Ever Noticed What Happens When You Sand A Nib?

[Flippy]

Hi,

 

Recently, I smoothed my medium nib (Lamy) with a ceramic cup bottom. After testing it on paper, I noticed something weird. The nib felt as though it was a Platinum 3776# Century, pencil like. It wasn't rough, just smoothly pencil-ish. Also, the nib made a louder noise as I wrote with it.

 

Is it just in my head? Will it go away? I mean, I didn't do it roughly at all, and it was barely for 10 seconds.

 

Josh

Edited June 14, 2017 by FlippyThePen

[Bo Bo Olson]

You have made the nib toothy. Your cup was much, much to coarse. Ten seconds can be way too long.

 

Get a three 'roughness' nail buffer in the beauty section, try just the smooth side to see if you can bring it back. Light Circles left, right, squiggles up and down, and left and right. 8-10 seconds total.

 

Do not do figure 9's, Ol'Grizz (RIP) said it causes baby bottom.

 

The other two roughness side, can be used to grind a nib or smooth it....do go lightly....what is gone is gone.

 

You didn't say what Lamy you were working on....I'm not sure of other Lamy pens, but the Safari nib use to cost some $7.00, in case you can't get it back to smooth. I think there are a lot of Lamy pens with Safari nibs.

[FarmBoy]

Try putting coffee in the cup first then grind your nib on the cup bottom.

[rwilsonedn]

Yes, if you grind into the surface of your tipping material with a really coarse abrasive, you will end up with a really coarse surface. There is a reason why the people who do this for a living say to use micromesh. Which, by the way, is what you will need to repair the results of your experiment.

ron

[aeba]

Yes, if you grind into the surface of your tipping material with a really coarse abrasive, you will end up with a really coarse surface. There is a reason why the people who do this for a living say to use micromesh. Which, by the way, is what you will need to repair the results of your experiment.

ron

That is, if op wants to "repair" the result.

[Flippy]

But the cup wasn't really course. It was somewhat smooth actually.

Edited June 14, 2017 by FlippyThePen

[ac12]

 

 

But the cup wasn't really course. It was somewhat smooth actually.

 

Not smooth enough.

 

Your fingers are fooling you into "thinking" that it is smooth enough.

[Russ]

Use micromesh. It isn't expensive and you will find it very useful for many years. I would never go back to improvised abrasives. The glassy smooth writing of a well-smoothed nib speaks for itself. Please, get micromesh.

[Erik Dalton]

Josh, it's your pen, your nibs. It's ok to experiment. But remember we were all like you at some point in our FP journey. Our comments are only meant to help you skip over some of the FP disasters we've created ourselves. I have a vintage Montblanc in my pen chest, that I literally wore away the tipping material trying to smooth the nib.

I've kept the pen for years. Maybe someday I'll send it out to be retipped.

 

For now, you could try to smooth out your nib using brown paper bag material, on a hard flat surface. Countertop, hard cover book etc.

 

Let us know how you make out.

[perfectstranger77]

At some time I "adjusted" the nib of a Jinhao 189 with the same result, but I found that I love that sound and feel (I am also a big fan of mechanical pendils) and given that this pen is also heavy the writing experience for me is fascinating as I've always preferred heavy pens.

 

But as others have said, I wouldn't do it to a more expensive pen.

 

Peace.

[Flippy]

Ok,

 

I ended up taking the brushed stainless steel part of a pair of scissors and smoothed the nib. Eventually, it went back to buttery smooth.

 

Yay!

[FarmBoy]

Try getting a nail buffing stick.

 

I would never considered a scissors for nib smoothing though I did recently hear about using a scissors to cut nibs apart.

[Bo Bo Olson]

The thing is with pens eventually you are going to have to bite the bullet....and shell out $5 or $10 for pen supplies.....

 

(Back in the Day...8 or so years ago...micro-mesh was hard to find....and Expensive....probably cost a beer or two. And I was in the Pen of the Week in the Mail Club, so didn't waste my money.)

 

I made do with the Brown Paper Bag, for years....but all I was doing was removing drag for sat in the dark of the drawer for two or so generations of micro-corrosion/'iridium' rust.

 

The brown paper bag will not take a nib more than 'good and smooth', it will never go to 'butter smooth'.

It does teach you to make big sweeping strokes as you learn to rotate the tip of the nib at all times. It is harder to ruin a nib on a brown paper bag than on a buff stick....but if you put your mind to it, and don't rotate the nib constantly, you can make a flat foot on the bottom of the nib.

A wet round hand mirror will smooth a bit....but again, it is not something to grind a nib with; small smoothing job...they use to smooth up WW2 Gillette Blue blades on mirrors or the inside of a glass.

 

I do know how to rotate a nib, so when I went to a thin buff stick, I could adjust....to real, real tiny

I do think a small sheet of micro-mesh to be much better in one has more surface to work with and is not cramped like a buff stick.

 

While you are out throwing money over your shoulder, get a rubber bulb for cleaning your CC pen, and a needle syringe....Goulet (sp) has a rubber needle one to fill your empty cartridges with.

Cartridges have over expensive....the high expense drove me a workers kid to ball points....so I could afford a Dime Coke, a large Nickle Snickers and a pack of baseball cards.

They are still rich folks toys even now.

[deepak23]

Ok,

 

I ended up taking the brushed stainless steel part of a pair of scissors and smoothed the nib. Eventually, it went back to buttery smooth.

 

Yay!

Chill ran down my spine as i read this. Get a set of micromesh paper. Random material like ceramic, scissor etc can kill nibs in no time.

[Morphling27]

Goulet sells a pen tuning kit with 3 levels of mesh (one is technically a 12,000 grit sandpaper, but that's WAY smoother than your ceramic cup or scissors). The thing is, you're dealing with micron level smoothness for this - unfortunately our sense of touch is good, but not that good.

 

Ceramic is VERY coarse, as are many metals. If you put those under even a basic microscope, you'd see.

 

Anyway, the little kit sold by Goulet is good, use cheap nibs like Lamy or Noodler's to test on (I Hope this isn't a 2k nib!). You can learn, you'll still mess up, some nibs are just junk, others will most likely require someone is a true nibmeister to make work. As a funny story to how 'smooth' the micromesh papers are, the first time I used it I had to try both sides to realize which was the 'rough' surface.