Oblique nibs: left vs. right

[pajaro]

Left hander, here, and I have several left and right obliques. They pretty much stay in the drawer until I forget how they write. They seem to require too much attention, but I can get some line variation out of them. It's just too much work, but they are a sort of interesting collector's item, just to have. I imagine anybody who has a lot of pens acquires pens found to be interesting but only as collectibles.

[jmnav]

As has been said, it is personal preference. I have/had 2 left-foot obliques and I just could not get used to them. Even after writing with one for 3 months, I could not get used to how they wrote. For me a RH person, a LF oblique give me a wide horizontal stroke. I prefer the look of a wide vertical stroke. So for me, a RF oblique would work much better. But I have talked to other RH people who LOVE the LF obliques. So it goes back to individual preference.

 

That exactly resembles my experience. I don't think about oblique nibs as a right or left handed issue per se, but about how the nib "lands" in the page.

 

I'm right handed and the pen attacks the paper at 45º to the writing direction with the nib aligned. This means that for all symmetric nibs the vertical and horizontal lines will have the same width no matter what (as the tangent of 45º is one). For me to naturally get a vertical stroke wider than horizontal out of an italic nib, I have to rotate the pen clockwise, which due to the angle of the pen against vertical means the nib needs to be a "right footer" in order to fully get in contact to the paper.

[pajaro]

I am left handed. Most writing I do with cursive italic nibs looks like the inverse of right hander efforts with these nibs.

[the_gasman]

 

... adapt the pen to your writing.

 

 

I love left obliques and have several, with various degrees of obliquity. If the nib is broad, smooth and generous of ink flow, I find that I naturally use a feather-light hold and the pen finds the optimal angle of rotation. Tao philosophy meets handwriting: the nib controls the writer.

 

I hadn't realised this until, at the fairly recent Lytham Pen Show, John Sorowka sculpted a few nibs for me. When I was testing one particular pen (a wonderfully wet, broad, semi-oblique Sheaffer Targa) he commented, as he watched me write, that I was using a much lighter grip than with other pens and that I was allowing the nib to dictate the rotation. I hadn't been aware of the sensation before his comment but I immediately recognised the verity of his observation.

 

He recently sent me [unsolicited] another Targa with a nib that he thought had my name written all over it. "Don't feel any compulsion to buy", he wrote. Yeh, right! The pen/nib was broad, left oblique, wet, exquisitely smooth, Sheaffer, and Targa. Oh, and the beauty of a nib had some softness, without being properly flexible. Milliseconds after the trial, the bank transfer was complete – there was no way that that pen was doing a return journey!

 

Cheers,

David.

Edited May 15, 2017 by the_gasman