Surprised by Sailor KOP nib

[Driften]

I've had several Sailor pens with B nibs and currently have a Pro Gear with 21k B. I got my first KOP last week and went with a B nib. It writes really nice, but for a Sailor it seemed to write wider then I was used to. I measured the line width and was surprised to see it puts down 0.75mm line. The normal and slim ProGear B nibs puts down a 0.45mm line. I just checked my records and the 1911L with a B nib wrote 0.6mm. Strange two Pro Gears (standard and slim) both wrote finer than that. The KOP writes the same width as the B on my Visconti Homo Sapiens! The 1911L with Zoom nib shows up on Friday and I wonder how wide it will write. I think the 1911 Realo Zoom I had before was more in the 0.8-0.9 range but I forgot to record it in my database.

 

My favorite line width is 0.6-0.65mm, but 0.75mm isn't an issue, just a surprise. If I get another KOP I will get an M just to be different and have both widths. But at the price of a KOP not sure if will buy another one soon. The more European width is nice for showing off ink. 

 

Overall I am enjoying the pen more then I expected I would. I was thinking it would feel more like my MB 149 based off it's size, but I like the KOP better of the two.

[Wadude]

I can completely relate to your experience, having recently acquired my first KOP with a Broad nib. Not only it writes vastly broader than I expected, but also with a very different feeling. Instead of the velvety, pencil-like feeling of my KOP M nibs, this one is glassy smooth, the smoothest pen I own, smoother than my Pilot Urushi. I feel somewhat disappointed, since I was looking specifically for that singular Sailor writing experience.

 

I guess it goes to show that manufacturers can never win with us insane, capricious hobbyists, but I have to wonder if Sailor B nibs were always this way or if the House of Anchor is finally capitulating to the smoothness crazy.

[mke]

> The normal and slim ProGear B nibs puts down a 0.45mm line.

That is never a B. That is more typical for a Sailor M.

In my experience, 0.38 mm is typical for a Sailor F and 0.3 mm for a Sailor EF.

 

My KoP M nib is also much broader than any other Sailor M nib, I have. It is nearly as broad as a Pelikan M.

 

Probably, Sailor considers KoP as signature pens - just for signing a document.

[Driften]

9 hours ago, Wadude said:

I can completely relate to your experience, having recently acquired my first KOP with a Broad nib. Not only it writes vastly broader than I expected, but also with a very different feeling. Instead of the velvety, pencil-like feeling of my KOP M nibs, this one is glassy smooth, the smoothest pen I own, smoother than my Pilot Urushi. I feel somewhat disappointed, since I was looking specifically for that singular Sailor writing experience.

 

I guess it goes to show that manufacturers can never win with us insane, capricious hobbyists, but I have to wonder if Sailor B nibs were always this way or if the House of Anchor is finally capitulating to the smoothness crazy.

 

It is smoother then my other sailor as well, but I don't mine that in a nib this broad. It doesn't skate in Rhodia paper so I would say it's a perfect smoothness. It also flows and writes perfectly, but it was tuned by nibs.com before they sent it to me.

[Driften]

5 hours ago, mke said:

> The normal and slim ProGear B nibs puts down a 0.45mm line.

That is never a B. That is more typical for a Sailor M.

In my experience, 0.38 mm is typical for a Sailor F and 0.3 mm for a Sailor EF.

 

My KoP M nib is also much broader than any other Sailor M nib, I have. It is nearly as broad as a Pelikan M.

 

Probably, Sailor considers KoP as signature pens - just for signing a document.

 

I did find in my notes the 1911L I had before in B was a 0.6mm. But the two Pro Gear Ocean (slim and standard) I bought together on sale and both wrote that fine and both were/are marked as H-B.  I no longer have the slim, just the standard. 

 

[arcfide]

I have been playing and loving a Sailor KOP B nib recently. I have some theories on this whole thing. 

 

Reading back into the history a little bit of people's experiences with Sailor on FPN, I don't think they've changed their ways. I suspect a few things are combining to create the situation.

1. The KOP nib I have is *very* springy by my standards. More so than pretty much any of my other pens, with the exception of purpose-made Flex nibs. I have a very light touch (off the charts according to Nakaya's survey for new nib tunings), but even then I have trouble not at least creating a little bit of tine movement with this pen when I write. Any of this sort of tine movement is bound to increase the line width by a little bit. 
2. The nib is much larger, and I suspect the tipping is a little different on these pens, which will naturally lead to some variation over the smaller nibs.
3. The large feed and nib seem well designed to lay down a lot of ink, which will also increase line width and wetness, which will also affect the overall nib feel.
4. I find myself writing at a different angle than with my other pens because of the size of this pen versus others, and I notice the line width does change depending on the angle slightly.
5. Depending on how I write with the nib, I can either get the "pencil like feedback" from the nib or I can get an exceptionally smooth nib, to an even more pronounced degree, as noted, than the Pilot pens I have, which are known for smooth balls. I suspect that the reason for this difference is that the Pilot pens I have appear to achieve smoothness through very high polish levels on their nibs, where the Sailor feels like it achieves its smoothness through something more like a foot and "ice skates" effect with the ink, based on how it feels to me. This corresponds with the experiences I have read historically on FPN; namely, that it appears that Sailor grinds their nibs to have a bit of a sweet spot, and if you hit that sweet spot, you get that super smooth feeling, but if you don't, you get some degree of the pencil like feedback. Now, given that the nib is larger, more springy, and has a wetter flow, I suspect that it is easier to stay on the sweet spot with this pen. If I stay in the sweet spot, I get the smoothness described by some Sailor users here on FPN, and if I don't, I get the pencil like feedback described by others. With a smaller nib and a smaller pen, I suspect that people hit off the sweet spot more often, getting that feedback. I don't have enough Sailors to be able to test this exhaustively or comprehensively though. 

Now, this is all largely extrapolated speculation and analysis, not fact. 🙂 

 

At any rate, it works for me, because I specifically picked this pen because I wanted a wet broad to show off my inks more and still retain a bit more writing ease and generality. I find that I can reverse write with the nib pretty well and the line width is not as large as some of my broader nibs, which makes it a good all-arounder for me, particularly with regards to letting me enjoy my inks more than I might from a fine nibbed pen.