Grinding A Cheap Round Nib Into A Stub

[orko]

Hi, folks!

 

I just joined here and decided to make a small post which might act as an introduction.

 

A month ago I finished off with my undergraduate studies and didn't have much to do before I go abroad for my Master's studies next January. My handwriting, which has always been cursive needed some serious improvement and hence I decided to do just that. The shop near my place had a pretty cheap fountain pen, the Flair Inky Executive which cost me Rs 50 ($ 0.75). It came with two cartridges and I decided to make the most out of them before trying out any other ink.

 

As soon as I started writing, I realized the pen had a medium nib and my handwriting was never legible unless written with an extra fine nib. I couldn't return the pen so I decided to play along with it for a while. I tried to follow some of the rules of the Spencer script which resulted in a minor improvement in my handwriting. In my pursuit to improve my writing, I came to know about italic nibs and the line variations they have to offer. After a lot of fooling around on the internet, I decided that I should grind my round-nibbed Inky to an italic nib.

 

I had a small block of granite laying around and began grinding the tip of the nib. I never really expected any results but it turns out, that I did manage to do something to the nib. Now as it stands, it's not an italic nib, but one could argue it's almost a stub and surprisingly enough, it isn't as scratchy as I imagined it would become. A stub nibbed FP here in my city would cost me around 4 times the cost of the Flair Inky that I used. I observed that after grinding, the lines have become much finer and I do get a bit of line variation.

 

I am still trying to improve my handwriting every day (been at it for 4 days now).

 

I am posting some images of the pen and a sample of my writing in it.

 

 

This is the nib after grinding, not sure one can make out much of it since I took the pictures with my phone camera.

 

 

Finally here is a sample of my ugly handwriting using the grounded nib.

 

 

Comments, views and suggestions are most welcome!

 

Cheers!