Flex Nibs – Bleubug

January 17, 2011

It Ain’t Hip To Be Stiff

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 21^st 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.

20110114-P1000304 — 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

August 31, 2010

Sackett To Me

I’ve got a quick follow-up on my last post about the Hicks-Sackett pen. The long “feeding stem” was missing from the pen when it arrived. Not surprising since it seemed the weakest part of the design being made of hard rubber and spindly. Somewhere in the past an owner was a bit rough refilling the pen and it snapped off. Besides acting as an ersatz feed that piece also seemed to provide a bit of locating support for the nib/feed plug. What I tried to do was construct a replacement using stone knives and bearskins which are about as advanced as my tools get. In the end I had a main shaft and a smaller hard rubber feed on top that ran down about 1/2 the length. Not perfect but workmanlike.

20100707-P1070001 — Endeavoring to create a missing bit.

August 27, 2010

Hicksups

Mr. George H. Sackett designed a pretty poor pen. Of course that sounds harsh a 124 years after the fact, but I’ve been examining the results of his fertile imagination and have come to that conclusion. Before discussing this curiosity more let me say I can’t blame him too much since early fountain pens are odd beasts as inventors and companies in the early days tried to morph them from glorified dip pens with a built in ink supplies to dependable instruments which would not alter your finger color. It was a free-for-all at the time since it was easy for someone to take a tube, stick a nib on the end, and engineer what was between based on simple physics and bizarre notions.

20100602-P1050855 — The Hicks-Sackett and writng sample.

I’m not sure if back then people thought building the perfect fountain pen would have the world beating a path to their door but it seems so. Type the word “Fountain Pen” into the Google patent databases and you’ll see enough listings to bug out your eyes. We tend to think the implement we nib fanciers use is a proven mechanical device and focus on aesthetics or usability but these early patents are an indicator how long the development process took. Nozzles, tubes, valves, and other tiny internal workings are intricately drafted in the old records and illustrate the inventor’s genius or insanity. Time and time again great self-assurance shines through in the pages and pages of descriptions and diagrams that are found.

The designer of the pen in question, Mr. Sackett, had at least three patents for a fountain pen (here, here and here) which show seemingly the same construction. Why the individual patents were filed and granted (just months apart in 1886) is confusing. The last tidbit is that an advertisement for this pen listed an 1885 patent but I can’t find it. This muddle aside it does seem there was little time wasted before manufacturing started since ads can be found from 1885. I’m neither a good researcher nor a patent expert so I can offer no explanations for all this. I’ll chalk it up to something unfathomable from the distant past which is another way of me saying I didn’t bother any further with the mystery.

Who was the inventor? Thanks to a family history I did find out a few factual items. His entry read as below:

GEORGE HENRY SACKETT, 1826-, of Providence, R. I., and Brooklyn, N. Y., son of Isaac and Mary Johnson Sackett, was married at Providence, R. I., July 27, 1857, to SARAH SWEETSER SHELDON. He was, from 1855 to 1878, a member of the firm of Sackett, Davis & Co., jewelry manufacturers, of Providence, R. I., and is the inventor of the Sackett fountain pen.

As you can see Mr. Sackett’s eponymous pen was considered an important enough achievement to be listed as one of his two accomplishments.

In that biographical tidbit it’s interesting to see that he was jeweler like many people involved in the nascent fountain pen industry. His invention seemingly got him out that business and by 1890 the Sackett Fountain Pen Co was located at 169 & 171 Broadway in New York City – at the corner with Maiden Lane, which was a hub for Jewelers in the city as well as many writing instrument companies as Waterman’s and Mabie, Todd & Co. One of the companies neighboring the location was the William S. Hicks Company which sold fountain pens both under its own name and for such high end establishments as Tiffany’s and Cartier. Many of these were beautiful, expensive pens and pencils made from precious metals and are prized today.

I’ve not found when or why Sackett and Hicks got together to brand and sell the pen designed by the former. Advertisements from the beginning list the pen as the “Hicks-Sackett”. Being an older and more established firm Hicks could have offered manufacturing capabilities and a proven distribution channel which must have been appealing. The elder firm may have wished for a low cost line of pens to market and latched upon this design as the one that fit the bill. Either way the pens were made from around the patent date till at least late into the first decade of the 20th century. By the late oughts the pen was quite a dinosaur since its competitors had invaluable features as modern channeled feeds to regulate ink flow and combs to catch excess ink. Add the use of screw caps and self-filling systems in some marketed pens and – even at a low price – the Hicks-Sackett pen was a doddering holdover from an earlier era.

The following might be dry, boring, and maybe even confusing in describing how this oddball pen works and includes illustrations that may make you squint and get a headache. With that caveat lets look at the pen parts and the basic principles of how they function. The first image below is from the patent that is best represents the actual pen sold. The second scan is a detailed illustration from an advertisement that also backs up that claim.

1001_questions_and_answers_on_arithmetic 169 — 1885 Advertisement.

Externally it’s unremarkable except for probably the first thing you’ll notice: The slip cap has a smaller diameter “crown” on the end. In my opinion this is the cleverest feature of the pen since the protrusion into a hole on the opposite end to allow posting. It’s a nice, tight fit and there’s no chance of a ring around the barrel ever forming from the friction of a cap being placed over it.

Internally what you see illustrates its origins in the late 19th century when fountain pens were in their infancy. As stated earlier the Hicks-Sackett is without the later innovations which made pens reliable and predictable in use and throughout the long period it was manufactured was frozen like this. In a nutshell it is basically a chased thin black hard rubber tube with an odd feed rod inside and flat triangular bit acting as a rudimentary feed.

The most prominent part that extends inside the barrel front to back is the “feeding stem”. This long grooved bar looks like a narrow feed on steroids but the patent text tells you the reason for it is to transmit the last bit of ink clinging to the walls of the pen to the nib via capillary action. That’s a reason but a silly one indeed. As seen in some of the Hicks-Sackett advertisements in the gallery below using the last drops of ink was brag worthy and for some reason the period around the turn of the 19th century was one where pen manufacturers fretted about this ability in their products. If you look at how pens like the Parker “Lucky Curve” touted their ink evacuation ability it seems like this was something the masses were demanding. From the hyperbole of the advertisements violent mobs must have gathered to chant “No ink left behind!” Of course this was just a marketing ploy since everyone wanted their pen to stand out in some way and this was flashier than saying “our cap stays on!” or “the pen that makes lines on paper!” The entire idea seems to have been abandoned as other things could be patented and harped upon like filling methods or interchangeable nibs. History shows people were alright with refilling their pens prior to that last drop being used since later pens phased out the gimmicks that were supposed to throttle the last of the ink out.

So the snake-like “feeding stem” which was inside the pen got a lot of thought. Unluckily nothing much else seems to have, especially the feed. Many contemporary pens had an over and under feed in the Hicks heyday and one could justify how elaborate these were since the super flexible nibs of the time needs a ink to gush down to where the rubber (read nib) met the road (nee paper). The Hicks-Sackett didn’t even bother with the underfeed that is still currently used in fountain pens and instead has a triangular sliver of hard rubber above the nib which has a standoff to make a gap which pulls ink out via capillary action. What is desperately missed is something like feed groves to allow air back up into the reservoir to fill the void ink leaves behind in a metered fashion. Everything happens on this pen through the same tiny slit behind the nib which the patent gobbled gook says will work just awesomely. In reality it allows air and ink enter an exit willy-nilly resulting in the occasional glob of ink coming out when air rushes through too fast. Aesthetically I love the way the nib looks – like a dip pen’s from underneath but that doesn’t compensate for the poor functionality.

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My criticisms wouldn’t hold water with the copy writers who created the ads for the pen as profuse praise was heaped upon by them. What kind of drugs they were on as they wrote these I don’t know, but one claim is that you will not get your fingers inky when refilling it. Possibly they had soot blackened fingers (Dickensian image) so they never noticed this pen almost guarantees ink stained digits. There is no section at the front and the barrel just continues jauntily on till it comes to an abrupt end. Here the feed and nib is held in place by a plug that friction fits into the hollow of the inside void. Removing it means you have to grasp the feed and nib between your finger and thumb and you know what liquid is on them? Yes, ink.

None-the-less the ads I dug up for this pen are a fun romp through a time long past. Look at the hyperbole in them for a quick giggle. I’ve found as many as I can so you can see that the pen never altered over its marketing life. If you do see these and wish to go back in time to purchase I recommend you first look at a certain new pen by a Mr. Sheaffer he calls a “lever filler”. I also heard Mr. Waterman makes a fine product too.

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What I love the most about researching this pen was finding the original patents and taking in their lovely language. On both you see Mr. Sackett tried to cover as many bases as possible by explaining alternative ways of executing his design. I have to say you can almost buy that this pen will revolutionize the field as the grandiosity of the design is teased out for you. If it only had a tiny steam engine and flapping wings you could see this as a prop in some modern steampunk fiction and called “Dr. Hermes’ Incredible Levitating Ink Fountain Marking Machine”.

The Hicks-Sackett pen is fascinating, odd, frustrating, and wonderful to explore. Some questions remain like why Hicks was associated with this pen and how it continued to be sold when as it become so inferior to its competition. But I’ll not trouble myself with that since I am not a historian but an observer. The pen that is pictured in this post has been passed to its new owner who has used it in part to create the wonderful illustration below. This proves that talent trumps technology – or something like that.

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August 4, 2010

Je Ne Swan Quoi

It’s obvious that old pens don’t work as well as newer ones. Take a look at the first fountain pens to be produced and how poor the ink delivery was due to feeds like tongue depressors. Like with any technology it takes a while to reach perfection. Another factor in early pens was that flexible nibs need a lot of ink to make those wide lines when the nib is under pressure. So in the late 19^th century you wound up using a pen that would give you a nice ink blob in the middle of a word.

Various methods were attempted to make the better mouse…er…pen trap including some which were half or quarter baked. What is called an “overfeed” was effective enough to have lasted on some pens like Onotos and Swans for nearly 20 years. I won’t go into great detail but what the overfeed does is the same as the underfeed: ink saunters down it to the point from the reservoir. This gives it a double dose of inky goodness needed by super flex nibs.

20100804-P1070482 — Swan 4571 slip cap eyedropper with overfeed showing.

I have a great example of this type of setup in an export Swan slip-cap eyedropper you see above. Why I say “export” is that this was sold in France where legally calling something “gold” meant that it had to be 18kt or above in quality. When I removed this nib I saw the text verifying this as well as the word “broad”. I think this is more a stub nib than a broad and with its flex is quite a joy to use.

If you want to see the few parts that go into this simple pen take a gander it during cleaning and restoration. There’s a barrel, a feed, a plug with wire retainer, a nib, the overfeed, and the cap. It’s such a graceful pen in how few bits make it up. Plugs go into holes and in this case it’s an alternative way to fill the pen. You can pull the plug (the Swan will not keel over) and use an eyedropper in that spot. The only confusing thing you might see is the modern addition of an o-ring on the section to seal it better.

Another interesting fact is that this is an American made Swan. The company that made Swan and other model fountain pens, Mabie Todd & Bard (just Mabie Todd in later years), goes back to the mid-19^th century making dip pens and pencils. By the turn of the century they had been making fountain pens for a while and started a British subsidiary. That UK arm really took off and their product was a success while the U.S. sales slowly dropped. The single company became two and parted ways. The U.S. firm closed up shop in the late 1930s while the other advertised itself as “The Pen of the British Empire”.

I’ve never quite seen a pen that can put down a line as wide as this pen does when flexed. When ink runs out in these instances you get “railroad tracks” or a double line since there’s not enough ink to fill the center. So, one can see the odd feed is doing the job. Yay for old tech!

May 10, 2010

The Irish, Tiny Dots, Ukuleles, and I

Please bear with me since I’m going to cover a lot of ground in this post. Really, if I wasn’t so lazy I’d make this into three different standalone posts instead of this omnibus one but I can justify running the subjects together since they do link up.

Think Ink

The seed of this post started as an ink review. I hate doing ink reviews since so many people do them better than I with the same inks and usually far earlier. Certainly I could do samples, test drying times, and talk about saturation but there’s no way I could spin it so it wasn’t repetitious. None-the-less I did get two free J. Herbin inks from the great Quo Vadis Blog St. Patrick’s day giveaway this year and I felt it only right that I make mention of them.

The inks were supposed to be some variant on orange and green (the colors of the Irish flag along with white) and so I had to sit down and decide which to ask for. The only green I don’t have from J. Herbin was the Diabolo Menthe and so that choice made itself. Orange provided a different challenge in that I already had the only one available: Orange Indien. Thinking out of the box I did see another ink that has a bit of orange undertones called Ambre de Birmanie. A few weeks later both inks arrived through the good auspices of Karen Doherty at Exaclair.

Without a real plan about how to review them I did do some writing samples with both inks to check them out. Recently I restored an interesting Conklin pencil and pen set which I decided to fill with one of the inks. Most people think of Wahl when metal fountain pens are mentioned since they advertised their line heavily in the early 1920s. However, other manufacturers made similar pens such as the rolled gold ones seen in the picture below. The checked design and proportions are reminiscent of the Wahls with the most noticeable differences being the domed ends and Conklin patent spring clip.

After trying the pen with Ambre de Birmanie I was surprised by how much I liked the results. While not super saturated the pleasant color and nice line shading that was displayed is very pleasing. This test led to me noticing the Conklin’s #3 semi-flex nib showed some disturbing ink starvation. Over time I’ve happened across articles that mention that even the flexible old pens of yore were not meant to flex as wide or as long as a calligraphy pen, for example. Still there are some that can maintain a happy ink flow for a good long time. This pen didn’t do that.

Fussing With Flex

I can live with the Conklin’s ink flow since I think it just might be the way it is but it did make me think of another pen I had that was bedeviling me with similar problems. The history of this one is that a year or so ago I found on an old Sheaffer parts pen a nib that was actually flexible. After some trial and error I put together a pen from old parts to give this nib a new home. I called it “Frankenflex”. From the beginning I noticed there wasn’t enough flow and as the nib flexed the ink dried up. I put the project aside and almost forgot about it till I was looking for a pen to try the Diablo Menthe in and saw it laying there. Taking another crack at the pen and seeing if it really was as bad as I remember seemed like a good idea. As you can see from the second writing sample shown later in this post I did not imagine the flow problems. There are many areas where the line separates into two small tracks which are the two tines distanced from each other with no ink flow to fill the middle.

As for the Diablo Menthe ink I don’t quite like it. It’s very light and thin looking even when it shades darker which isn’t endearing. I’ll keep thinking of a good use for it, though, and maybe one the right color paper it will grow on me.

After filling the Frankenflex I decided to get back at trying to make it write correctly. Ink flow has a few different aspects to it including the amount of ink, the viscosity of the ink, and the way the surface tension is maintained. The mechanics behind those include the distance between feed and nib, the size of the ink/air channels, and the shape of the nib slit. There’s a lot more to it than those factors (some good information about this can be found here) but those I mentioned are ones a simple mind like mine can handle. Deciding that widening the channels on the feed was the way to go I went to work.

If you look at the first picture below you’ll see the parts of the pen that do the heavy lifting. On a Sheaffer of this era the feed (A) has a long half-round extension (B) which slides into a hole at the end (which you can see in the next picture). The ink travels up this feed extension into the middle of the feed proper where is gets to the underside of the nib through a slot cut into the topside. It’s a bit more complex than the usual feed you see in fountain pens of this era but still rather straightforward. My goal was to increase the width and depth of the feed channels and the width of the top feed slot. Hopefully by doing this I would increase the flow and supply the nib enough ink to keep it from drying out when flexed to make a thick line.

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I used an X-acto knife and some fine sandpaper to attack the job with. Heeding the saying “easy does it” as a guide I only modified a little each time and then put the pen back together to test how it wrote. The third picture in he set above will show you what the feed looked like after I widened it a bit. A series of writing samples seen below show my progress (and frustrations) as I worked along. Test 2 looked like I was making progress and I was happy. However, it still needed improvement so I went back to make more adjustments. The third sample you see looks worse than the second one for no reason I could figure out. Fickle is the fountain pen and its ink feed mechanism! Confused but not beaten I took it all apart again and did more adjusting and widening. Finally we come to the last test and its satisfactory result. There is a lot of improvement in general and it was a nice point to stop before doing more damage than good. Yes, I’m very good at doing damage if not careful.

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You may notice I used a different ink in each test and pose the question did that make a difference in flow? I do find that thin inks don’t seem to work as well in flexible pens as ones that are more syrupy. I’ve not done a controlled scientific-y test to see if this is correct and the fact that denser liquids have less capillary action would seem to contradict my observations so I just wind up confused as usual. The picture below shows the Frankenflex nib with the tines widely separated. Between them is a ribbon of ink that when it breaks stops in the ink from making a solid line. The goal of all this was to keep that ink flowing down the gap.

Padding This Post

There is one more thing I really need to mention before finishing this all up: For the samples I used the new Rhodia Dot Pad which I recently purchased. It’s quickly become my favorite pad style due to the both the pattern and the paper. Rhodia pads always have great fountain pen friendly paper in them and this pad is no exception. The smooth 80g acid-free, pH neutral paper has purple dots in a grid on it which is both useful and discrete. I’m really sold on it.

You’ll also see a lovely roller blotter in the picture below that was purchased for me (I paid him for it, don’t worry) by Rodney, a grand person from the great state of Hawaii. It’s made of the native Koa wood by David Mozdren who runs The WoodJoint (808-294-3283 is the number but no website and I know nothing more of his work). The wood is beautiful and often used in the construction of musical instruments like Ukuleles.

J. Herbin and pens — J. Herbin inks, Frankenflex on left, Conklin on right, and Koa wood blotter.

Musical Finish

So, we come to the end of this rambling post with something I thought I’d never mention: Ukuleles. Maybe in the future I’ll fit Zithers or Theremins in somewhere.

November 22, 2009

Pen, Paper, Ink, Pugless

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.

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).

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Ink

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.

October 29, 2009

Feed Me

Rear of flex Snorkel nib unit with longer tube poking out.

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.

Flex Fine Snorkel nib FF3 (L) and medium nib M3 (R).

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.

Flex Snorkel feed (L) and normal feed (R).

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.

Inside tube feed: Flex (L) and normal (R).

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.

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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.

May 26, 2009

Redipoint, Set, Go!

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.

may-22-2009-1-blog-p1030004 — 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.

April 2, 2009

Snorktastic Nibs

I have a weakness for Sheaffer Snorkels and I’ve already talked a bit about one in an earlier post. They were from that writing era between fountain pens with expressive nibs and the evil empire of the ball point pen. The precise lines of nail like fine and medium point pens were the hallmark of this period. Even if most people were happy with this dull situation Sheaffer still offered a wide variety of Snorkel nibs with flair. Those special order nibs, as well as some made in Canada, England, and Australia which catered to those markets less uniform tastes, offer a real treat for the collector today.

Determining if you have found an oddball nib is by the numbers. Well, actually numbers and letters since Snorkel nibs were marked on the front or back with a code. I’m not going to discuss Sheaffer’s elaborate numbering system for their Snorkel fountain pen nibs since places like PenHero.com have great articles on the subject. What I’m going to do here is show my interesting nibs so you can see a few examples and in later posts some will get a more thorough review.

In this picture: Australian bold flex, FF3 fine flex, FS2 stub flex, Australian bold triumph, SR4 right oblique triumph, s4 stub. (click for larger image) — In this picture: Australian bold flex, FF3 fine flex, FS2 stub flex, Australian bold triumph, SR4 right oblique triumph, s4 stub. (click on for larger image)

If you want to find one of these great nibs keeping your eyes open is the first rule. Not all of them have retained their grade markings since wiping, polishing, and just normal wear can remove them over time. If those codes are gone look for tell-tale signs such as the flat edge of a stub point or the lack of an impressed grove between the silver and gold on a two tone flex nib. In general they are the proverbial needle in the haystack so obtaining one comes down to luck or enough loot for a purchase from a vintage pen seller.

Here are a few larger images where the nib grade codes can be clearly seen:

This flexible fine nib captures some of the essence of the “wet noodles” from the early part of the 20th century.

Able to put down a line as bold as a thick Sharpie this flexible stub is quite amazing. This single-tone nib was the least expensive one Sheaffer sold in solid gold but was still offered in all the usual variations.

“Right Oblique Stub Point Palladium-Silver Triumph Nib” is a long moniker. The obliques are hard to use since the pen really needs to be held at the right angle.

February 20, 2009

A Flexible Sheaffer Snorkel: Future Past

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.

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.

Idolatry

Into the 21st Century

The Same, But Different

The Exciting Bit

The Unseen Hero

So, What About That Flex?

So, How Is It to Use?

Whadda I Think?

Think Ink

Fussing With Flex

Padding This Post

Musical Finish

Pen

Paper

Ink

Pugless

Into the 21^st Century