EF nibs

[mke]

It is always good to know that there are remarkable differences between EF nibs. 

I show here Sailor, Hongdian and Jowo EF. Not included is Pelikan EF - as it is a broad nib in disguise.

Sailor EF is comparable to Jowo XXF.

 

 

 

[arcfide]

Indeed! And I come at this from the other side. Where pens like Pelikan have actually broad nibs, whereas other pens' broad nibs often barely make a "medium" in my book. 

[Bo Bo Olson]

The era makes a huge difference. I find vintage and semi-vintage Pelikans properly marked, and to write in a clean line..... I am not a fan of double ball fuzzy lined nibs; who wouldn't know a true clean like if bitten.

.

I have a Waterman Mann 200 F that is as wide as my Pelikan 200's EF nibs...that was once part of a Major Generation Flame War...Pelikan swap nibs vs skinnier Waterman nibs...............before Japanese nibs got off their island and were no longer nitch market.

Now no Waterman fan brags their narrow Waterman nibs any more, in the Japanese, even the supposed fat Japanese Sailor nibs are narrower than Waterman and the skinniest euro nib, Aurora.

 

You can not compare one size smaller than marked Japanese nibs made for a tiny printed script  to Euro width pens who are more 'truly' size marked for cursive writing.

Even though each company has it's very own standards. Even the so called number nibs are not as standard as wished. In the day of One Man, One Pen, why would fat Parker make a skinny Sheaffer nib, someone could become confused and buy the wrong brand for his once a decade new pen.

 

With Pelikan the tear drop tipped nibs are 1/2 a width narrower than the modern double ball.  Tear drop tipped nibs are @ as narrow and clean lined at the factory stubs of the '50-65 semi-vintage era.

 

With Pelikan having the driest 4001 inks....Pelikan makes it's nibs write wetter.....balancing out the dry inks.

So what ink of yours is dry enough for Pelikan???....and as far as I have read, Japanese inks are wet.

 

Waterman made what was once considered a wet ink, so made a narrow nib to balance that out.

Japanese nibs are  a size narrow and Japanese inks are reputed to be wet therefore....that is like Waterman how they balance out a skinnier than  marked nib. ....A sopping wet ink.

.........................

Use a 4001 ink for your Pelikan, it may not be as fat as when using a sopping wet ink.

 

Pelikan 4001 inks would make your skinny japanese pens write narrower also.

 

 

[A Smug Dill]

1 minute ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

You can not compare one size smaller than marked Japanese nibs made for a tiny printed script  to Euro width pens who are more 'truly' size marked for cursive writing.

 

Of course you can compare them; many of us did, and often. Furthermore, no company, or industry in a particular country or region, can validly claim to have defined or set a universally 'true' standard for a width grade, in a global market.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Well you can....but Japanese nibs are narrower than marked....if you grew up with Euro size...modern who started with a Metropolitan will always find Euro nibs fat....

If I don't take the miss labeling the Japanese nibs one size into account, I could believe what you want to believe.

I how ever am never going to believe a EF marked F is just.

 

They are miss marked....you who may have started with Japanese pens, would say the same about Euro nibs. My god a Euro M is as wide as a Japaneses B.

 

Oddly no one comments on that....as true as it is.

 

 

[Karmachanic]

15 minutes ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

Japanese nibs are narrower than marked.

 

EF and F according to Western standard perhaps, but not according to Japanese standard.  M and B are often the same.

[Bo Bo Olson]

I live in the west and can remember long before Japanese pens crawled out of their Island nitch. So I favor western nibs as being the 'true' size....going from real wide Conway Stewart to as narrow as Euro nibs go, Aurora.

As I mentioned there was a time with in the last 15 years when the Waterman fans bragged their narrow nibs........until the Japanese pens became popular.

 

I've often said, if one starts with Euro nibs, Japanese are narrower than marked.

If one started with Japanese pens, the reverse. Euro nibs are all fat and fatter...than marked.

 

But to be blunt to expect Euro pens to be as narrow as Japanese is ...paste your words here...don't want to get  banned.

 

In I'm into M in Euro nibs I'd have to get B Japanese in it's narrow marked, and that is could be a narrow M.

Richard Binder had a chart on that once.

 

[Karmachanic]

Nib.com has a chart.

[Cjtamu]

4 hours ago, Karmachanic said:

Nib.com has a chart.

Interesting. Have been telling my wife for a bit that the M nib on M600 black tortoise I recently purchased is broader than the B on my Custom 845. It’s the only M Pelikan I have so wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be so. The chart just confirmed it. Thanks for the link.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Thanks...does show Waterman F= Pelikan EF.

 

The pre- 97 chart I had and sort of lost in the mess of my computer had only Conway Stewart, Parker, Sheaffer, two Pelikans; the 400's and the narrower 800, and then Waterman.

In 1997 Pelikan tasked Bock to make it's double ball nibs....perhaps the tear drop tipped 200's also...don't know on that.

The Pelikan Double Ball is as shown in that nice copied chart, as now fatter than both Parker and Shaffer...........which it use to be narrower than.

But the Pelikan vintage and semi-vintage nibs write with a nice clean line and are 1/2 a width narrower than modern...which IMO does not write with as clean a line.

I am AR/OCD on woolly lines...even have my own chart on that. Many ink reviews show a woolly line as 'normal', in there never is any comment about it, that one can plainly see.

 

Hair splitting starts with whoever's F and goes downwards....in narrow.

I've never seen My BB/OBB is wider than yours.

 

I got saved buying a Japanese EF, by running into a MB 32 with as that narrow of a nib eyeball EEF.

(I'm with in minutes of running one old MB 264 (narrow M) out of ink, and could well try that 32.)

I am on the whole satisfied with my two Pelikan 200's EF's or the = Waterman F, for editing. Even if considered Japanese F by most.

But Fine nibs fall into my hand outside the two Pelikan 200's which I ordered with EF nibs, I never chased them having gone wide before setting on M.

 

I do have a maxi-semi-flex Geha 790 EF..,which has the problem, I'm still slightly Heavy Handed, so just as often as not the nib writes F because of the tine flex. That pen is as narrow as I need.

Perhaps because I had that pen, I never had the need before those two (pretty) 200's to chase other narrow nibs. Narrow nibs of that era I suspect to be nearer to Japanese narrow, in vintage and semi-vintage German nibs are 1/2 a width narrower than modern. My Pelikan W.Germany 600 OBB is one half a width narrower than my post '97 805 OBB, as expected.

My two Pelikan EF 200's.........They are narrow enough for me....especially in quite often I use those wide , fat western M nibs. (And I got that Waterman Mann 200 in it's narrow for western F.)

 

 

[Mercian]

The narrowest nibs that I own are, in ascending order of width (based solely on subjective personal assessment):

• a late-1950s Geha 700 (nib marked ‘F’);
• an early-1970s Made-in-France Parker 45 (marked ‘X’);
• some modern Lamy Z50 nibs (marked ‘EF’);
• an early 1950s Pelikan 400 cursive-italic (marked ‘F’) = a modern Pilot Plumix ‘calligraphy’ nib (marked ‘F’);
• a 1970s Made-in-USA Parker 75 (marked ‘F’);
• an early 1990s Pelikan M400 (marked ‘M’);
• a modern Pilot Metropolitan (marked ‘M’);
• two 1970s Made-in-England Parker 45s (1 x 14k gold, 1 x steel, both marked ‘M’)
• various modern Parker and Lamy nibs (marked ‘F’).

My modern ‘western’ nibs are wider than my modern Japanese nibs marked with the same grade - which one would expect, given that Chinese/Japanese characters require many very-fine strokes to ‘draw’ in comparison to the relatively-simple glyphs of European/west-Asian alphabets.
But my 1950s German nibs are of similar widths to my equivalently-marked modern Japanese nibs.

 

Looking at my list above, I suspect that ‘western’ nibs may have become wider as fountain pens have seen their ‘general day-to-day writing’ role usurped by ballpoints and rollerballs, and, as a consequence, fountain pen use become increasingly restricted to ‘signatures’.
Or maybe nib-making expertise has been lost, or tolerances have been reduced in order to cut manufacturing costs.
Or maybe it’s just a case of wider nibs being more in-fashion in western countries in recent years.
🤷‍♂️ 

 

In summary, my experience is that the widths of companies’ nibs vary according to the whims of their then-current Executives.
These vary by era as well as by company-location.

 

Slàinte,
M.

[Bo Bo Olson]

10 hours ago, Mercian said:

But my 1950s German nibs are of similar widths to my equivalently-marked modern Japanese nibs.

I expect the '50-70 era of German nibs to be with in 1/2 a size of Japanese nibs.......

The size chart that was so nicely given...is modern size not vintage. I read and see it as 1/2 a width narrower than modern at least by Pelikan. Being in Germany some 35 Pelikans fell into my hand, mostly vintage and semi-vintage.

 

Outside of my real Fat B, Virginia Wolf, my tear drop @late 80's early '90's 146's and 149 seem 'normal' like the Pelikans of that era. My vintage '48-70 MB's; a 234 1/2 Deluxe, rolled gold 742, 32 and a 1948-60 medium-large 146...all seem of that era, not particularly narrower or wider than the other brands.

 

I have a a pre-98 chart hidden in my computer, that shows Parker being fatter than Shaffer, and both fatter than Pelikan....pre'98, when they went over to the fat and blobby ball point writer's friendly double ball and stiffer nibs. (outside Bock's semi-flex 1000, and the fine springy regular flex 200.) The regular flex 400/600 became semi-nail....the 800 often became a nail. That way the Ham Fisted had a harder time making pretzels out of the nib, cutting warrentee repair.

 

By eyeball, in I'm not going to spend pen, ink or paper money on some sort of gadget that allows me to measure nib widths I don't care about....EF.

 

I did print out...just twice, Richard Binder's make a line and see how wide your nib is chart.... Just twice because my interest in hair splitting was low....and I had narrow enough nibs...or fat enough, from my vintage and semi-vintage German pens.

 

It never bothered me that someone's EF is narrower than mine...to me..EF was very narrow....even if western..............

Finally getting a Waterman Mann 200 in F that was as narrow as my two Pelikan 200's showed me the extinct Flame War that was before Japanese pens became popular; was true...Waterman made a skinny nib for Western.

 

My Geha pens would be also in the same boat...a M would look like an M.

 

Of course for the hair splitters, each company had it's very own standards, like any other company....one wanted to make the One Man, One Pen, buy your company's pen that decade, by having a 'consistent' standard. That didn't mean you can't have a Fat and Skinny F, or any other width.

I often post Ron Zorn's Schaffer nib widths and tolerances. A Fat F can = exactly a Skinny M...or any other size. getting middle of the tolerance seems pure luck...and then the next company's tolerance overlaps every other company.

then add eras.... In the next pen off the assembly line can be anywhere else in the tolerance range........

Thinking of horseshoes, is wishful thinking; even with in one brand's tolerance.  Across the brands it's close if the nib is with in hand grenade range.

 

 

10 hours ago, Mercian said:

and, as a consequence, fountain pen use become increasingly restricted to ‘signatures’.

This could be, in for years bling across a conference table saved the fountain pen industry.....................and here on the com, 'noobies' insisted on fat, sopping wet lines....those who were not hunting spiderweb or baby spiderweb nibs.

 

 

I do know Pelikan became 1/2 a width wider because of the fat and blobby double ball nib they came out with in '98, so ball point users wouldn't be put off  on having to learn strange and complicated things like how to hold a fountain pen properly.

 

MB also became known for fat nibs...by the time I got my on sale at my @ 2012-14 B&M Virginia Woolf.

I do love the my eyes only bling of it's nib. With permission of Pentime.

It is compared to my vintage BB/OBB nibs, characterless. Fat and blobby.

What I hate is it's B=BB nib. I read on the Com, MB was now fat. I made a mistake in Not Bringing my own paper. using theirs. The M wrote B.

At home, on good paper it wrote M. The second mistake I made was not insisting  with the nib swap...middle of tolerance.....in I got the wide part.

 

One of these day's I'll get it taken down to B...perhaps made CI and in M...in I have a Lamy Persona in CI B.

 

I'm more comfortable talking nibs of Pelikan, Geha, MB and Osmia.

 

With 4 Lamy's I can't make statements...and with 8-9 Parkers (4 new), a Vac BB stub, 51, couple 45's, 75(2), a 15 & a 50 (body is the nib) ...........they all are semi-vintage and vintage.....Somewhere I have a cheap modern nail Parker that I don't remember what it is/was. As much as possible I don't use nails.

 

Call it '50-70 for German vintage...mostly factory stubbed semi-flex nibs...writes with a clean line. Line variation with out doing anything but writing normal.

Nice springy regular flex tear drop tipped nibs. MB from 1970-late '90's. Pelikan '82-97. Write with a clean line. 

Both eras seem to be @ the same widths...at least to me.

I see no reason to chase modern pens, with substandard nibs, when i can get nibs with character for used, so much cheaper.

of course I like standard and medium-large pens.

 

It appears the poor fellas that like Large pens are out of luck....except for semi-flex 149's...'50-70, the Osmia 78, is as big I think as the modern 146. Sonnecken 111 Extra** is 149 big. The thick girthed Osmia 76 is medium-large. Posted it will do for large quite well.

They will have nibs worth chasing. Stubbed semi-flex nibs.

Semi-flex is a 'flair' nib, not a calligraphy nib. At max with out risking springing one's nib, it will go 3X...(excusable if one is Heavy Handed like I was) If you write slow with a semi-flex nibbed pen...you are committing Nib Abuse.    I have full fledged rants on that. I scribble away just as fast as if I use a regular flex or nail, getting line variation from natural writing pressure.

 

** Once a grail pen of mine...even the 222 Extra would have done....but the money burnt a hole in my pocket and I bought a flock of Pelikans.

 

[Bo Bo Olson]

OK, major disappointment of the day.....that thin nibbed MB 32 was not the EEF that I had hoped...just same width as a Pelikan 200 EF. Looks can be deceiving.

 

So I might have to go Japanese EF or EEF.

What Japanese Pens are most affordable with such nibs

I'm use to buying old used vintage/semi-vintage pens, out side of some LE Pelikans. If I bought new pens, I'd have just the P-75 I bought in 1971......pre-Chinese.

So the price of new Pilots...which I know nothing, shocked me.

 

..........................my second thought is to send a Pelikan I have off to a nib master and get it made EEF.

So a 'new' Pilot with a Japanese EF or EEF nib would have to be comparable with sending a nib to a nibmeister.

[Karmachanic]

 

26 minutes ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

What Japanese Pens

 

I recommend Sailor Profit Casual.  Steel nibs, but same tipping as the gold. €84

[Bo Bo Olson]

Thanks for the quick answer. The price is affordable. I like the red, in I have a large collection of black and gold or black and 'silver' pens.

 

Some 10 years ago I said nor more black and gold pens...only half of them I've bought since were black and gold....the standard German pen color.