A Comparative Review Of Italic Nibs: Custom Versus Stock

[zzbr76]

The last 2 pens are priceless, regrinded by Masuyama and Mottishaw. Mike is so skillful!

[Green Ink]

I have a set of Osmiroids that are just great.

 

Of course custom grinds are going to be best (I have a butterline stub and a cursive italic from Pendleton), but I'm curious to hear if anyone has tried a Kaweco Calligraphy Nib?

 

I don't take my good pens out of the house and it might be a fun pen to carry along.

Edited September 6, 2014 by Green Ink

[Keyless Works]

Here's a picture of a 1911 with Music nib from FPN member 'akustyk', I think it looks perty darn nice. I hope to get one soon, Engieka has the standard 1911 with this 14kt nib for $85, what a deal...

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Is this a stock music nib? The Sailor music nibs I have sampled aren't that sharp.

[arran]

Of all my stubby or italics like pens , the music sailor pen I have is very smooth and an ink gusher as well

But considering line variation on it self , I will not suggest this pen.

[Mickey]

On topic, my favorite edged pens are a mildly tweaked Parker #94 (medium italic) Centennial and John Mottishaw custom ground left-oblique Nakaya, which I use for cursive italic. Their shared virtues are a smooth, crisp, not too wet line. The Parker is crisp enough for formal writing, but smooth enough for dashing off a note. The Nakaya is fun but, by design, not stiff enough nor high ratio enough for formal writing.

 

Rant on (the reason for this second post to this thread.)I tried about a half dozen 'sharp' italic (I presume this meant crisp or formal) at the SF show. (I will not name the vendor.) These pens convinced me some grinders are not clear on the distinction between cursive and crisp (formal, sharp, etc.) nibs nor truly know how to grind either sort. What I always understood to be the principal difference was the push stroke. If the push stroke was smooth, reliable, and easy, the pen was cursive. This distinction, of course, is somewhat skill dependent, and one man's cursive could be another man's formal. (An important secondary distinction is the fine/broad ratio.)

 

The corners on the pens I sampled were not rounded in any way. They were nearly as sharp as a woodworker's chisel** and just about as useful for writing. Such grinds make little sense to me. The determining factor (between cursive and formal) is a product of edge sharpness, not corner sharpness. Unless pressed excessively, a pen will only mark to the width of the contact patch* and no farther. It doesn't matter significantly whether the corners are radiussed or not. As far as I can tell, the only value of a sharp cornered pen is to enforce proper point movement, but at the price of paper choices. (These pens were pretty useless on anything other than hard, smooth calendared papers. I will concede a relatively sharp corner is useful for corner penned features, but there is sharp enough and then there is stupidly sharp.)

 

 

* and a tiny bit beyond, owing to surface tension, paper absorption, etc.

 

** They also dripped like garden hoses, presumably to make them somewhat usable.

Edited September 6, 2014 by Mickey

[dms525]

The only pre-ground italic nibs I sampled at the SF Pen Show were the Nakayas John Mottishaw had out. Assuming the "Cursive Italic" and "Formal Italic" nibs were representative of his personal standards, the nibs he grinds for me, which I call "crisp cursive italic," are somewhere between his CI and FI's. That's how I like them.

 

Mikey, I'm sorry we didn't connect at the SF Pen Show! You could have tried some of the nibs John Mottishaw and Michael Masuyama have ground for me.

 

While at the show, I had lunch one day with Ward Dunham. He showed me some steel nibs he had ground to crisp italic for his own use. They were both very crisp and very smooth.

 

David