Debunking myths about fountain pens

[PantaRhei2024]

Have you ever bought into an idea about fountain pens and then later realised that it was unfounded?
 

Let me give a couple of examples. I’d like to warn some readers that the views and opinions presented might stir you up, as believes and strong opinions that are criticised may lead to a feeling of being attacked. Analogous to politics or art that is discussed in public, which stir emotions, even though the claims are somewhat objective. Actual performance of fountain pens may be assessed in terms of performance to write, from an objective stand point, in contrast to the design of the pen. Writing experience is more subjective, not only because each pen writer have different preferences, but also since there may be a better fit between the user and the fountain pen. Disclaimers put aside I’ll turn to list examples of what I want to term as myths, which are prevalent among new comers.
 

Ebonite feed is better than plastic feed in a fountain pen and worth the cost

 

This claim is provocative, because the ink flow and capillary action is dependent on the material, actually favours ebonite, but also the design of the feed. E.g. grooves and channels of the feeding system that add to the effect of capillary action. As indicated, the ebonite material is, in fact, more porous than the most commonly used plastic variation ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene). This provides a more porous potential, beneficial to the feed, as it creates a better absorption of ink from the pen, that adds pressure to the ink flow when the nib is pressed down. Yet, the actual design of the fountain pen and viscosity of ink may affect the ink flow. Meaning a well made ABS-system to feed ink, may not produce a noticeable effect in comparison to an ebonite based system, when the feed of ink to the pen’s nib is evaluated.

 

Expansion or contraction of the material is greater in ABS feed system than ebonite based feed. This should contribute to more stability and consistency of the feed in comparison. Thermal expansion is greater in many other plastic materials than ebonite. Another fact of ebonite as a more stable material may lend itself to a product with a greater degree of precision. However, the manual work is not as easy to control as automatised work in a standardised production process of resin or celluloid fountain pens, inasmuch the quality of the final product may be lower than that of ABS feeder. Quality control is therefore an important factor to take into consideration of the consistency of ink flow etc. 

Edited October 11, 2024 by PantaRhei2024

[A Smug Dill]

5 minutes ago, PantaRhei2024 said:

Have you ever bought into an idea about fountain pens and then later realised that it was unfounded?

 

Yeah, like, (the more vocal or active among) participants in online hobbyist forums know what they're talking about, especially when addressing a far wider audience than themselves. In the end, there are no reliable (as in ISO, DIN, AS, etc.) standards to which ‘all’ manufacturers and/or brands from a particular country, let alone many from different countries far and wide, strive to adhere and are proud to claim compliance (to boost sales); and claims of what is ‘standard’ has far narrower applicability than most fans and proponents of such purport. One should take everything said with a grain of salt, if it's not independently verifiable (or falsifiable) by hours of research and review outside of ‘recommendations’ offered on demand.

[PantaRhei2024]

5 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Yeah, like, (the more vocal or active among) participants in online hobbyist forums know what they're talking about, especially when addressing a far wider audience than themselves.

 

[….]
 

One should take everything said with a grain of salt, if it's not independently verifiable (or falsifiable) by hours of research and review outside of ‘recommendations’ offered on demand.

Would you mind to provide some examples to debunk any commonly held myths in specific? 
 

I’m a firm advocate of the shared experience of a community, with respect to any matter, when assessing any claim. The shared experience provides the best point of departure for any discussion. What is objectively true with respect to fountain pens will more likely be correct if it’s based on popular opinion, even though further consideration must be taken of the grounds that supports the claims. 
 

I would be grateful if you could dispel any falsely held popular belief, that is out of proportion, akin to a myth. 

[A Smug Dill]

On 10/11/2024 at 6:56 PM, PantaRhei2024 said:

Have you ever bought into an idea about fountain pens and then later realised that it was unfounded?

On 10/12/2024 at 12:17 AM, PantaRhei2024 said:

Would you mind to provide some examples to debunk any commonly held myths in specific?

…‹snip›… 

I would be grateful if you could dispel any falsely held popular belief, that is out of proportion, akin to a myth. 

 

Now you're moving the goalposts on the question itself. A figuratively myopic opinion, often repeated by those who are ‘like-minded’, and even parroted by others who are far removed from the original perceptual frame — and thus have no visibility of its inherent biases and limitations — can be highly misleading to both newcomers to and a more general populace in the fountain pen hobby, but are not necessarily myths that can be debunked and proven factually untrue.

 

The sort of thing I had in mind include:

• The FA nib on a Pilot Custom Heritage 912 is a (modern) flex nib. Never mind how it performs mechanically or empirically compared to vintage flex nibs, Pilot Corporation never described the FA nib as a flexible nib, or alluded to such being the design intent, in any web page, product catalogue, or marketing material it has published in either Japanese or English, and I believe I have looked at enough of such over my past six years of research and involvement in the hobby. What it did and does warn against, however, is putting downward pressure on the FA nib, which is the only nib type out of umpteen (which, more precisely, was fifteen but now sixteen) available on pens in the Custom product line.
• There is a fountain pen model called the Pilot Metropolitan. The model is Pilot MR, in every market outside Japan where Pilot Corporation officially distributes it. In English and for the US market, Pilot has always been consistent — from press releases dating back to 2013 (that I had to dig up in the Internet Archive aka the Wayback Machine, as the pages have long become irrelevant and removed from where they were originally hosted on the Web) to product catalogues in the past few years — in calling the model Pilot MR. The Pilot MR Metropolitan Collection is a subset of colourways, but not singular, among all the technically identical fountain pens in the MR Animal Collection and MR Retro Pop Collection. Therefore it is not true that Pilot MR refers only to the variants officially distributed in UK and European markets, which are designed to use “European” or so-called “standard international” ink cartridges, while Pilot Metropolitan (everywhere else) uses Pilot's proprietary format ink cartridges. If you have a Pilot MR fountain pen — one that Pilot Corporation itself identifies as the MR model — then there is a high likelihood it uses Pilot's proprietary format ink cartridges.
• ‘Feedback’ from a nib is like (the sensation of) writing with a sharp pencil. While it is true that kinaesthetic feedback from a nib can feel like that, it is just a subset. Whether it's the sensation of a layer of graphite being easily sheared off the writing tip as it travels across the page, or of dragging something reluctant to move laterally against the paper surface, or akin to drawing a very stiff and hard knitting needle across the paper surface and the reaction to every bit of downward pressure applied is transmitted directly back up the axis of the writing instrument to one's hand, it is still ‘feedback’. (Note: those three descriptions of different flavours of ‘feedback’ are for what is typical for Sailor, Pilot, and Platinum gold nibs respectively, from my first-hand experience with dozens of each.)
• You cannot get ‘line variation’ from a regular or garden-variety (nominally) round-tipped nib. Having written with several hundred different ones, few are nibs from which I cannot tease line width variation by applying a range of handwriting techniques. If a pen user cannot produce line width variation with a nib, then chances are that it is more of a limitation on the part of the user than on the part of the nib.
• Fountain pens are designed to be held at a greatly slanted angle (say, ≤50° between the plane of the page surface and the axis lengthwise through the pen body) when writing. Pilot's official description of its umpteen nib types does not corroborate that; and Platinum's official testing regime for determining how each nib width grade should perform used 60° as the fixed angle.
• Using movement of the whole arm is the ‘right’ or ‘better’ way to write with a pen, even if one has to retrain one's writing hand, as it isn't how students are commonly taught in school. Try writing neatly and consistently with ≤2mm x-height; even if you train yourself to practise ‘arm writing’, to get such precise movements to fill an A5 page with such ‘small’ handwriting will require an immense amount of concentration and muscular control, that it is not going to be less tiring than using wrist and finger movements to execute the sum of the pen strokes.

Red text above goes against what the pen manufacturer states. Now, someone could claim, “but that's the terminology I use, and others know what I'm talking about,” but it does not make it factually or objectively correct. I would prefer to steer a larger proportion of hobbyists, and especially those who are newcomers, to learn, adopt, and consistently use the manufacturer's terminology and descriptions instead.

 

That also goes to terms such as “#6 nib”. Bock doesn't call the nibs in its type 250 nib units “#6 nib”, and Pelikan, Aurora, Pilot, Sailor, etc. — all well-known fountain pen brands with significant market share that manufacture their nibs in-house — do not call their nibs of similar size, or ones are designed to fit around feeds of approximately 6mm diameter, “#6 nibs”. There are no Chinese “#6 nibs” that I'm aware; but there are Chinese (size) number 32, number 33.5, and number 35 nibs, all of which fit around feeds of approximately 6mm diameter. Even brands that use nibs manufactured by JoWo, for example Diplomat, do not necessarily refer to such nibs (e.g. on the Aero and Elox models) as “#6” as a size or in description; and an Opus 88 #12 nib unit is no doubt of JoWo make and has the same technical specifications as a JoWo #6 nib unit, but there is no Opus 88 "#6 nib". To use one company's, i.e. JoWo's, effectively proprietary size scale as if it is an industry or international standard, when so many major brands don't use either JoWo nibs or JoWo's terminology, only creates confusion.

 

Orange text are often given as broad generalisations, even when it is arguably valid only for a narrow scope (that is usually not disclosed or described at the same time as the advice is proffered). As such, they are not myths to be debunked; one should merely challenge their applicability, and highlight their narrowness and limitations.

 

Those are the types of narratives I don't and can't support, and I wish I knew better from the very start to see through their flaws, without learning “the hard way” from experience only accompanied by lots of cost and disappointment.

[Sh.Andrews]

10 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

Using movement of the whole arm is the ‘right’ or ‘better’ way to write with a pen

I don't buy into the "whole arm" thing.  Might be right for some people but definitely not for me. There are handwriting "experts" on both sides and the other side likes to adamantly say the other side is dead wrong. Relax!

[Merrick]

29 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

That also goes to terms such as “#6 nib”. Bock doesn't call the nibs in its type 250 nib units “#6 nib”, and Pelikan, Aurora, Pilot, Sailor, etc. — all well-known fountain pen brands with significant market share that manufacture their nibs in-house — do not call their nibs of similar size, or ones are designed to fit around feeds of approximately 6mm diameter, “#6 nibs”. There are no Chinese “#6 nibs” that I'm aware; but there are Chinese (size) number 32, number 33.5, and number 35 nibs, all of which fit around feeds of approximately 6mm diameter. Even brands that use nibs manufactured by JoWo, for example Diplomat, do not necessarily refer to such nibs (e.g. on the Aero and Elox models) as “#6” as a size or in description; and an Opus 88 #12 nib unit is no doubt of JoWo make and has the same technical specifications as a JoWo #6 nib unit, but there is no Opus 88 "#6 nib". To use one company's, i.e. JoWo's, effectively proprietary size scale as if it is an industry or international standard, when so many major brands don't use either JoWo nibs or JoWo's terminology, only creates confusion.

Most people I see talking about this use the term “equivalent” as in a Pilot #15 nib is equivalent in size to a Jowo #6 (usually commonly referred to as #6 without adding Jowo). 
 

I could understand confusion if people made unsupported comments like “all nibs of an equivalent size class are interchangeable” which we know isn’t true but I don’t see people making those statements. I think the 5/6/8 designations are useful in giving a baseline for comparison and being an easy to remember shorthand. 

[A Smug Dill]

13 minutes ago, Merrick said:

Most people I see talking about this use the term “equivalent” as in a Pilot #15 nib is equivalent in size to a Jowo #6 (usually commonly referred to as #6 without adding Jowo). 

 

I honestly cannot recall a single instance where someone used the word “equivalent” when talking about Chinese (Jinhao, Wing Sung, HongDian, PenBBS, etc.) or Aurora nibs and using JoWo #6 as the baseline for nib size and/or geometry.

 

17 minutes ago, Merrick said:

I could understand confusion if people made unsupported comments like “all nibs of an equivalent size class are interchangeable” which we know isn’t true but I don’t see people making those statements.

 

I have inadvertently crushed a Nemosine "#6 nib" that I spent an hour regrinding and then transplanted into a PenBBS 355, then capped it in a hurry when I needed to leave the house because I was running late. That was after two or three years' deep-diving into the hobby, and I still wasn't educated enough to know (size) "#6" doesn't mean (bleep) when it comes to the length of the nib, and guess what? Length matters when it comes to whether a nib will fit inside a particular pen model.

 

21 minutes ago, Merrick said:

I think the 5/6/8 designations are useful in giving a baseline for comparison and being an easy to remember shorthand. 

 

I think glossing over the differences between no.32, no.33.5, and no.35 nibs, as well as differences in curvature, and whether there are cutouts to (perhaps) match complementarily shaped nubs on the feed, is harmful instead of helpful.

[Merrick]

32 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

I honestly cannot recall a single instance where someone used the word “equivalent” when talking about Chinese (Jinhao, Wing Sung, HongDian, PenBBS, etc.) or Aurora nibs and using JoWo #6 as the baseline for nib size and/or geometry.

 

 

I have inadvertently crushed a Nemosine "#6 nib" that I spent an hour regrinding and then transplanted into a PenBBS 355, then capped it in a hurry when I needed to leave the house because I was running late. That was after two or three years' deep-diving into the hobby, and I still wasn't educated enough to know (size) "#6" doesn't mean (bleep) when it comes to the length of the nib, and guess what? Length matters when it comes to whether a nib will fit inside a particular pen model.

 

 

I think glossing over the differences between no.32, no.33.5, and no.35 nibs, as well as differences in curvature, and whether there are cutouts to (perhaps) match complementarily shaped nubs on the feed, is harmful instead of helpful.

I also crushed a nib by accident because I didn’t take length into account. I got it partially fixed and ground but it still writes with some scratch. 
 

Given that each manufacturer makes nibs with different lengths, widths, curvature, geometry, cutouts, etc etc means that any attempt at creating a systemized shorthand to compare nibs between manufacturers is going to inevitably fall short. The map, after all, is not the territory.