Regrind From B To M, With Mild Architect

[TheDutchGuy]

Making slow but steady progress doing re-grinds of steel nibs. The most pleasing ones thus far are a Leonardo stub that I narrowed from 1.5 to 0.9 and this one:

 

 

This nib began life as a B. At some point I figured I needed a B, so I ordere a spare B nib/feed collar for my Supra Brass. But I was wrong, I can't do anything with a B. Just not my kind of nib. Because these #6 Kaweco nibs aren't all that expensive, I decided to narrow it to a nib that writes an M line horizontally and an F line vertically, i.e. with a mild architect grind. Ideally I'd make it an EF in the vertical direction, but I did not want to push my luck.

 

The job was done manually, with 3k grit glued to a perfectly horizontal block of hardwood. The result is a very smooth nib that's totally reliable: it never skips, it never hard starts, it has rich flow...and as a bonus it's a great reverse writer! The upward blob on the tip was quite rounded to begin with and I only had to apply a gentle smoothing to it in order to achieve perfect reverse writing. I do lots of reverse writing with it, so you might say it's two pens in one.

 

I'm very pleased with it.

[Honeybadgers]

That's one hell of an expressive grind!

 

I wouldn't recommend using sandpaper on wood. Get a $1 marble floor tile from a hardware store and some spray adhesive, glue sandpaper to that. It's a ghetto machinist's block but I've used it for cylinder heads for years and it's never failed me.

Edited May 18, 2019 by Honeybadgers

[TheDutchGuy]

Thanks! It's a lot of fun to do! I've found that 3k grit will do most jobs without the need for a Dremel or anything like that. Final smoothing with 12k grit. I compared the result to a "real" architect nib:

 

^---top: my Kaweco #6 regrind; bottom: stock vintage 14C EF nib in my old MB 146 (for a while, MB shipped their EF's as architects).

 

That old 146 EF is a masterpiece, but it has two drawbacks that are inherent to its razorblade design. First, it's very sensitive to angle of writing. Second, you can forget about reverse writing. The Kaweco shows less line variation when writing, but does not have these two drawbacks at all.

 

How much the line variation shows up in my actual writing depends on the style of writing. Slow, deliberate writing and cursive italic reveal it more.

 

PS... stubs, now those are hard to do, I find. I always assumed that stubs were just a narrow flat-foot with smoothed edges, but I was totally wrong. Never got them right with that approach. Examining some factory stubs under a stereo microscope revealed my error. In order to get the narrowest possible horizontal stroke, the tip needs to be ground like a half-cylinder lying across the width of the nib, i.e. rounded. And in order to get a nice, even vertical stroke, the lowest point of that rounded surface needs to be in exactly the same spot (i.e. in a perfectly straight line) all across the width of the nib. And if you finally get it right, then the polishing process might undo it. While I've made some interesting, usable and fun nibs in my efforts to create the perfect stub, so far the desired result eludes me.

Edited May 19, 2019 by TheDutchGuy

[TheDutchGuy]

 

I did another one, this time with one of the many Kaweco 60 nibs I've got lying around. I took an F and did a subtle re-grind that turns vertical strokes into very thin lines (the image doesn't really do it justice) and European-F sized horizontal lines. Very nice character to the writing. The Dia2 is a great platform for nib changes, with its removable nib/feed collar. Depending on mood, I can do 1.5, 1.1, M, F, EF and now my own little architect-ish nib.