Aurora nibs

[mke]

A dutch penshop said on IG that Aurora nibs are the best nibs.

Such comments give me stomach ache. I am a scientist and like to have some facts.

Can you help?

 

And another question, do Aurora nibs fit in other pens? Anybody tried?

 

 

[InesF]

Still no science when I can tell from my practical experience that my fife Aurora pens, ordered with different nibs were the only fountain pens where none of the them required any form of fine tuning, adjustment or any other work out of the box. Compared to four other Italian brands where I also have multiple practical experience pointing somewhere else, there seems to be something special about Aurora. I guess (but don't know), they care about what they sell.

My Aurora nibs are: stiff round M; modern flex, goccia EF; blue coated stiff round F; black coated stub.

For statistics: 5 Aurora pens & nibs: 5x perfect conditions. 11 other Italian brand pens: 9x nib tuning (and 3x pen tuning!) necessary.

 

All fife nib units screw out (for cleaning) and are interchangeable to any other Aurora pen. I was, so far, neither willing nor in need to dismantle a nib unit to get a free nib.

 

[mke]

On 1/29/2024 at 4:49 PM, InesF said:

5 Aurora pens & nibs: 5x perfect conditions

That sounds good. Thank you.

[Lam1]

On 1/29/2024 at 1:49 AM, InesF said:

Still no science when I can tell from my practical experience that my fife Aurora pens, ordered with different nibs were the only fountain pens where none of the them required any form of fine tuning, adjustment or any other work out of the box. Compared to four other Italian brands where I also have multiple practical experience pointing somewhere else, there seems to be something special about Aurora. I guess (but don't know), they care about what they sell.

My Aurora nibs are: stiff round M; modern flex, goccia EF; blue coated stiff round F; black coated stub.

For statistics: 5 Aurora pens & nibs: 5x perfect conditions. 11 other Italian brand pens: 9x nib tuning (and 3x pen tuning!) necessary.

 

All fife nib units screw out (for cleaning) and are interchangeable to any other Aurora pen. I was, so far, neither willing nor in need to dismantle a nib unit to get a free nib.

 

 

My experience is the opposite. 

I only have one Aurora, an Optima Sterling Silver with a Stub nib. It came with an utterly misaligned nib that required a lot of work to get it working. Then, after one use, the piston broke (leaked from the blind cap). 

Now, after the two repairs, it works well (and I do like the pen).

[ajoe]

Generalizations are always wrong. Even this one.

[InesF]

20 hours ago, Lam1 said:

My experience is the opposite. 

I only have one Aurora, an Optima Sterling Silver with a Stub nib. It came with an utterly misaligned nib that required a lot of work to get it working. Then, after one use, the piston broke (leaked from the blind cap). 

There seems to be always an exception.

[Bo Bo Olson]

A decade ago one could still get semi-flex aurora nibs in a German B&M.

 

I took one of my semi-flex pens with me, for a sale. The Aurora nib was finer than any European nib...(close to a Sailor nib perhaps)....then....but it was scratchy just like reported.

 

Sine then, they came out with that fake flex pen....I guess any that had worked on their semi-flex nibs retired....and new management wanted to do it the bookkeepers way, ...lie....

I don't know how thin they are now.

 

One can only chase so many brands...and Aurora didn't make it in I wasn't into skinny nibs. 

 

I would suggest chasing Aurora pens that are 20-70 years old.

[Fr-Jano]

I got the opposite comment from on the most respected pen shops in Paris: they recently tried to carry the brand again as Aurora is attempting to re-enter the French market, but they dropped the brand after a few months. They said they never had so many nib issues with any brand - even compared to Visconti when they had non existent QC - they called their products "junk" ; said they consulted other Parisian retailers who agree that Aurora has been simply awful for the past 15 years.

Keep in mind they said even Stipula (which ghosts retailers on the regular) are more pleasant to work with than Aurora.

 

I really tried to like the brand for the past few years, but out of the about 14 pens I bought brand new around 70% had crippling  QC issues and I ended up being so gutted with sending pens to Italy one after another that I sold everything.

 

Beware of Aurora, for your own sake.

[Bo Bo Olson]

So sad...when a fountain pen company is ran by a ball point user.

[AlexLeGrande]

My individual experience is with an Aurora 88 @1948.  It has a 14K fine nib that's quite flexible, not a wet noodle, but nice and flexy.  It's one of my best nibs.

[Tashi_Tsering]

I have 9 nibs from Aurora (vintage and modern). Only one nib from the modern small 88 was  poorly tuned, the rest of the nibs are excellent. 

[Bo Bo Olson]

3 hours ago, AlexLeGrande said:

Aurora 88 @1948.  It has a 14K fine nib that's quite flexible,

What I'd call semi-flex...........I wanted an 88, but couldn't chase every brand.

 

A 1948 Columbus, piston pen. The nib is no name, but is semi-flex. It is one of my most beautiful pens.

 

It's sad when one has too many pens, and such good balanced, gran nibbed very pretty pens don't get any use.

 

Aurora was once a very narrow, semi-flex toothy nib....well worth chasing.

[nibtip]

 

On 1/26/2024 at 2:01 PM, mke said:

A dutch penshop said on IG that Aurora nibs are the best nibs.

Such comments give me stomach ache. I am a scientist and like to have some facts.

Can you help?

 

And another question, do Aurora nibs fit in other pens? Anybody tried?

 

 

I have bought 9 new modern Auroras (Optimas, Dante, Pape, demo, 88 silver, Talentums, ...) to this day, either 14K or 18K, within these last two months.  

I think the writing experience is smoother than Sailor and Platinum, for the feedback character. But not on all nibs. A some are a bit smoother. Some are wetter, some drier. All write flawlessly.

 

Those variations can be applied to any brand.

 

The width of waist of an Aurora (grande) nib is 6.6mm

For comparison:

Platinum 3776: 5.9mm

Sailor 21K 6.5mm

M805 6.5mm

149 7.7mm

Modern Omas Ogiva 6.6mm

Jowo 6.5mm

 

Aurora nibs are more curved than the above. I cannot positively say if they fit other (customized, bespoke?)  pens. 

 

 

 

[torstar]

Love my Afrika and Talentum, great flow no matter the angle of writing asked.

 

[Bo Bo Olson]

some 15-20 years ago Aurora was the narrowest of the European nibs and made semi-flex nibs.

They also had a reputation of being toothy.

 

An old Aurora 88 is on my list....and has been for 12 years.

 

At my B&M, I tested an Aurora Verdi...there are very very many Verdi's, from expensive to real real dam expensive.

 

For my birthday some 10 or so years ago, my B&M had a sale of certain pens; The Aurora Verdi, Pelikan Pen of It's time or Their time, ....and a MB Virginia Woolf.

I got the Woolf because it was pretty and much cheaper than the other two.

The Aurora Verdi was very pretty, but it's nib was too narrow and toothy. Almost scratchy....

I had brought a Geha 725 Goldschwing with me, in it's got great balance and a semi-flex nib, as a test pen. So I know the Verdi was semi-flex.

 

Some time in the last few years Aurora came out with some sort of advertising crud of a....flexi.....nib.

Pen owners ...at least on this com, were not as stupid as Aurora thought.

It wasn't even semi-flex.........something they didn't bring some old guys out of retirement to do it right.

 

I don't have one...but would advise getting a older ...20 years or 40 or 60 year old one with a toothy semi-flex nib.

Toothy could perhaps be slightly smoothed**....but fake 'flexi' is going to remain fake.

 

** IMO one needs a toothy nib...ie, one that writes like a pencil....just like one needs a butter smooth nib.

As one can tell I'm not much in favor of butter smooth nibs.

I prefer good and smooth, the level just under butter smooth...won't skate on slick papers.

 

On sale prices €750 for the Verdi, 600 or so for the Pelikan and €450 for the MB Woolf.

There was that dammed small print....enforced on my birthday present. Our money.

I couldn't afford any good to better paper, cheap pens on German Ebay, or even ink....for at least 9 months.

I do love the My Eyes Only bling of my Woolf.

[Targa]

What utter nonsense.  Firstly, "best" is clearly a 100% subjective term.  Best how or for what?  Second, even if one defines some specific criterion or criteria to qualify as "best", you would need to do statistical studies of at least many, if not all, nibs, with a sample space of, e.g. 20 nibs of each type.  And then a nested analysis of variance, looking for the components of variance, which I predict will show that the human factor in setting and tuning nibs at the end of the process is the major variance.  And so, the only realistic outcome would be that one company or another, on average, produces more "good" nibs than others, but that any indiviual pen may have a better or worse nib, regardless of manufacturer.  After all, nobody writes with averaged pens, just your won.  

And anyway "You can always tell a Dutchman.  But not much."

[torstar]

well then... 

[Bo Bo Olson]

I just won an Aurora Otpima...have to check when that style pen was made in black and gold, to see what I can say in an Aurora nib thread.

It appears to be semi-flex...early, checked it vs three semi-flex pens. Not a narrow nib looks M, so could be an Aurora B.

The big black one in the middle...along with an Aurora BP.

[NoGaBiker]

I bought a "Big" 88, used, last week. It has the long-tine nib. Mine was Medium. Worked great out of the box but I am an Italic kinda guy so I made it an Italic right away. I know I'm still in the honeymoon phase, but man I love this pen. It's so plain, I don't know why I like it so much. Black with gold trims, 14k nib. Something about it feels and looks vintage, but it's probably less than 30 years old, although it's only my second Aurora and I've spent 35 years of pennery pretty much ignoring them. I bought an Optima Asia because it's too pretty to ignore, only to find that it's also too short uncapped to enjoy, and I don't like the balance capped. Sigh. 

But the 88... Wowzers. I did open up the feed ink channel a tad because I like super wet pens; it didn't "need" it, I just wanted to customize for my own taste. But like I said, before messing with the nib and feed I wrote with it for a day and was very impressed. 
 

[Tseg]

A couple years back I won at auction for a very good price a NIB (New in Box) Aurora 88 long nib remake from 1990.  This long nib remake was made for just 1 year as they found it difficult to tune (?).   After 30+ years this 14k M nib wrote beautiful and closer to (European) Fine out of the box.