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I recently purchased a selection of dip pen nibs for Copperplate and Engrosser's Script. Some nibs perform beautifully smoothly on the upstroke like the Zebra G and the Brause EF66. However then there are the Hunt nibs I purchased like the Hunt 101 and 22B which are very scratchy! The Gillot 303 and 404 suffer the same fate. While I can ameliorate the scratchiness by using really smooth paper like Rhodia as well as using a very light touch I am wondering if I can use the same techniques and materials (e.g. 3M micromesh) to lightly round and polish the tine tips of these nibs as I have successfully used on my fountain pens? Anyone had experience doing this?

I recently became aware that one can easily install a Pilot Parallel nib into an Opus 88 Demonstrator pen. I have tried it, and it works. It is super simple. This provides at once the virtues of the Pilot Parallel nibs for calligraphy and the advantages of the Opus 88 fountain pen - better ergonomics, portability, huge ink capacity and economical ink use (compared to cartridges, unless you refill them). Here are links to a couple of youtube videos on this hack: Enjoy! David

I was gifted a Sheaffer No Nonsense calligraphy set some time back. I would really like to swap out the flat, untipped nibs for nibs with tipping material on them. I've read this posting from Ron Z from some years ago where he says, "re. nib swap. The nib and feed are really tight in these pens, so swapping nib for nib is hard to do." Yeah, they're at least hard to swap. After my experience I'm wondering if it's impossible to get the nib and feed out of one of these things. I took the largest nib, which I know I would never use, and soaked it in dish detergent for days. Then I screwed the nib/feed/section onto the No Nonsense barrel, got a good grip on the nib/feed with a pair of those spark plug pliers that people sell for pulling nibs and feeds, and I pulled steadily. I really pulled on that thing. I couldn't get it to come out. I then soaked the nib/feed/section in dish detergent solution some more, and put the nib/feed/section into the ultrasonic cleaner while also soaking in that dish detergent and after a few zaps with that I tried again. No go. My question is if the nib and feed are actually glued in to the section or if it just takes a lot of effort to get them out. Here's the pen and the packaging to show just what this is. So has anyone ever successfully swapped the nib/feed from one of these pens. Has anyone ever succeeded in getting the nib and feed out of the section in one of these? I spent some years with a Platignum Silverline fountain pen that had an italic nib, no tipping. So I've had my fill of that. I have some Sheaffer cartridge fountain pen nibs that might fit, and I have some Sheaffer Prelude nibs that might fit the No Nonsense feed and section, and I'd really like to make a sort of frankenpen of the No Nonsense pen with some sort of tipped nib on it. Thanks for any advice or sharing of experiences with this sort of thing.

Hello there, Took an interesting hobby to hoard weird, unusual, peculiar nibs to find new means of calligraphy. Recently, I've bought a whole little box stuffed with old nibs in antiques in Prague and I encountered this little guys. I can't really identify them, no matter how my english description is plaguing Uncle Google. This nibs?/cones?/resevoirs? whatever isn't working anymore, but apparently you drip some ink in it and the stick in the end of cone will let ink down by pressing it against papper (hence the spring). That's just so much to my reverse engineering. I tried to let it stay in warm water to clean content in it, solve the rust away in vinegar and brush it of in baking soda. None of it make it better. I'm looking forward to buy a new one, but there is nothing like brand or signature of manufacturer, which would hint its origin. So I figured out that you, guys, may help me. Tried to find it here for what felt like hours, so I submit this thread (after I sign up to this amazing community!). It may be regular model of some stationary tool I didn't know about, or some rare oddity not really used in any time. tags I used in forum, google: cone, funnel, nib cone-shaped, unusual nibs, calligraphy dip cone type, so on.. (I really tried) Value every opinion. (mobile photos, bad quality :(( )

I'm fairly new to the world of fountain pens, and I'm itching to try something with a good amount of flex that I don't have to apply too much pressure to to achieve a lot of line variation. I've tried the noodler's nib creeper, and while it of course had better line variation than a stiff nib, it really wasn't what I was looking for. I know that to get a really good wet noodle fountain pen I'd have to look for a restored vintage pen, but I really don't have anywhere near the budget for that. Given that, I had an idea. I know a lot of calligraphy nibs, although not meant for use in fountain pens, have a huge amount of flex, and I was thinking of getting a calligraphy nib and replacing the nib on one of my fountain pens with it. Does anyone have any ideas of what kind of nibs and pens to use, or want to tell me that this is a terrible idea? Any advice is appreciated!

I purchased this Waterman's 52 Wood Grain with an unusual #2 "J" nib on Ebay a month or so ago. I may have paid more than I should have but having never run across such a nib, I could not resist. I've only seen one other reference to such a nib on the penboard.de and it indicated that it is a calligraphy nib. Can anyone confirm this or offer additional insight/knowledge about this nib? Regardless of price, it has been a lot fun to write with. Even under the control of my untrained hand, the nib produces excellent ink shading and puts out a really wet line. It is slightly flexible, however pressure predominately enhances the ink flow and not line width. With light pressure, the pen produces a line 1.44 mm in width on the down-stroke!