My First Shot At Doing Something With A Pelikan Nib

February 16, 2020

I got a Pelikan Nib with my Christmas money.... an M800, and believe me I was really excited. So before anybody snickers about the fact that a 42 year old guy still gets Christmas money, please remember I'm hard to buy for, or at least thats what my relatives say. Okay now you can giggle a little. So I took my $150 and added a little of my own and ordered an M800 nib. I figured out now I made one mistake. I should've order a F or EF but I got a M because I figured it couldn't be that thick, but it really does write just like a B. In fact, I would wager that the line from it is close to .9 or even 1.0 mm. I think I'm probably gonna grind it down to a stub or italic of some sort.... but thats later.

On to the pen. A few months ago I started casting and that has really been a freeing experience. I was starting to feel like I had seen every combination of colors and everything was beginning to look the same. Casting myself has changed all that. Now I feel like its my fault if its boring, not someone I bought a blank from. Since my favorite color is bright blue, I figured I would go ahead and make the brightest, bluest, most crazy awesome pen blank I could for the build. Someone else had posted on facebook about a Leonardo pen and it was crazy bright turquoisey blue and I used that as a partial inspiration for this pen.

Ever since I got the clip you see in the picture I have been scheming for a way to add a jewel to it. So for this build, since it was for me, I also decided to incorporate a gemstone into the clip. I ordered a selection of them from a jewelry supplier online. I got a couple sapphires, some tanzanite, some opals, and in the end it was this stuff called apatite that I decided on for this particular clip. Apatite is a very bright blue stone, and while it isn't terribly expensive the color I felt went really well with this pen. The pictures below show how it came out. You be the judge.

I chose a design that I had used on other pens for this build. The pen is around 5 5/8" long and the pen by itself is 5 1/4" long. The cap does post and pretty deeply at that. The section is about 23mm long and about 13mm thick at its fattest. I really like bell shaped sections so thats where the shape came from. I stewed and stewed over the filling system. Being a Pelikan nib gave me a couple choices. Either I eyedropper it or I come up with a piston or syringe type filling mechanism. In the end I went for the simple eyedropper route. I write a lot at my day job and I've gone through more than a converter of ink in a day before so an eyedropper is pretty appealing. I can fill the pen and be good for a week or 10 days, and if I want less I fill it less. Either way simple and low maintenance. I did draw up 3 different designs for various piston type systems, but I will probably try those as experiments over the next few weeks and see where it takes me. After posting on facebook, I was pleasantly surprised to see how many people actually liked the eyedropper system. Based on that, I think I will probably order a couple more nibs and build a few to sell.

I would love to hear what everyone thinks. The only other comment I have is that I was FLOORED by how smooth and wet the Pelikan nib was. As I mentioned earlier, I think I am going to be building more pens for their nibs. I really enjoyed using it so far. Thanks for looking at my Christmas present!

February 17, 2020

Really nice.

Pete

February 17, 2020

i agree. Understated.

I would prefer a little "extra" - maybe one or 2 fake thin capbands, or something like that. But that's me. I can see why you would like the plain smooth profile since the jewel on the clip draws enough attention to itself.

Well done.

Nick