My "new" Pelikan 400nn arrived today!

[mhwombat]

[N1003U]

A lovely, classic pen. It looks like the nib has just a nice touch of expressiveness. I hope you enjoy it for years to come!

[carola]

The 400NNs are great pens. Enjoy!

[inkstainedruth]

For some reason, even though it's not my favorite color, that striped green binde just screams "Pelikan" to me.  I don't know why.  I have one in that color from the 1950s, but I don't use it a lot, preferring some of the others, and the color I wanted the most was the blue-black (it's just that when I got my first bird, it ended up being an M400 Brown Tortoise because that's the one I won on eBay).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[mhwombat]

Yeah, the green binde is iconic Pelikan to me too. I love the brown pelikans!

 

I had heard that Pelikan nibs tend to be broader than usual (even for a Western pen). So I was delighted to find that my EF is really truly an EF.

 

It's a delight to have a vintage pen with a piston filler and a way to check the ink level! For anyone who doesn't know (I didn't until recently), when you hold the striped pens up to the light, you can see the ink level. Although that seems to have changed in the last year or so because they've changed materials.

[OMASsimo]

Congratulations to one of the classic Pelikan pens, one of my absolute favorites. And it looks like it’s in great shape. Vintage Pelikan nibs show a bit of width variation but the more narrow ones don’t usually tend to be broader than could be expected from their designation. If you post a picture of the nib, you may get extra information about the production period. Anyway, enjoy one of the best pens of that era.

[mhwombat]

Here's a close-up of the nib. If anyone has any more info about my Pelikan, I'd be interested.

18 hours ago, OMASsimo said:

If you post a picture of the nib, you may get extra information about the production period.

 

[carola]

Modern Pelikans tend to be broader. Vintage Pelikans usually are approximately one grade narrower than the modern ones and thus what you would call a "true" EF, F or whatever.

[DerMarsianer]

Congratulations for the pen.

I have exactly the same pen and I really like it. It's a real working horse and always inked up. I usually have a smaller handwriting and modern western nibs are to broad for me. My 400NN writes perfect and even sixty years later it feels absolutely solid and reliable.

Regards Thorsten

 

[Bo Bo Olson]

I tend to think of vintage and semi-vintage Pelikan nibs being 1/2 a width  narrower, but can get where Carola is coming from.

 

But then again I only have two modern Pelikans a 600 & 1005.

 

There is a lot of slop in every company's standard tolerance. A skinny F can = a fat EF, or be with in a 1 or 2 thousandth of an inch of thin or thick tolerance border and you will never know the difference. I ten to think getting a nib in the middle of tolerance is pure luck and seems to matter most to narrow and extra narrow nib user.

 

For years we had a flame war here, until Japanese pens suddenly became popular; Waterman's thin nibs vs Pelikans twist change a nib.

I ended up getting a old '90's Waterman Mann 200 F, that was narrower than my modern EF on a 200.....The Waterman nibs were that thin.

 

Horseshoe to hand grande close is all one can expect....if one stays in the company and era..................... change company and or era, block buster close is what you can expect.