Do scratchy nibs smooth out?

[Wizergig]

I bought a pen recently that has a extra fine Iridium nib on it. This pen gives a lot of feedback, and seems very scratchy. This was not a high dollar pen, but being so new to this hoby I don't feel comfortable trying to manipulate the nib in any way. So my question really is do these nibs tend to smooth out as they are used, and does it generally take a lot of writing? I realize that being an EF nib it is likely to be more rough to start out with.

Thanks

Chuck

[kissing]

Hi!

 

Any good nib should not feel annoyingly scratchy - though they can be tolerably toothy.

Could you tell us what pen it is?

[Wizergig]

Hi!

 

Any good nib should not feel annoyingly scratchy - though they can be tolerably toothy.

Could you tell us what pen it is?

It is an Arbutus Carbon Fiber pen. It has a German iridium point that puts down a very fine line.

http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa222/Bravotwofive/pen3.jpg

http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa222/Bravotwofive/pen1.jpg

 

[FrankB]

Some nibs smooth out over time, but EF and F nibs that start out very scratchy seem seldome to get smooth on their own in my experience. You could try the brown paper bag smoothing trick. Or Tryphon Industries has a nib smoothing kit that consists of very fine grit sand paper that works wonderfully well. It doesn't take a lot of talent to smooth out the nib. In fact, you can ask here for guidance.

[Ink Stained Wretch]

I bought a pen recently that has a extra fine Iridium nib on it. This pen gives a lot of feedback, and seems very scratchy. This was not a high dollar pen, but being so new to this hoby I don't feel comfortable trying to manipulate the nib in any way. So my question really is do these nibs tend to smooth out as they are used, and does it generally take a lot of writing? I realize that being an EF nib it is likely to be more rough to start out with.

I can give you a definite answer to your question: it depends.

 

Sometimes the scratchiness can be smoothed out just by writing, but a lost of the time it's not at all possible.

 

I have experienced "Toothiness" to get mitigated over time by writing with the fountain pen, but actual scratchiness has never gone away.

 

And you need to figure out why it's scratchy. If the tines are misaligned no amount of writing can smooth out the nib. If the tipping material is missing a chunk or is malformed you'll have to spend years writing it out and it's possible that it'd take a century or more of writing to smooth such a nib. Slightly rough tipping material may get better after a while but even that's dicey.

 

So I'd say that the thing you need to do is inspect the tip under magnification to see what the problem might be. Good luck with it.