Brief Comparison Of Various Lamy Extra Fine Nibs' Output

[Mercian]

18 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

While it is a little unclear as to what Lamy meant by the figures given in that diagram you have copied from its nib guide page, you are most certainly misinterpreting the figures given by Platinum Pen in its chart of nib width grades.

Lamy do not specify whether or not they mean ‘manufacturing tolerance for nib widths’, but I think that that is what they mean.

I am assuming that to be their meaning for two reasons:

 

1- by analogy with a photo on Lih-Tah Wong’s Parker75.com website, on the reference page for ‘Nibs’.

He shows a photograph of a tool that Parker used to ascertain the final grade to mark on the nibs of the 75:

 

 

It was used by sliding the nib down the gradually-narrowing-slot until it stopped. One can see that there is a range of widths within which each grade falls.

There is another, close-up, photograph on Parker75.com

 

2- because Platinum’s far-more-detailed chart (which as you rightly intuited, I did not understand) claims to be assessing their nibs’ line width produced by writing with a ‘standard cartridge’.

What is that?

What ink is in it?

What specific paper were they writing on?

 

As we all know, different inks spread out on the page more than others - even within the same brand range - and to differing degrees on different papers.

 

While stating the manufacturing tolerances of the nibs’ widths within the company’s own grading system is easy, attempting to define the final line-width that the nibs will produce when the customer is writing with their own choice of ink on their own choice of paper isn’t, because there are too many variables.

 

I regard Lamy’s illustration of cursive writing on their nib chart to be merely an illustrative piece of marketing material, rather than any kind of accurate information.

Their gold nibs may offer some degree of line-variation due to flexibility, but their steel Z50s certainly don’t.

Edited February 5, 2023 by Mercian
Hit ‘submit’ instead of ‘Other Media’ the first time. D’oh!

[A Smug Dill]

12 minutes ago, Mercian said:

He shows a photograph of a tool that Parker used to ascertain the final grade to mark on the nibs of the 75:

 

 

 

It was used by sliding the nib down the gradually-narrowing-slot until it stopped.

 

I don't see a photo in the space after the colon. Are you talking about the photo beneath where the page read,

Update of December 18, 2005

Here is a hand-made nib gauging tool that Parker used to size the exotic nibs.  

?

 

I see no other reference to such a tool, or any suggestion that it or something similar was used to determine the width grade of the finished product for regularly ground nib types.

 

Edit: Now I see you've edited your post above, and the photo appears. You were indeed referring to that tool, for which the limiting description is clear.

[A Smug Dill]

14 minutes ago, Mercian said:

What is that?

What ink is in it?

What specific paper were they writing on?

 

I cannot tell you whether that is a standard Platinum black ink cartridge, or standard Platinum blue-black ink cartridge. Considering, in my experience across a couple of dozen Platinum's ‘better’ pen models (‘above’ the Preppy, Plaisir, and Prefounte), new pens are usually supplied with blue-black ink cartridges in their retail packages, in all likelihood that would be what was used for testing.

 

As for the specific type of paper used, there was no explicit mention, and quite frankly I don't think it matters. No average fountain pen user and/or hobbyist is going to acquire writing paper supplied in long continuous rolls, which is no doubt (in my mind, anyway) the format that was used in Platinum Pen's test set-up. I trust that the type of paper used is consistent for all of the nibs tested and all of the test iterations, and so 1. the published line widths are achievable (without telling anyone all the conditions of how), and 2. the chart validly informs would-be purchasers how the various nib width grades compare. Who writes with the pen held consistently at 60° to the page with exactly 50g of downward pressure anyway? Press down with 55g, or hold the pen at 55°, and you'd be liable to get line widths not consistent with what the chart stated, even if you use the same ink and same make/type of paper (of which there may yet be batch-to-batch variation); so the goal of reproducing the exact same results would be misguided, in my opinion.

 

It'd be more useful to calibrate one's expectations against the chart. I usually get significantly finer line widths than what the chart suggests, using UEF, F, and SF nibs on Platinum #3776 Century and President/Izumo pens. Based on how my Platinum UEF and F nibs perform, say, when writing in Aurora Black ink on Rhodia DotPad 80g/m² paper, I should be able to extrapolate and get a fair idea of how an M nib would perform using same. Yes, it's all guesstimates only from the user's perspective, not forecasting performance scientifically from first principles, and not operating in some way that comes with any guarantees of observable outcomes against which I can hold the manufacturer to account.

[Mercian]

40 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

As for the specific type of paper used, there was no explicit mention, and quite frankly I don't think it matters.

Really?

Are you honestly saying that you think that all inks show the exact same degree of line-width/spread/feathering on every type of paper?

I don’t believe you.

 

Not least because that is patently untrue (e.g. try writing with any ink on Oxford Optik or Rhodia 90gsm paper, then on cheap inkjet copier paper, or Moleskine paper, then on newsprint) but also because you have, in almost every post I have ever seen you make, attempted to be very accurate in your statements.

 

And also because you have pointed out to other posters when their remarks have been sufficiently ambiguous/insufficiently precise to potentially cause/be subject to misconstrual.

You have gone to great length to try to get other posters to clarify their exact meaning - to the extent of desiring precision equivalent to Platinum’s statements of the exact angle and pressure at which they test their pens when determining nib grade (which you are now suddenly decrying as irrelevant, even though it is precisely the kind of clarity that is necessary in order to enable one to reproduce their ‘experimental results’).
Sometimes this - your keenness on disambiguated precision/exactitude - has led other posters to feel that you have been trying to impugn them, even when I don’t think that you necessarily have been.

 

I think that you feel that I have, in these recent posts, been trying to impugn or belittle you in some way (I have not), and that you have reacted to this perceived slight in an emotional (rather than in a rational) manner, to try to ‘have the last word’.

I shall put this down to the lateness of the hour in Australia.

 

Slàinte,

M.

[A Smug Dill]

6 hours ago, Mercian said:

Are you honestly saying that you think that all inks show the exact same degree of line-width/spread/feathering on every type of paper?

I don’t believe you.

 

6 hours ago, Mercian said:

I think that you feel that I have, in these recent posts, been trying to impugn or belittle you in some way (I have not), and that you have reacted to this perceived slight in an emotional (rather than in a rational) manner, to try to ‘have the last word’.

 

I think you misinterpreted both what I wrote, and where I was coming from, entirely.

 

There are so many factors that end up affecting the observed and/or measurable line width(s) on the page.

 

9 hours ago, Mercian said:

I do applaud Lamy for making the information about their nib grades/widths available, and would like to see the same information provided by other manufacturers.

9 hours ago, Mercian said:

I find the provision of this information - by both companies - to be very useful.

Sadly, I also recognise that I - a ‘hobbyist’ who is interested to know this information - am very much an ‘outlier’ within the group of potential customers of any pen company. But I still wish that more manufacturers would provide it!

8 hours ago, Mercian said:

What is that?

What ink is in it?

What specific paper were they writing on?

 

As we all know, different inks spread out on the page more than others - even within the same brand range - and to differing degrees on different papers.

 

With each post, it became more apparent to me that you seem not just want (more) manufacturers to disclose whether they have internal standards/specifications, or at least set of targets, for their nib width grading, and to provide a view of how stringent their manufacturing and/or testing is, but you want complete, objective information published that the outsider could reproduce, falsify (as in prove incorrect), and/or interrogate or cite directly to inform their expectations of the writing or drawing outcomes they're going to get as users.

 

You're simply never going to get complete information of the sort, as a user, purchaser, consumer, hobbyist, enthusiast, whatever. I'm not ‘telling’ you not to find it useful as provided, or not to want (more of) it to be provided; but, if you want to be so analytical in your approach, then you should perhaps first look at how reasonable it is to demand it, or how realistic it is to expect it, from more parties in the fountain pen industry.

 

Even if you know the specific ink and type of paper used by Platinum Pen in its testing, then what? The ink is most likely a product Platinum makes and sells, but the paper is certainly not. I see no reason why Platinum would then provide that information. It was either a third-party product, whether that is one of several varieties of Tomoe River paper made by Tomoegawa (back in the day) in Japan, one of umpteen varieties of paper made by Clairefontaine in France, etc. over which Platinum has no production control, or something Platinum commissioned a paper mill to produce to the company's specifications which you cannot expect to be able to buy.

 

I'm not trying to belittle you, or condescend, when I go to pains to point out you cannot have complete information, and the reasons why the information would be and will always be incomplete. I offered you the alternative view that, as long as a company publishes something done to a consistent framework of its own choosing, you don't need to know all the details of how its ink of choice behaves on or reacts with its paper of choice in testing; you just need to calibrate your own choices against it.

 

And you can pretty much forget about ever getting to the point where you can cross-compare nibs of different brands by the information their respective manufacturers choose to publish. Again, it's a case of it being unrealistic to expect there will ever be sufficient cooperation between Platinum, Pilot, Parker, Pelikan, Aurora, Lamy, Majohn, and HongDian for there to be a common standard for testing and/or information provision to the consumer and would-be user. Better you (and the individual hobbyist) face that brick wall of a disempowering limitation now, reconcile with it, and work out how to work around it while still obtaining some (small?) measure of value out of what is freely offered.

 

That's about as unemotional and rational a position as I can take. I don't feel belittled, I don't feel slighted, I don't feel condescended upon. My old job for many years was as a business analyst and enterprise architect (by whatever position title) for a large corporation, which even with its billions of dollars in revenue and in resources cannot operate with complete information. “That's not going to happen,” and, ”we don't have that information, and you cannot know it with any certainty,” were frequently part of how we chose where we directed our attention, resources, and investigative efforts in pursuit of specific outcomes for the business.

 

Again, if as a hobbyist you are very interested to know particular information, then you're the one who has to ‘burn’ resources, efforts, time, and money to obtain it. If you want to know how a Platinum 14K gold #3776 EF nib, Platinum 18K gold President EF nib, Platinum 18K gold F nib, Lamy 2000's 14K gold EF nib, Pelikan EF nib, etc. using Aurora Black ink on Rhodia 80g/m² paper, then you're going to have to source those nibs and test them yourself, and still be without the ability to extrapolate the results to how they will perform if Waterman Serenity Blue ink and/or Maruman 70g/m² paper is used instead. Whether you then choose to publish your test results, as I've published this comparison of various Lamy EF nibs (as well as lots of other reviews, comparisons, and information in general over the past several years) will be entirely up to you.

 

Nobody is working to a common standard or in a cooperative effort for hobbyists like you and me to know enough, either out of intellectual curiosity or for the best purchasing decisions we could make as consumers, from information being served up on a platter freely, without our spending our own efforts and money to get truly useful answers for the use-cases we have in mind.