Sailor Music Nib—Ok To Write Reverse?

[sightsome]

Hello fellow Sailor lovers. I recently acquired a Sailor 1911L with a music nib. It is a complete joy to write with, especially with the Sailor Four Season Oku Yama, since it brings out the shading and the sheen in that ink beautifully.

 

But I digress. Ive noticed that when I write with this pen reversed/upside down, I get a broader downstroke and thinner cross stroke that is one-size smaller than the normal position, and it writes just as smooth as the normal side. Ive found this differentiation in size to be handy in writingbigger side for the main text, smaller side for annotation. Plus I like to have the option of the larger or smaller depending on the application. Its kinda like having two stub nibs on one pen. And we all know that one can never have too many stub nibs around.

 

Now, when I told one of my pen buddies about this, and hes a guy thats been in the pen world longer than Ive been alive, he warned me not to write reverse too much, since it will wear out the nib. For the same reason women dont file their nails from the top-down, it will eventually fracture the nail, was the analogy he used to try to explain it.

 

Now, I can see how that would be the case for some nibs, like maybe the Sailor fine or medium nibs, but is this so for the music nib? The reverse side writes so well and so smoothly, and it delivers a smaller mirror image of the normal side so reliably that it seems as if Sailor meant one to use the nib in this way. Furthermore, Ive read elsewhere that music nibs are meant to be written with pretty much vertical to the writing surface, with the pen oriented such that the broad strokes are horizontal, long the direction in which one is writing. So, it seems likely to me that Sailor designed the nib to be written from three directions: the normal Western prose writing style, the reverse, and the music style.

 

But Im sure one of you here can help me know whats what.

 

Thanks!

 

P.S. If this issue has been addressed and I just cant find the thread, please point it out and I will delete this one.

Edited November 15, 2019 by sightsome

[sightsome]

Nota bene: for some reason when I wrote this post from my iPad, it removed all that hyphens and apostrophes from my writing, and I can’t get them to stay in. So, please forgive the grammatical infelicities. They are forced on me.

[Intensity]

Hm I've only had one Sailor Music nib, and it was a smaller 14K nib on a Pro Gear Slim. Mine only wrote properly at a high near-vertical angle, as I had learned Sailor's music nibs are ground that way on purpose, compared to Platinum's and Pilot's equivalents. At a lower angle with the paper, something like 45 degrees, it would skip and hard start. I didn't write in reverse much to test that orientation, but I remember it worked fine. I had the nib re-ground at a pen show to a traditional sharp cursive italic (almost formal italic), and it writes beautifully now with very high line variation and spiderweb thin cross strokes--one of my favorites.

 

As long as there is tipping material that you write with, the nib tipping should take a long time to "wear out". You shouldn't be pressing down into paper anyway, and hopefully you don't write won rough paper or on nail buffing sticks

 

In regards to iOS Safari eating punctuation--it's a known issue Happens to me all the time when I post from my iPad. It used to bother me greatly and I'd edit and re-edit, and now I write compensating for those errors. Instead of "I'm", I will write "I am", etc.

[sightsome]

Hm I've only had one Sailor Music nib, and it was a smaller 14K nib on a Pro Gear Slim. Mine only wrote properly at a high near-vertical angle, as I had learned Sailor's music nibs are ground that way on purpose, compared to Platinum's and Pilot's equivalents. At a lower angle with the paper, something like 45 degrees, it would skip and hard start. I didn't write in reverse much to test that orientation, but I remember it worked fine. I had the nib re-ground at a pen show to a traditional sharp cursive italic (almost formal italic), and it writes beautifully now with very high line variation and spiderweb thin cross strokes--one of my favorites.

 

As long as there is tipping material that you write with, the nib tipping should take a long time to "wear out". You shouldn't be pressing down into paper anyway, and hopefully you don't write won rough paper or on nail buffing sticks

 

In regards to iOS Safari eating punctuation--it's a known issue Happens to me all the time when I post from my iPad. It used to bother me greatly and I'd edit and re-edit, and now I write compensating for those errors. Instead of "I'm", I will write "I am", etc.

That grind option sounds lovely. I might do that someday. It also seems like there is enough tipping on the top of the nib to grind the underside/face into an italic and still keep that upper lip so as to retain the option of reverse writing.

Edited November 15, 2019 by sightsome