Hoping someone could ID these pens for me

[Dan Carmell]

I will remember the phrase from that document “ a heavy masculine line that threw away the technique” because it perfectly describes what one gets with a broad/coarse point. 
Very interesting document, thanks to machine translation, I will read more, thank you. 

[Dan Carmell]

On 4/6/2022 at 8:25 PM, A Smug Dill said:

 

With due respect to @kpong11, I wouldn't call an opinion confirmation. That's why I wrote, ”I don't know with certainty”, because I cannot find any authoritative information source stating how those nibs came to be named thus, or even cite a long history of it being industry convention (in China and/or elsewhere).

 

 

Not really. I have many Chinese pens with ‘financial’ nibs here, and not all of those nibs are in physical contact with the hood to rely on it for physical support (against any attempt to elastically or inelastically deform it, eg. to flex it). 

 

Rare is the Chinese EF nib that writes finer than an F nib produced by one of the Japanese ‘Big Three’ brands in the fountain pen industry. 

 

Clearly I was suffering from confirmation bias, I wanted a neat clear answer, so I jumped for it. 
 

I thought the hooded nib was more a convention than an actual necessary. I would think there might be long term problems with a nib that actually depended on the hood to be stiff (a nail, as many people refer to many vintage Sheaffers etc.). Nib deformation, ink residue in unwanted places, interrupted ink flow—seems like problems would be waiting to pop up. 
 

It’s true, I’ve already noticed, about the comparative F/EF nibs of many current Chinese made pens versus Pilot/Sailor/Platinum, but the important thing is they are not so wide as modern European nibs, which generally don’t do it for me. I do get an EF nib whenever I can. The only nib too fine for me is the Platinum UEF, which requires some additional attention when I write with it. 

[Number99]

On 4/18/2022 at 12:21 AM, Dan Carmell said:

Clearly I was suffering from confirmation bias, I wanted a neat clear answer, so I jumped for it. 
 

I thought the hooded nib was more a convention than an actual necessary. I would think there might be long term problems with a nib that actually depended on the hood to be stiff (a nail, as many people refer to many vintage Sheaffers etc.). Nib deformation, ink residue in unwanted places, interrupted ink flow—seems like problems would be waiting to pop up. 
 

It’s true, I’ve already noticed, about the comparative F/EF nibs of many current Chinese made pens versus Pilot/Sailor/Platinum, but the important thing is they are not so wide as modern European nibs, which generally don’t do it for me. I do get an EF nib whenever I can. The only nib too fine for me is the Platinum UEF, which requires some additional attention when I write with it. 

In AliExpress's app for Japan, "financial" appears in the Chinese character "金融".

 This is displayed directly in Chinese and does not make sense as a translation.

 If you throw the word "金融" into the search window of AliExpress, you will see items related to "notebook". "Fountain pen for notebook" "Gel pen for notebook" "Notebook type calculator" "Notebook itself" etc. A notebook here is a type of notebook that can be put in a small pocket, but translation does not work well.

 Then, for some reason, a lot of hooded jackets also appear.

 I think this is a side effect of machine translation.

 It seems that Chinese members will come up with an answer soon, but if we were discussing because of "mistranslation" and further based on "mistranslation", it would be a conversation that Chinese members do not understand. It looks like.

 

 

 

 

 

[A Smug Dill]

On 4/7/2022 at 6:23 AM, Dan Carmell said:

What does ‘financial’ mean in this context? By observation on AliExpress, it seems to mean a hooded nib, possibly EF?

 

On 4/20/2022 at 10:28 PM, Number99 said:

In AliExpress's app for Japan, "financial" appears in the Chinese character "金融".

…‹snip›…

It seems that Chinese members will come up with an answer soon,

 

This is starting to really go sideways, so to speak.

 

金融 (see https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/金融) means finance, as in banking, (trading in) bonds, commodities, stocks, etc. I haven't seen that term used in relation to describing fountain pens or specific components of such.

 

On Taobao, where one can see how items are listed by sellers in Chinese (as understood by the dominant segment of Chinese speakers, i.e. those in mainland China, and adopting their terminology and expressions), a subset of fountain pens and/or nibs are sometimes described as 财务专用, often abbreviated to 财务. 财务 is literally “(in) money matters”, and therefore “finance”, but in the contexts of corporate finance and personal finance, not markets and trading. 专用 means “(for) specific use”. So, a pen or nib that is 财务专用 is “especially suitable for use in the context of finance”, but that is not a description of, and does not so much as allude to, the physical characteristics of the nib. Maybe that implies writing on paper of inferior, coarse, or inconsistent quality (as opposed to calligraphy paper, art paper, etc.); maybe not. It certainly seems to imply being used to render glyphs in relatively small size on paper.

 

Note that usually only sellers put such wording in the item listing titles or descriptions. (The Picasso brand is the exception.) From what I have seen, the marketing collateral that originate from manufacturers or brand owners generally would describe the nibs as 暗尖 (暗 literally meaning dark or dim, but metaphorically meaning hidden or obscured; 尖 means sharp and/or end-point, and in the context of fountain pens, short for 笔尖 nib) or 包尖 (包 meaning wrap or surround), thus hooded nib, as opposed to 眀尖 (明 meaning bright, or clearly visible; ergo, open nib), and give some numeric indication of width (e.g. 0.35mm or 0.38mm). There's also 直尖 (straight nib), versus 弯尖 (bent nib) or 美工尖 (artwork nib).

 

Source: Taobao

 

Source: Hero flagship store on Taobao

 

Source: Taobao

 

Source: Taobao

N.B. the numeric figures given in the image immediately above refer to the total length of each nib

 

There is no reason why a 0.35mm open nib with a straight point would be any less suitable than a 0.38mm hooded nib with a straight point for use in a finance or bookkeeping context, if being able to write very finely is the key performance criterion; but it seems “financial” has become a shorthand descriptor of “0.38mm hooded with straight point” for some sellers. Maybe that's traditionally what they were called decades ago; maybe not. I'm not a historian at heart, and don't really care that much, but I just want to help others realise what it means when they see the descriptor of “financial” for a nib type.

 

For what it's worth, I've never seen a Chinese nib being clearly marked on the body as 财务, 财, FI, or FN, unlike Posting nibs (cf. Pilot nibs that are marked PO as the nib type).

[Penguincollector]

谢谢 for all of this information,  it’s a window into a whole other aspect of the fountain pen world. Now I have to brush up on my Mandarin as it’s been 20 years since I studied it last. 

[Number99]

11 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

 

This is starting to really go sideways, so to speak.

 

金融 (see https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/金融) means finance, as in banking, (trading in) bonds, commodities, stocks, etc. I haven't seen that term used in relation to describing fountain pens or specific components of such.

 

On Taobao, where one can see how items are listed by sellers in Chinese (as understood by the dominant segment of Chinese speakers, i.e. those in mainland China, and adopting their terminology and expressions), a subset of fountain pens and/or nibs are sometimes described as 财务专用, often abbreviated to 财务. 财务 is literally “(in) money matters”, and therefore “finance”, but in the contexts of corporate finance and personal finance, not markets and trading. 专用 means “(for) specific use”. So, a pen or nib that is 财务专用 is “especially suitable for use in the context of finance”, but that is not a description of, and does not so much as allude to, the physical characteristics of the nib. Maybe that implies writing on paper of inferior, coarse, or inconsistent quality (as opposed to calligraphy paper, art paper, etc.); maybe not.

 

Note that usually only sellers put such wording in the item listing titles or descriptions. (The Picasso brand is the exception.) From what I have seen, the marketing collateral that originate from manufacturers or brand owners generally would describe the nibs as 暗尖 (暗 literally meaning dark or dim, but metaphorically meaning hidden or obscured; 尖 means sharp and/or end-point, and in the context of fountain pens, short for 笔尖 nib) or 包尖 (包 meaning wrap or surround), thus hooded nib, as opposed to 眀尖 (明 meaning bright, or clearly visible; ergo, open nib), and give some numeric indication of width (e.g. 0.35 or 0.38). There's also 直尖 (straight nib), versus 弯尖 (bent nib) or 美工尖 (artwork nib).

 

Source: Taobao

 

Source: Hero flagship store on Taobao

 

Source: Taobao

 

Source: Taobao

N.B. the numeric figures given in the image immediately above refer to the total length of each nib

 

There is no reason why a 0.35 open nib with a straight point would be any less suitable than a 0.38 hooded nib with a straight point for use in a finance or bookkeeping context, if being able to write very finely is the key performance criterion; but it seems “financial” has become a shorthand descriptor of “0.38 hooded with straight point” for some sellers. Maybe that's traditionally what they were called decades ago; maybe not. I'm not a historian at heart, and don't really care that much, but I just want to help others realise what it means when they see the descriptor of “financial” for a nib type.

 

For what it's worth, I've never seen a Chinese nib being clearly marked on the body as 财务, 财, FI, or FN, unlike Posting nibs (cf. Pilot nibs that are marked PO as the nib type).

The introduction of the fact that it is a 財務専用 pen is easy to understand.

 

 I found an article with many Chinese notations for nibs, including Parker's special nibs.

 

https://www.zhihu.com/question/312109439/answer/600226085

 

Thankyou very much！

 

 

[Mech-for-i]

On 4/22/2022 at 6:15 PM, A Smug Dill said:

..

 

For what it's worth, I've never seen a Chinese nib being clearly marked on the body as 财务, 财, FI, or FN, unlike Posting nibs (cf. Pilot nibs that are marked PO as the nib type).

 

AFAIK , there is never any nib that's marked so , but there was many pens clearly marked so , and as for the part , from vintage era on, the accountant / Financial nib usually not only referring to the XF / XXF grind ( which in old days means even finer than 0.3 per todays' standard ) but also the nib is turned to write with the said kind of ink , aka usually Iron Gall Blue Black or classic Carbon Black , both being lean flow , one being dry , and one being thick .

 

Those same nib when used with todays more free flow ink generally will return writing wider than how its original intended

 

[Number99]

23 hours ago, Mech-for-i said:

 

AFAIK , there is never any nib that's marked so , but there was many pens clearly marked so , and as for the part , from vintage era on, the accountant / Financial nib usually not only referring to the XF / XXF grind ( which in old days means even finer than 0.3 per todays' standard ) but also the nib is turned to write with the said kind of ink , aka usually Iron Gall Blue Black or classic Carbon Black , both being lean flow , one being dry , and one being thick .

 

Those same nib when used with todays more free flow ink generally will return writing wider than how its original intended

 

I saw some product pages where fine point (0.2mm) water-based ballpoint pens are sold as "財務専用" "Financial-only" pens.

 I also saw the notations "金融 ink" "financial ink".

 

I understand that the small notebooks and calculators displayed in the AliExpress search were items related to "financial" office work.

 

It was good to be able to deepen our understanding because these questions have a close influence on our purchasing behavior.

 

 Thank you very much.

 

 

 

Edited April 25, 2022 by Number99

[TFHS]

I recently collected several "semi-finished products" of Hero 800 pen nibs.

[A Smug Dill]

Just now, TFHS said:

I recently collected several "semi-finished products" of Hero 800 pen nibs.

 

Hey, they're pretty damn cool! Where did you find those?

[TFHS]

Just now, A Smug Dill said:

 

Hey, they're pretty damn cool! Where did you find those?

A precious metal recycler. My guess is that at the turn of the century, Hero Pen Factory used these to pay workers' wages. These nibs then flow into the hands of precious metal recyclers.

 

https://b23.tv/o6TtV0f