Secretary of De Flex nib on Opus 88 Omar

[steve50]

I want to briefly share how this modified nib performs when mounted on Opus 88 Omar - an eyedropper pen with a shut-off valve. For the sake of clarity, let me note at the outset that by 'softness' I mean the soft feel of the nib when pressure is applied. Softness may or may not be combined with tine spread. By 'flexibility' I mean a combined quality of softness and tine spread. Platinum SF nib, for example, is soft but there's only minimal tine spread, so it's not really flexible. Noodler's and Fountain Pen Revolution nibs have good tine spreads but no softness, so they don't qualify as flexible either. Lastly, tine spread has to be matched by a generous feed, or else it'll suffer from ink starvation. This is the case with Pilot FA nib which is flexible but relatively dry. (Personally though, I like the FA nib in its original set-up.)

 

Now the 'Secretary of De Flex' nib is fully flexible in the sense I just defined and it comes with an ebonite feed with a very generous flow. First, it's soft to the point where you'd have to take care not to flex it. This is what I look for in a flex nib. It starts from a Jowo EF point, so it's not extremely fine to begin with, and it can easily write like a F point if I'm not careful. This is because along with the tine spread comes an increased volume of ink and an even thicker line. It also means that I can achieve line variation with very little effort, pretty much like writing with dip nibs. I don't use flex nibs for lettering/calligraphy but for regular writing with subtle line variation; which is why I like the FA nib as it comes, because I don't really flex it all that much. Suppose I normally apply 5 units of pressure to a rigid M nib. With the Secretary nib, I begin with 1-2 and go to 5 when I want flex action. So I'm actually applying less pressure than I would with a rigid nib. 

 

In the delivery package, Kirk who modified the nib included a writing sample showing how far the tines can spread. According to my measurement, it's about 2.1mm which is more than a 10X spread. I never push it that far but that's how far it can go, if that's what you're interested in. Once I start putting pressure it gets to 1.1-2mm before I notice, so I imagine getting to 2.1 wouldn't be too hard either.

 

This review is also about how the nib pairs with Opus 88 Omar. The nib comes as a complete unit with an ebonite feed and housing so on paper you can just screw it into a pen of your choice and get writing. In practice it was impossible to properly install the unit to the pen without messing up the alignment. Basically because Omar has a tiny O-ring where the nib unit goes in, you have to turn the whole unit pretty hard so there's a good seal between the ink chamber and the nib unit. But this ends up messing up Kirk's original set-up. It's quickly becomes quite miserable when this happens as you'll feel like you can never get it back to how it came. It took me literally a whole day of frustration to get it to write properly again. I guess a solution to this is to get the converter version which doesn't need screwing in so hard. Or take the O-ring out and replace it with silicone grease. Pairing it with a converter might have another virtue of more controlled ink flow. At the moment, I use it with the shut off valve always always shut because the flow gets uncontrollable when it's open.      

 

It costs $140, which is expensive for a steel nib, but it'd definitely cost me a lot more than that to buy the tools to cut additional slits and master the skills to do this. Plus with this nib and Pilot FA my flex nib needs are sorted, so I'm happy.   

[Karmachanic]

Pablo at FPNibs ground a flexy, 14K #5 Jowo for my Koloro three years ago. It's been permanently inked since that time. Like you I always keep the valve open, except when flying. I lost the feed O-ring a long time ago. Made no difference.

[steve50]

31 minutes ago, Karmachanic said:

Pablo at FPNibs ground a flexy, 14K #5 Jowo for my Koloro three years ago. It's been permanently inked since that time. Like you I always keep the valve open, except when flying. I lost the feed O-ring a long time ago. Made no difference.

I reckon the two nibs perform pretty similarly. But this one is cheaper as it's based on a steel nib. The actual fee Kirk charges for the modification is around $80, which again could be cheaper but not unreasonable.   

 

I keep the valve shut not open to control the flow. I'm surprised that there's no leak without the O-ring. As an experiment I tried eyedroppering an ebonite pen without using silicone grease nor an o-ring on the nib housing, and it leaked badly.