drawing paper/sketching book filled with paper you could try. Also, may I ask how on earth did you get such a extra-fine nib? I always wanted to get a XXF or perhaps a XXXF needlepoint pen... The closest I got is my TWSBI EF which is pretty sharp..

 

Good Luck on your Search!

 

-RTMC

Favorite Ink and Pen Combinations:

Monteverde Jewelria in Fine with Noodlers Liberty's Elysium

Jinhao x450 with a Goulet X-Fine Nib with Noodlers Liberty's Elysium

Lamy Al-Star BlueGreen in Extra Fine with Parker Quink Black

Pilot Metropolitan in Medium with Parker Quink Black

"A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti."

- Dr. Hannibal Lecter

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Just wondering what constitutes a quintuplet xf nib? In terms of line width (i assume it would be a value in microns)?

Edited by The Blue Knight
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Thanks for your suggestions. I was at a B&M store and looked for Rhodia paper. They did not have Rhodia, but they had some 500 sheet packs of Clairefontaine 80g in A5 for 3,28 Euros. They told me that this was by far the best paper for colour printing. So now I`m here with my Clairefontaine paper and after comparing it to my other paper samples I must say that it fulfills all my requirements: no bleedthrough, no feathering and true width of lines drawn or written on it. And it is brilliant white, whiter than any of the other papers claiming to be that. I love it!

 

And now to the needlepoint nib on my pen. I`m doing Micrography as a hobby and have been using Rotring Isograph and Rapidograph pens with 0.13mm tips. There was zero line variation and my works looked rather monotonous or like they were done in Microsoft Paint. I tried to use dip pen nibs, but they didn`t draw that fine and so were abandoned soon. When coming back to using fountain pens for writing I got the idea of taking a stiff nib with a slit that is as narrow as can be at the nib tip and grind the tipping down to an ultra-needlepoint, as fine as the point of a sewing needle if possible. And so the xxxxxf nib was born. The iridium tip is so extremely small that you can see it only through a strong loupe. To get it down into that small size I made a xxxxf tip first and then used a jeweller`s cloth to create a microfine tip with a round shape before I polished the nib slit a little bit to slightly increase the ink flow so that the tiny tip would get enough lubrication to run smooth on the paper. For having full control over my regrind I used a strong stereo loupe like those that you find in laboratories to check the size of the nib`s tipping inbetween steps. And it was absolutely necessary for me, with a weaker loupe it would have been Russian roulette, resulting in the abrasion of the whole iridium tip.

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Wow! What is the line width of the x..f nib? Is there an ISO standard for this?

Please can we see a photo of the nib and some representative samples?

I was pretty proud of myself refining the Ahab nib, but it is very nerve wracking to go that thin!

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