The tipping on Japanese nibs

[rochester21]

One thing i noticed over the years is that if you buy used fountain pens from Japan(i'm talking about modern pens, not vintage), the vast majority will come with finer nibs(no surprise there) with little to no tipping on the nibs, which results in more feedback during writing. 

 

When i buy my japanese pens new however, they have more tipping and sometimes an excessive amount. 

 

I will give an example, i had for a short time a brand new Sailor 1911 with the 21K medium nib, and i hated the way it wrote, had to sell it immediately. There was no issue with the nib apparently, but it was dry and the tipping felt awkward, the angle of writing was restrictive. 

 

Years later i have bought the standard 1911 with 14K nib size F but used. It had plenty of wear but it wrote wonderfully, the tipping was just right and the pen puts down a wet fine line with some feedback, but not too much. No issue with the angle of writing or sweet spot. Not to mention paying a fraction of the price of the new pen for this user grade one. 

 

How can this be? I understand tipping wears off, something that's obvious with vintage pens but my experience is with japanese pens made in the last 20 years, not WW2 era. 

 

Do japanese makers use different nib specs for the home market versus the export market? Do the tipping materials they use wear down quicker than the ones used by european manufacturers? Coincidence? 

 

Is this a QC issue? 

Or am i just being paranoid? 

 

Hey, i'm not saying i'm not! 

What's your experience with japanese nibs in general? 

 

 

 

 

 

[PithyProlix]

All my Japanese pens from vintage to modern - and I have quite a few and they are mostly Japanese market pens that have made their way over to the country I live in - have no issues with an adequate amount of tipping on their nibs. (Same with my other, non-Japanese pens, btw.) Unless a nib is broken in some way - but those are exceptional cases. As far as tipping wearing off, I think you'd have to write with the pen very, very frequently to notice.

 

Based on my experience, QC on Japanese pens has been excellent, in general.

 

How many Japanese pens have you purchased from Japan? And how many of those have little to no tipping?

[rochester21]

  On 10/12/2022 at 11:49 AM, PithyProlix said:

All my Japanese pens from vintage to modern - and I have quite a few and they are mostly Japanese market pens that have made their way over to the country I live in - have no issues with an adequate amount of tipping on their nibs. (Same with my other, non-Japanese pens, btw.) Unless a nib is broken in some way - but those are exceptional cases. As far as tipping wearing off, I think you'd have to write with the pen very, very frequently to notice.

 

Based on my experience, QC on Japanese pens has been excellent, in general.

 

How many Japanese pens have you purchased from Japan? And how many of those have little to no tipping?

Expand  

Probably more than a dozen. I once bought a batch of 7 used fps from Japan, the rest new. 

I'm not saying there is no tipping, but it's not the "ball" usually seen on western made pens. I have a medium nib Vanishing Point that has plenty of tipping, but that's an exception. 

 

This is a random shot from a current ebay listing from Japan, most feature the same type of nib- fine or XF. 

 

But on new pens the tipping is more prominent(not always a good thing). 

[A Smug Dill]

  On 10/12/2022 at 12:23 PM, rochester21 said:

I'm not saying there is no tipping, but it's not the "ball" usually seen on western made pens.

Expand  

 

As far as I'm concerned, not leave excessive or having a ‘ball’ of tipping material is a perfectly proper approach, if the pen manufacturer prides itself on delivering nibs that precisely embody the designated width grade. Leaving little leeway for anyone to ‘customise’ or modify the nib's writing character, after the pen leaves the factory, and locking the customer into the choice he/she has made when selecting the nib width grade on initial order, is perfectly fine if the manufacturer is confident it will deliver to its specification of said width grade with every unit that goes out the door.

 

That is why I gladly bought dozens of modern fountain pens from the Japanese ‘Big Three’ brands, and am almost always happy that the manufacturers have delivered high-quality writing instruments ‘to-spec’ — not addressing customised or special requirements I may have liked to have the opportunity to specify, of course, but simply getting what I was ‘promised’.

 

  On 10/11/2022 at 10:19 PM, rochester21 said:

Do japanese makers use different nib specs for the home market versus the export market?

Expand  

 

I highly doubt that.

 

  On 10/11/2022 at 10:19 PM, rochester21 said:

Years later i have bought the standard 1911 with 14K nib size F but used. It had plenty of wear but it wrote wonderfully, the tipping was just right and the pen puts down a wet fine line with some feedback, but not too much. No issue with the angle of writing or sweet spot. Not to mention paying a fraction of the price of the new pen for this user grade one. 

Expand  

 

That's the ‘problem’ — you can't know if the owner before you have messed with it and modified Sailor's product as-built, even if you just happen to find the end result more to your likely.

 

  On 10/11/2022 at 10:19 PM, rochester21 said:

Is this a QC issue? 

Or am i just being paranoid? 

 

Hey, i'm not saying i'm not! 

What's your experience with japanese nibs in general? 

Expand  

 

No issues with QC from what I've seen, and almost every new nib I got on a Japanese pen model that sells more than ¥5,000+tax in the domestic market comes unforgivingly to-spec. The only one I'm not sure of is Sailor's medium-sized 14K gold Zoom nib; the tipping on the one that was on my Nagasawa Proske (a rebranded, Nagasawa Stationery Center store-exclusive version of a Sailor Profit Standard demonstrator) is shaped noticeably different from the one I got on a Sailor Professional Gear Slim ‘Midnight Sky’; the latter had more tipping material and puts down broader lines even when the pen is held at steep angles, and I like the pen less for it.

[PithyProlix]

  On 10/12/2022 at 12:23 PM, rochester21 said:

This is a random shot from a current ebay listing from Japan, most feature the same type of nib- fine or XF. 

 

But on new pens the tipping is more prominent(not always a good thing). 

Expand  

 

What's that pen? I recognize the feed and the underside of the section adjacent to the feed - and I'm pretty sure I have at least one pen with the same design - but I'm having trouble placing it right now. Regardless, I don't recall seeing a tip that looks like that.

 

EDIT: Actually, I think it might be an older Sailor design, perhaps a pocket pen from the 1970s or thereabouts, is that correct? Is there a nib type stated in the listing and/or a photo of the other side of the nib?

[hairlame]

  On 10/11/2022 at 10:19 PM, rochester21 said:

I will give an example, i had for a short time a brand new Sailor 1911 with the 21K medium nib, and i hated the way it wrote, had to sell it immediately. There was no issue with the nib apparently, but it was dry and the tipping felt awkward, the angle of writing was restrictive. 

 

Years later i have bought the standard 1911 with 14K nib size F but used. It had plenty of wear but it wrote wonderfully, the tipping was just right and the pen puts down a wet fine line with some feedback, but not too much. No issue with the angle of writing or sweet spot. Not to mention paying a fraction of the price of the new pen for this user grade one. 

 

How can this be? I understand tipping wears off, something that's obvious with vintage pens but my experience is with japanese pens made in the last 20 years, not WW2 era. 

 

Do japanese makers use different nib specs for the home market versus the export market? Do the tipping materials they use wear down quicker than the ones used by european manufacturers? Coincidence? 

 

Is this a QC issue? 

Or am i just being paranoid? 

 

Hey, i'm not saying i'm not! 

What's your experience with japanese nibs in general? 

 

Expand  

 

From the experiences I've had with a variety of Sailor pens, the tipping shape on Sailor EF,F and MF nibs are quite different from that on the M and B nibs.  The M/B nibs have facets at the top - just like the zoom nib.  The EF/F/MF nibs lack this. Here's an example pulled from a reddit thread: https://i.imgur.com/pMy1shn.jpg; https://www.reddit.com/r/fountainpens/comments/7ixyw9/opinions_on_sailor_1911_l_21k_broad_nib/

I've found that the M and B Sailor nibs work best when using shallow angle (45 deg. or less), but that the EF/F/MF nibs are more amenable to higher angles. 

Here's a link to an FPN thread discussing sailor tipping shapes and its effect on writing angles: https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/328644-old-style-sailor-nibs-same-as-new-style/.

Based on that thread, there might have been a change in Sailor nib shape at some point, probably pre-2000?  I have examples of an old style B nib on a 1911S and a newer 1911L and the older one definitely has a larger tipping blob, and less pronounced faceting. But I don't think this applies to the EF/F/FM nibs, just the larger tipping sizes.

So it might be that the differences you're seeing are due to the way Sailor 'designs' the finer versus coarser nibs... 

 

 

[Olya]

Is this regarding all Japanese pen brands or specific brands?

 

There are rumours of Sailor tipping wearing off, but nothing proven

 

 

 

[Lithium466]

On that topic, I recently received a Sailor 1911S with a MF 21K nib, and just found the nib horrible and scratchy. After weeks of trying every ink that could help, etc, I finally decided to do some polishing, with nail polishers first, then a Dremel with various polishing/abrasive compounds (as bad as that sounds).

 

Surprisingly, the result is now very nice (for my taste), very smooth writing, and I found the tipping material to be hard wearing and resistant to everything I put it through. I definitely don't think it will be prone to wear out prematurely with normal use.

Compared to a Lamy Z50 nib that I used to "train", I'd say the tipping of the Lamy was easier to wear through, but that's maybe because I was less careful with it than with the Sailor. The shape of the nib under the tipping is also different on the Lamy, so not a fair comparison.

 

[Paul_LZ]

  On 10/14/2022 at 10:02 AM, Olya said:

Is this regarding all Japanese pen brands or specific brands?

 

There are rumours of Sailor tipping wearing off, but nothing proven

 

 

 

Expand  

The shop assistant only mentioned Sailor.

[Intensity]

Finer Sailor nibs (medium-fine and finer) come with significantly less tipping material to begin with when brand new.  You can barely see it on Fine and Extra Fine--it's almost not there, and not really visible unless you use a magnifying glass.  It's not that it's worn off--it is intended to be that way.  Sailor Medium and up has significantly more tipping material, as A Smug Dill mentioned, and they are more similar to western nibs in line width and behavior.

 

Regarding feedback, there's a bit of variation between individual units--some have more or less feedback than others from the start.  The tipping material is so small, there's variance in tine spacing and polishing; enough to make a difference from pretty smooth to sometimes almost scratchy if there's the tiniest bit of misalignment.  I've owned about 20 recent production Sailor pens with gold nibs at this point, in terms of my personal experience on the matter.  Almost all were perfect right away, a couple required very minor tine realignment, and only a single one I actually dared to polish as it had wider spacing between the tines and was too scratchy, and I couldn't manage to get the tines together just right, because the alignment needs to be done with surgical precision on those EF nibs.  Lovely nib now, writes wet and still has some feedback.

[essayfaire]

I have rarely had to get a Japanese pen tuned.  The only one that needed work was a Sailor 1911 M, that felt too similar to the MF I already had(in contrast to @hairlame's experience above).  The flow ended up needing to be adjusted but it was not a tipping issue.  Now it's a fabulous pen.

 

Even the cheap Japanese pens, like the Preppys and the Petits usually write well.  I'm considering buying something like a Waverly to see what tipping feels like, but I like the Japanese pens. I should add that I write at odd angles and don't do well with most italic nibs.