This post is about the joining in writing bliss of two orphaned items: A nib and a pen. It’s always heartwarming to bring about such a lovely union and in this case worthy of a few words since both parties are quite interesting. Let’s look at their backgrounds briefly (just to be sure no one is a gold digger) and then see if they function happily ever after.
Our suitor is a “safety pen” which came about as an odd answer to the question of how to keep a fountain pen from leaking. These pens showed up at the end of the 19th century and gained a niche that kept them on sale through the middle of the next one.. The best known early maker of Safety Pens was Moore who introduced a model in 1899 heralded as the “non-leakable” pen. Why didn’t these pens leak? Well, basically it’s an ink bottle with a nib. The ink is held in the barrel and a short cap screws tightly down on a lip at the end of that which is open. Where is the nib and feed you ask? When not in use they are hiding down in the barrel. The Moore accomplished this by using a sleeve you pushed to extend the nib out of the end like a turtle’s head popping out to see if the coast is clear. You pull it back to retract the nib into the barrel and then you cap it up tight which makes this a marvel of hermetically sealed safety.
Sometime around 1908 the design most people think of when they hear “safety pen” was introduced by Waterman. The difference here was that these functioned in a fancier way. To extend the nib and feed a knob at the end is twisted and that magically extends the writing point out and into action. The principle was pretty simple and effective: A pin set at the base of the rod that holds the nib and feed extends sideways into a hollow spiral attached to a knob. Due to a restriction in the pin’s axial motion it travels up and down when the knob is turned. This simple method was copied by other manufacturers and became the de facto construction for a safety pen.
A safety pen taken mostly apart.
Our inky groom happens to be a Waterman safety likely from the 1930s.. This is the late version of the pen which is more from the art deco era than the earlier models most people come in contact with. The interesting military style clip and the smooth sides make it a most modern looking safety but under the skin it’s still the same pen that was made for years prior.
The better half of this marriage is what the safety pen will hold to write: A music nib. I’ve certainly written about music nibs before (or at least my poor memory twinges me in such a way as to make me think that’s a possibility) so my description will be brief. A music nib is the unforgettable Cerberus of the pen world and like that mythic figure it has parts that seem too plentiful. Specifically I refer to the tines where three are in residence instead of the usual two. If you want to know why just take a moment to recognize the use this nib it put to (hint: read the name again). Musical notation has some thin and very thick lines so writing them requires quite a bit of stroke contrast and the ink flow to go along with it. Two ink channels going to a chisel tip can keep ink flowing during those big bold bits.
The formerly single music nib which accepted the proposal to join this pen is the Waterman #5 above. It is hard to date but possibly from the 1940s. It’s a lovely nib with flexibility which makes it a great joy to use.
So now that we know the couple in this pen story we wonder how they function together since blind dates don’t always work out. The deeply channeled feed on this pen supplies a great deal of writing fluid to the nib which is fine with it. Lines go from thin to extra bold in an instant. The ink is liberally doled out so this is a pen you need to blot a lot when using. As you can see in the writing sample you really can have some fun utilizing it and together they make a great team. Indeed a pair for the ages.
Flexible nibs (which I did an earlier post about here) are often coveted but just as often misunderstood by fountain pen collectors. That’s to be expected since nearly all current pens have nibs that flex very little. If not stiff then they are what is often called “soft”, a term that means under some pressure the tines will spread a tiny bit.
Idolatry
So why are flex nibs so coveted and how do you get one? People can get sold on them sight unseen due to all the dialogue praising them but don’t know of the downside. Most new owners would find them hard to use on a daily basis. You have to take your time writing with one and the necessary high ink flow means a lot of drying time which leads to disappointment and some grumbling you don’t often see expressed due to embarrassment. If given a little perseverance (and practice) most folks do come to enjoy their use.
Getting the real McCoy usually involves finding a good vintage pen from the golden era of flexibility which ended in the late 1930s. It’s a hard quest since so many people selling “flexible” nib pens have no idea what that adjective really means in those cases. Thus caveat emptor needs to be strongly observed so you don’t wind up holding a nail when you wanted a noodle. Trying out pens in person or buying from a known, recommended, or trusted seller is really a very, very good idea.
Into the 21st Century
The other way to obtain a flexible nib also can be tricky. Some very high end manufactures have special order flexy ones and some nibmeisters can alter what you have on hand to be such for a hefty price. People debate the qualities of these all the time asking if they are truly flexible or just rigid with a lazy streak. Results do indeed vary.
Now Into this comes a new much talked about entry from Noodler’s, the people well known for ink and low cost fountain pens. The Nib Creaper (or NC since I’m lazy) is billed to have a flexible nib on a very low cost pen. Intriguing, yes? Well I’ve managed to get my hands on a couple through the auspices of kind friends and took some time to get to know it. Let’s take a look.
Noodler's Nib Creaper.
The Same, But Different
Do you like the look of the exsisting Noodler’s piston fill fountain pens (as shown here)? If you do then you’ll like the Nib Creeper. I don’t find the design unattractive or all that attractive. It’s a nice generic pen shape with little adornment. There’s nothing wrong with that, as I said before, since it’s an inexpensive pen. For this price point you don’t expect too much and just the fact this is a piston filled pen is a nice surprise.
This is one of the cheapest new piston filling fountain pen I can think of. The Dollar Pen rivals it for price but I’ve had no experience with them so I can’t comment on quality. Oh, and the Dollar does not have a fancy nib. The TWISBI piston filler is a fine pen and built to a much higher level of quality but it goes for nearly 4 times the price of the Nib Creaper. If someone wants to get away from converters or cartridges first stop is here.
How long a Noodler’s pen such as this will last in use is an open question. It looks to me built to perform a good long time and you can buy new piston seals from Noodler’s to replace worn ones (a nice touch.) The design is straight forward and simple much like the “school pens” from European manufacturers in the 50s and 60s. You see the minimum of parts to get the job done on this pen so rough handling should not break it.
The Exciting Bit
Now that we’ve discussed the supporting cast let us get to the star of this pen: The new flexible nib. If you look at the overhead comparison shot between a regular Noodler’s and the NC’s steel nib you immediately see the difference. The slit on the normal nib is goes part way up and ends in a breather hole. No surprise there since it’s the classic nib look and the one people visualize when thinking of one.
Now look at the nib next door. Wow! The NC’s slit travels much farther up the nib and does not have a breather hole. Why is that? Well you can also see that both nibs are about the same thickness and (I assume) made from similar steel. Flexible nibs from the past were made thinner and some say from a different alloy of gold to make them springier. If you can’t do that kind of engineering then the long slit is a path to flex on the cheap. Here the two nib tines have more freedom to move since they are effectively longer and of less width than a common nib. Visualize this by thinking of an index card being cut along its length: If the cut is an inch into it and you push up on one side it moves a little but if the cut is 3 times that long you’ll have something a lot floppier.
What about the vent hole you ask? Well, what about it? The purpose of one is supposedly to allow air to flow in to replace the outgoing ink more efficiently. However a lot pens have done without it and seem to have no ill effects. Additionally with a slit that goes up to where everything snugs into the section it makes little sense on the NC to have one.
The Unseen Hero
One thing about flex nibs that people should know about is that they need a lot of ink. When they are flexed to make a thick line they have to put down a wide swath of that liquid stuff and if there’s not enough ink coming up through the feed they “railroad”. That means each tine makes a thin line and there is a blank nothingness between them. That is bad. Now if there is enough ink to cover that gap you see a very wet line indeed. The balance between too much and too little ink is usually in major part controlled by the feed of the pen. Of course I should mention there is always a point where railroading will happen if a nib is flexed really far and capillary attraction loses out to gravity and other forces.
Flexy pen feeds that work well have deep channels holding ample ink ready to be called upon when needed. In the picture below I’ve taken a few photos of the regular Noodler’s piston fill feed and the one from the NC. I love that these are great looking old school ebonite feeds since it’s nice to see something made today that looks just like it’s counterpart from 100 years past. No molded plastic fanciness here, just good old lathed hard rubber.
You can see that the feed for the flex nib pen is more robust in construction especially along the bottom where material was added. Perhaps the idea was these new pens will get more of a workout and so this part was beefed up to prevent breakage? The other change is the very important use of larger feed channels to supply more ink. Seeing this shows that the pen isn’t just a “swap the nib” endeavor but there is thought behind it.
In summary we see that that the Nib Creaper has a new nib and feed on the same barrel as the regular Noodler’s piston fill pen. Well, there is one cool additional difference: The colors (or lack thereof.) Initially the NC was introduced in black mottled red and clear demonstrator plastic but at the time of this writing a black mottled white pen is being sold too. The swirled colors are a welcome and interesting visual change from the solid ones. As for the demonstrator, who doesn’t love those? (If you don’t please just slink out of the room now.)
So, What About That Flex?
We all know the real question everyone wants answered about this pen is how flexible is the nib really? Using it gives an impression but that is subjective and hard to relate in words. One person’s flexible nib is another’s rock hard nail like scratching device.
What I had to figure out was how to test and show the Creaper’s flexnibedness. A comparison between a vintage pen I think anyone would describe as having a flexible nib and this modern upstart made sense. Looking for a good wet noodle as a comparator I was lucky to have a vintage model also sporting a steel nib (even better for the comparison) on hand. This flag bearer for flex is a 50s Montblanc that can accelerate from narrow line to wide in the wink of an eye. Once that choice was made I moved forward to formulate a hair brained scheme.
What I needed was a way to illustrate how much flex there was using the same downward writing pressure on both pens. After a great deal (practically minutes) of thought I came up with two options which could work. In the first one I would buy expensive equipment to apply the exact same measured force to both pens and run a moving belt of paper underneath to capture the lines. Then I use magnification and a micrometer to measure the line width to high accuracy.
Yeah, right. I’m lazy and all for loose, unscientific tests that don’t cost me anything so I selected the second path: duck tape. Since it can do anything I figured it would provide me a cheap and cheerful testing solution. So what I did was tape both pens together with the points at an equal level to each other and on the same plane.. With that done I made lines across the paper increasing the pressure as I went. Since the pens are, so to say, a single unit the pressure was pretty equal on both.
The results in the scans above (you’ll want to click on the images to see it all) show a couple things: Yes, the Noodler’s Nib Creaper will flex. No, it doesn’t flex as easily as a vintage nib does.
So, How Is It to Use?
My use bears out what the duck tape experirama shows in that the Noodler’s pen was not an entirely willing flexible partner. It takes a good deal of pressure to get line variation and that makes it a bit less enjoyable.
The next issue is that both nibs I tried were a bit scratchy. I’ve read some people’s reviews where they state the pen was very smooth so this may just be an anomaly or maybe I am a tougher judge of smoothness. As always this is something you will have to see for yourself.
My last comment has to do with ink supply. Even with the modified feed the pen railroads quite a bit. To stop this you can write slowly and deliberately which slows the rate of ink being put on paper so the flow can keep up. This is something some flexible nib pens require but it can be a bit exasperating.
Writing sample.
Everything I said in my review of the normal Noodler’s piston filled pen goes for this one. It’s a featherweight pen which makes the NC easy to use and carry. The piston works as advertised and there are convenient ink windows in the barrel to see the level of such. On top of all this is a screw cap which is my favorite method of holding one on.
Whadda I Think?
A fountain pen that is this inexpensive makes me want to play up the positives and minimize the negatives. You get good value for your money with a Noodler’s Nib Creaper for sure but as with all things you do get what you pay for. That turns out to be a fun pen to use but not an amazing wet-noodle nib writing experience. For that your best bet still is going for a vintage pen.
I’m finally getting back to writing about pens, a topic I find interesting even if that may indicate a psychological abnormality. A number of things have been sitting around waiting to be introduced here but without a common theme to link them. If pressed I can say all the pens do happen to have good points, and I mean that literally.
First up is something cool due to its obscurity. The doo-dad maker Levenger sells a lot of fountain pens and sometimes contracts with manufacturers to make special editions for them. Somewhere around 10 years ago they had the Italian firm Omas make a nice medium sized piston filling fountain pen called the Articula. Not a big deal in itself but the hook with this pen was that it had a flexible nib. Of course a modern flexible nib is only semi-flexible in comparison to those from the days of yore and this is no exception. Nonetheless the nib is comfy to use and can be coaxed into an expressive mood. I’m not sure why this wasn’t a more popular pen considering all this.
Nibs in a row: Sheaffer, Parker, and Omas.
It’s hard to find a Parker Vacumatic with a nib that isn’t narrow but they exist and I had such in the form of disembodied Canadian made stub. Never wanting such a nifty nib to go to waste I put it on a circa 1940 standard size Vac I had recently purchased as part of a lot. Even more frightening was this Frankenpen was already equipped with the wrong filling unit in the form of an earlier lock down version instead of the proper aluminum speedline. The result is actually not scary but a nice writing mish-mash with lots of character.
The final pen is a Sheaffer’s Thin Model also equipped with a stub. A damaged barrel on the original required a replacement which turned out to be green creating an overall effect is a bit like a classic Pelikan (one of my favorite color combinations.) The modest stub nib writes smoothly and like the Parker discussed previously isn’t something you see every day.
Pens and Pooper. Thanks to Hazel for the pen wrap underneath. (click for closeup)
You have to have some paper to use a pen with and I got lucky enough to find something a few weeks ago both fun and environmentally sound. On a visit to Office Max I saw a few boxes of Terracycle recycled paper on closeout. What makes this cool is that we’re not talking paper made from post-consumer waste but made from some out of the ordinary items. The sample pack I have uses grass, banana peels and pachyderm excrement to make the sheets. Yes, you heard me: elephant poop.
All three papers are moderately rough in texture but very attractive with some unbleached elements appearing randomy. They are also very fountain pen friendly exhibiting no bleed or feathering. Sadly the reason I saw this was because it is no longer made and can’t be found at the chain anymore. However, if you search the web you will find other places that still market papers like this, even the poopy one.
And on that note I think it is a good time to end this post.
The idea that effort can be saved by gathering tasks together to tackle as a single unit is not something that originated with me. Being both lazy and a procrastinator I find myself afloat in a sea of topics and items I wanted to write about but never got around to. Thus I’m applying that principle here in this stitched together post that I hope will intertwine some ink, paper, and pen items sitting around here.
Pen
I single-mindedly comb the world for Sheaffer Snorkels with interesting nibs. My day races by with me obsessively hunched over a monitor, a phone in my hand, utilizing a chip in my cerebral cortex that gives me a direct uplink to the Internet. OK, most of that isn’t true but I do look more often than the average person to see if I can find something cool.
A little while ago I got lucky and found myself a pretty good deal on a Sheaffer Snorkel with a traditional open nib. Not a run-of-the-mill example this had the FM3 marked nib (medium point flexible). These are hard to find (proverbial hens teeth, needle in a haystack, or bit of food a pug won’t eat rare) and when I was the happy owner the bill came to an astounding $22. Lucky? No…it was skill! OK, I got lucky. I thought I was the Baron of Penfindia until a friend found something similar for $11. Descent from smugness is sometimes so rapid you skin your knees.
What is odd is that this nib has less flex and a slightly narrower line than the other FM3 nib I have. It’s still flexible but not as giving as the predecessor nib in my collection. I have a feeling these specialty nibs were more handwork than the vast quantities of fine and medium nibs turned out by Sheaffer and that might explain such variances. Once I did get this pen restored I filled it with Private Reserve Supershow Blue ink and happily doodled away on the next topic of this post.
The $22 flexible Snorkel.
Paper
Once again Karen at Exaclair was nice enough to send me a few things to give my hasty and subjective opinions on. One of them was a pad of G. Lalo Vergé de France white paper. I’m used to using the smooth Clairefontaine paper when I need something to make ink form shapes on so this was a nice change. This is laid paper and the factors you immediately notice with this substrate (otherwise known as fancy-schmancy stationary) is it has visible watermarks, a bit of a tooth, and a substantial heft.
What is laid paper? Well, making paper is a lot more complex than most people think. It’s not just like you chop down a tree or mash up some recycling and you have a sheet of the white stuff. There are a number of steps that takes the raw materials through slurry, gets it flat, and then smoothes and dries it. The end product differs depending on the way these procedures are done. The part that we need to look at involves what is called a screen which is for capturing the pulp slurry creating a thin skin and allowing water to drain out of it. As the fibers rest they take on any pattern that is held in the screen like a watermark, for example. Most modern paper is made on a screen of a fine mesh of filaments and imparts a uniform, opaque look to the paper (except for the aforementioned water marks). Laid paper is a more old fashioned method where the screen is made of parallel filaments and the final product shows a ribbed texture when light passes through it.
I like laid finish quite a bit and in fact the boarder around this blog is my scan of some Crane laid note sheets I had on hand. The pattern in the fiber seems to enhance the paper’s attractiveness because it creates visual interest. Writing on this paper is a different experience from my typical papers since while not extremely rough you do feel the nibs contact on the sheet more. The act of writing somehow feels more formal and special. When I use it I feel all my words are profound and meaningful even though in reality they are incoherent scribbles that I don’t understand a few hours hence.
Specifically the Vergé paper is excellent in all areas. It’s 100gsm with 25% cotton fiber content so isn’t lightweight and shows almost no feathering. At first I thought there was bleed through on the paper but I quickly realized that these sheets are quite translucent and it what was written on the sheets could be seen as light passed through. When placed face down on a table it was less noticeable. That’s not a problem for me and since there are a number of available colors it might not be the case with those. Click on the images below for further enlightenment (or just boredom).
Along with the paper came ink I’ve been wanting to try for a long time. I like black inks but I hate ones that aren’t dark, dark, dark. Also some seem to have a reddish-brown cast on the edges that I really don’t like. I certainly have not tried every black out there but there have been a few on my desk over the years. Knowing that some of the J. Herbin colors aren’t too saturated I wondered how the Perle Noire that arrived would perform. Happily I can report that it is a nice opaque dark black that I’ve not noticed any negatives to yet. There are a lot of black ink comparison reviews in blogland that are quite thorough so I’d recommend taking a look since this is just a quick impression.
Pugless
So we come to the end of my omnibus post. There’s a still a lot of items I need to get to but at least I’ve removed a few from my list. The pugs wonder why they aren’t pictured in this post due to the growing number of fans they seem to have. Maybe next time I’ll see what input they might have but for now the puga donnas will just have to keep snoring.
OK, I gave in. Here’s Mr. Puggy’s reaction to the Snorkel. He tells me it’s beneath his notice.
Last post I showed you a few Sheaffer Snorkels with flexible nibs. While I was doing that I took a closer look at them and found a few interesting tidbits which in my pen filled brain were fascinating. If you are as occupied with esoterica as I am you might find it interesting too, but first a little story:
I’ve repaired and built a number of Snorkels usually with good results. However, one I made (the original Frankensnork) wound up with a bit of a problem: ink starvation. That pen had a flexible stub nib and while all seemed well enough I soon was made aware that sometimes (while being exercised by its owner who is well known for the ability stretch pens to their limits) the line being drawn would peter out. Not enough ink flowing to the point during grueling calligraphic maneuvers was the root cause. Of course I felt rather inept at not noticing this when I tested the pen originally and felt I must have overlooked something. My contrition is legendary and all I could do was swear at myself a lot and wonder.
So why did a perfectly fine, to all appearances, Snorkel so act? That old question was on my mind as I disassembled and examined my newest flex Snork. Imagine my surprise to find that Sheaffers with the flexible nibs had differently constructed feeds! Imagine my surprise that I was too thick to have noticed this before!
In case you don’t know about feeds they are what supply ink from the reservoir to the writing point. The basic function of this piece, usually made out of hard rubber, is to allow ink to flow to the business end via a channel and also contain excess fluid in a ridged part called a comb. This link goes to a good in-depth explanation of how this all works. A delicate balance is maintained by a feed so it can supply enough ink for writing while allow air to pass the opposite way to replace what is drained. If either one of these is slacking in its work you get that starvation I mentioned.
It seems that Sheaffer combated this in the high flow flexible nib Snorkels by creating a super feed that could really move the ink. This brings us to a quick sketch of the complex inner mechanism of a Snorkel, I’m afraid. Hold on through this boring part and you get to see the pretty pictures (well, if you like boring pen bits they are pretty). A Snorkel has a tube that can be extended outwards from under the nib when the knob at the other end of the pen is twisted. An extensive advertising campaign explained this action to be a wonderful boon to mankind in that the pen did not have to be dunked into the ink for filling but only the end of the tube. Yep, no wiping off of the nib when you need to top up the writing fluid. Not quite the same importance as polio vaccine but this was the 50s when automotive tail fins were considered a triumph. I’m not going to go to much farther into how this all works (but here’s a good link to that here) except to say that not only is the ribbed feed under the nib part of the ink delivery unit but so is the tube. Thus, the tube has a thin strip of hard rubber that acts like a feed extension which passes the ink baton to the external one. So, specifically what did Sheaffer do to increase ink flow? Simple, they made the pipes bigger. By that I mean the spots ink flow through were increased in size (quite a bit) so the nib would keep spitting out ink even if the user was ham handed and flexed the heck out of every character they wrote. Let’s take a look in pictures, shall we? Don’t forget to click on them to see them large.
First is a comparison of a flex and non-flex open, two-tone style #3 nib. You’ll see that they look similar enough but upon close inspection the flex nib (with the code FF3 on it) doesn’t have the impressed line that mark the boundary between the silver and the gold sections as the less acrobatic firm medium one. Since the flex nib is thinner (and possibly metallurgically different) I’d wager removal of this embossing was to prevent a weak area that could snap or crack in use. It could have acted like paper when scored to form a crease to ease folding. A bent or broken nib is not something you’d be very happy about while writing a letter. The platinum mask (a thin plating, really) on the flexible nib is applied to mimic the one with the grooves in it. I always like to think there was a back room at the Sheaffer nib works were a few folks labored over these not widely produced nibs with loving care. Yes, overly romantic indeed.
Next let’s look at the feeds that live down below. The picture is of the top of them which comes into contact with the underside of the nibs. You’ll see the one that services our flexible friends has a wider groove down the middle. This is an ink supply channel and larger means more flow. Also, the combs are more widely spaced possibly to retain the expected greater ink overflow.
The last bit in the ink supply chain is the thin hard rubber strip that lives in the tube. The image shows them from end on and the difference is most striking. Look and see how the one out of the flex pen is much more slender allowing it take up far less space so more ink can bustle on through. The bottom of it (facing up in the picture) is actually concave and the top a flat and ungrooved. Remember that capillary action helps to draw the ink forward which is why the tube isn’t just empty, but here we see how almost empty Sheaffer could make one.
In the next two illustrations we see the Snorkel tubes themselves and a top view of the strips from them. I don’t know why the one for the fancy flexible nib is longer but it is. When in the pen it extends from out under the comb feed a tiny bit more than normal. I’ve got a stub flex Snorkel with a #2 style nib (single tone gold) which has the same type of strip in the tube but is the same length as a normal pen. Thus, the length is a mystery to which I can see no obvious explanation. On the other end near the black plug you can see how the tube is also longer there and has a cut out in. I’m not sure about this either but it could be for obtaining ink more rapidly through greater contact.
And so ends our tour of this unique type of pen. I’m no expert and some of my assumptions may be wrong but I hope you found this interesting nonetheless. I say “Vive la Difference!” if it keeps my snorkel happily making weird, varying lines.
If you’re active in using or collecting fountain pens eventually you will hear the term “flexible”. It’s often used with reverence as when someone gushes “the pen has a nib that is flexible!!” Sometimes you hear such called “wet noodles” which causes no end of confusion as people not familiar with the term try to figure out how long to boil their pen to get it al dente. I’m pretty sure that most people who read this (all 6 or you) will know what a flexible nib is and what it does but that isn’t going to stop me from rambling on and giving a explanation on a kindergarten level. If you are schooled in flex about you might want to skip to the pictures.
Once upon a time skilled individuals created fancy documents with flowing, beautiful script. If you look at historic letters you can see that the lines which make up the letterforms flow in varying widths. For example, a line descending into a curve would become broader in a natural swelling that reminds one of a widening river. The same line usually pinches back to being narrow yet again while it moves along into another letter. One could think of it a bit like brush strokes in painting where more pressure creates a greater ink patch on the paper. However, we are talking about pens and not bristly things.
Mechanically the way it was accomplished is very easy to understand (even for me). Writing tips from the quill to our modern gold nibs have a slit down the middle to the point which directs the ink through capillary action to where you want it on the paper. The narrowest line a nib can make is the width of the point without any (well, hardly any) downward pressure on it. If you bear down while writing the two sides of the slit, called tines, spread apart creating a wider contact area on the paper. The more pressure means the wider the gap, and thus a wider line. Eventually if the spread is too far apart there would be a loss of capillary action or ink flow which stops the line on the paper which is bad. That’s how it works, Q.E.D.!
So, why is flex so special then? Well, fountain pens today are less able to create line variation. This is because the nibs are thicker and stiffer so the tines don’t move apart much. There’s metallurgy involved as well but I’m not getting into that since its complex and I’m too stupid to fully comprehend it. Let’s just say chances are a modern pen will usually write a predictable line without much variation akin to ballpoints.
As stated this is a change from the past. Early on just about all fountain pens (like their dip pen predecessors) had nibs that would allow for a great deal of flexibility. The systems used to teach cursive or business writing took this into consideration and instructed on when and where to apply pressure to create the standardized but artistic writing styles. Still, for writing in small print for things like accounting there was a need for uniform, thin lines and less flexible points were available. With the advent of things like flimsies and carbon copies stiff nibbed pens become the norm since a firm, regular contact point on the substrate was necessary. To top it all off an inflexible nib is easier and requires less practice to use correctly.
This transformation started in the 30s and by the 50s the vast majority of pens had fine or medium nibs often described as being like nails since their strength would allow them to be driven into wood with no damage. At this time flexible nibs were for specialty uses and not very common.
So, now that we know what a flexible nib is let’s take a look at some I have on hand. Below you’ll see a gallery of 5 nibs that have this quality (click on them for the big view):
Many people use terms like “full-flex” or “semi-flex” to describe a nib’s ability to create the mentioned line variation. There’s no standardized system to measure this and unless the nib is marked this kind of label is based on trial and experience. Luckily, three of the pictured nibs are marked so we know they are officially flexible. The first two are the rather rare beast known as the Sheaffer Snorkel flexisaurus. OK, I made that last word up but you get the idea. You could obtain a wide number of different points on Snorks (16 were listed but when you consider that there were 5 different nibs designs you can imagine the variety) and a number were flexible. Determining if you have such a nib is easy and 100% foolproof if the lightly etched nib codes (in use to 1958, after that you’re out of luck) are still visible. Often these have been polished off by the friction from repeated wiping. In the pictures you can these codes and the meaning is listed in the caption.
The Eversharp nib seen is stamped “flexible” leaving nary a doubt about what it was born as. Rounding these out is a Moore nib that through use can be determined as flexible and an Onoto with a stub nib and the moves to make it at least a semi-flex.
Now that you’ve seen the nibs you might want to see them in action. Well, too bad! I’ve got zero skill in calligraphy and my hand writing looks like I’m three sheets to the wind. OK, I did do something in the way of a demonstration which is that I doodled and recorded it. So below is my first (and maybe last) attempt at being my own A.V. club and I hope you enjoy it.
If the video isn’t enough for you for an encore I’ve got some writing samples for you to examine followed by an image of what the whole pens (not just the nibs) look like.
Brown & Bigelow of St. Paul, MN knows promotional products. In 1896 they came out with some of the first advertising calendars and eventually created many iconic ones like the Norman Rockwell Boy Scouts of America series. They did more than just that, though. The “Redipoint” pencil was a B&B product usually sporting the name or logo of a business on the barrel. You’ll be happy to know they still are in the same line of business today.
In 1922 William H. Ingersoll, the marketing maven for the Ingersoll Watch Company (“The Watch That Made the Dollar Famous”) left that industry after a takeover of the eponymous company. He went to the Redipoint Company which reorganized as Ingersoll Redipoint. Still distributed by B&B the products of this company continued to rely heavily on promotional writing instruments. Besides pencils they also had a line of plastic and metal fountain pens one of which is the topic of this post.
Redipoint pen and paraphernalia. (click for larger image)
The fountain pen shown here is a very nice insurance promotional item. The top has an enameled company name and you can find identical pens with variety of companies and cities in this spot. The Redipoint pen itself has a gold-filled metal barrel and cap covered with a fleurs-de-lis design. It’s similar to a Wahl metal pen of the same era in looks and the lever filling system. The nib is a semi-flex medium which really can put down a good amount of ink. Overall it’s quite nice for a piece of insurance advertising.
Pictured here is a near mint example with all the original paperwork. Sometime in 1924 Mrs. G. E. Sanford got this pen at Christmas but didn’t use it very much. I have no idea where it lived for the many intervening years until the pen found itself on the other side of the world with my friend in Metro Manila. It did come back to this hemisphere and stayed a little while with me before I gave it this past weekend as a graduation present to a good friend. So the legacy of Mrs. Sanford of Bunker Hill, IL lives on in an odd way.
It’s great when you have an indicator of what type of nib is on a vintage pen. Some Wahl examples had “flexible” stamped on them so it’s pretty clear what you’ve got. Sheaffer Snorkels had codes lightly etched on the base of their nibs corresponding to a certain point type. A feed may have numbers on it which could be decoded to give the same kind of information like on a Parker 75. If you’re really lucky you might have your hands on a pen that’s new old stock (never was sold) with a factory identification sticker or chalk mark relating the vitals about the type of line it will create.
Realistically the vast majority of vintage pens one can buy are bereft of any readable information. To know what kind of line that shiny gold thing at the end is going to put down you need to do a close inspection as well as use the pen. There’s no real standard about what makes a fine, medium, or bold point what they are. If you draw a very thin line with a fountain pen you say “fine point” and if it’s pretty thick you say “bold point.” Stub, italic, and music nibs can be seen to be what they are by usually by eye. Knowing when you come across a flexible nib is a combination of subjective considerations and experience. Many people mistakenly think a semi-flexible nib is full flex because they’ve just never used the latter.
Now that we know the confusion that can be had on the topic of nib grading and identification let us look at a prime example of “huh?” I have a Sheaffer Touchdown filling Tuckaway model which has a nib I can’t quite categorize. It was sold as a bold nib, but bold nibs usually have a pretty good spherical blob of tipping material on them. This one has a thin edge to it almost like a stub nib. So, is it a stub? Well, it has pretty rounded shoulders that make me question that. And to make matters a little more interesting it has some flex to it when used.
Closely inspecting the construction of the upper part of the nib in question (nib A) we see some more oddness. I’ve included a few images of both this nib and a contemporary medium-ish Sheaffer nib for comparison (nib B). As nib A approaches its point you can see that it becomes flattened which is shown well in the back and side view images below. Nib B maintains a lateral curvature in this same area before getting a little flatter closer to the tip. It’s this flatness that allows nib A to flex more than nib B which has stiffer tines due to that arch shape being carried through. Another difference is that the feed ends a bit lower on nib A so it won’t bump on the paper when the tines spread. Lastly, you can observe how wider tines give nib A the shovel like appearance at its end reminiscent of a stub nib.
Writing sample.
So, I don’t know what this nib is really. I’ll call it a bold with some stub like qualities. Look at the images and writing sample and see if you can come up with the answer.
In the optimistic days of the 1950s a race developed to improve simple processes by throwing as much confusing gadgetry at them as possible. With flying cars and home based nuclear reactors around the corner consumers wanted a taste of that future now. Autos got “Hi-Way Hi-Fi” under dash record players, “Autronic Eye” headlight dimmers, and “Torsion-Aire” suspensions. Appliances self-cleaned, self-defrosted, and self-timed. It was only natural that fountain pen technology would embrace the space age as well.
Sheaffer’s Snorkel fountain pen is the premier example of fixing something that isn’t broken. The idea was that dunking the nib and section of a fountain pen into ink to fill it was messy (it was) and a terrible plague on humanity (which it wasn’t). The pen engineers at Sheaffer knew they could combat this terror and took their current stylishly svelte fountain pen called the TM (for “Thin Model”) added some length and a mess of internal parts until it became the famous Snorkel filler. That name was based not on recreational divers but the snorkel technology used by submarines to keep air flowing into diesel engines at shallow depths. In the case of the new pen, however, it didn’t keep liquid out but sucked some in. The procedure for filling it was a bit like using a Rube Goldberg contraption: You first twisted the blind cap at the back end to extend a long tube from under the nib. This tube went into the ink keeping the nib and section squeaky clean (and your fingers as well). The next step was to pull up the blind cap extending another larger tube backwards.Reversing this with a smart push down was the last step and caused high air pressure to collapse a rubber sac in the pen which was suddenly released when the tube traveled far enough to reach an air escape passage. With no more pressure in the barrel the sac expands and sucks up the ink, Q.E.D. It’s no surprise that with a filling system this blingy Snorkels became wildly popular and eventually were made at the Sheaffer plants in Canada, England, and Australia as well as domestically.
Despite the complexity Snorkels are well built pens that are usually problem free and enjoyable to use when restored. There was a myriad of colors and styles to select from and a large range of nib types. Overwhelmingly these pens show up with traditional open or conical Triumph nibs in fine and medium points even though more interesting alternatives were offered including flexibles and italics. That fact makes it all the more satisfying when you come across a unique Snorkel nib.
In order to hunt the rare and little seen nibs the following facts can be helpful: English and Australian built snorkels have a higher chance of having nibs with more flex. It is not true that a Triumph nib cannot be flexible, there were some flex versions made. Oblique italics and stub italic nibs came in all the nib styles and materials. Lastly, on some of the flexible nibs it looks like they were not finished on the normal production line due to some minor discrepancies. These nibs do not have a groove that usually marks the delineation point between the platinum plated front and the gold back possibly because that would be a weak point when flexed. Slightly sloppy masking at the edge of the platinum is also seen. Possibly handwork was needed to complete them due to the low number produced in comparison with the more popular nibs.
This snorkel can do thick and thin.
Sheaffer had a bewildering array of model names based on the style of nib, nib material, cap material, clip style, and guarantee so not every Snorkel is created equal. The example pen shown here is a Saratoga model with 14k Australian made flexible stub nib. Its shows a good amount of line variation in use due both to the flexibility and the shape of the tip. It always seems that the ink flow in pens from the era where flex was out of style is skimpy creating the “ink on,” “ink off” nightmare of skipping. In this pen I removed the thin hard rubber feed that runs the length of the snorkel tube and increased the depth of the channel in the center. Now the pen has a very good flow and writes quite wet.
So, hopefully this shows that Snorkels don’t have to be dull and stodgy. A good nib makes this a fun pen and the elaborate filling system will give you a different experience than found in one of those old timey fountain pens.
Our suitor is a “safety pen” which came about as an odd answer to the question of how to keep a fountain pen from leaking. These pens showed up at the end of the 19th century and gained a niche that kept them on sale through the middle of the next one.. The best known early maker of Safety Pens was Moore who introduced a model in 1899 heralded as the “non-leakable” pen. Why didn’t these pens leak? Well, basically it’s an ink bottle with a nib. The ink is held in the barrel and a short cap screws tightly down on a lip at the end of that which is open. Where is the nib and feed you ask? When not in use they are hiding down in the barrel. The Moore accomplished this by using a sleeve you pushed to extend the nib out of the end like a turtle’s head popping out to see if the coast is clear. You pull it back to retract the nib into the barrel and then you cap it up tight which makes this a marvel of hermetically sealed safety.
