PEN NIBS – A SOLUTION AT LAST
Dip pen nibs
I am very happy with my new calligraphy fountain pen, but despite it being “super flex,” it doesn’t have as much spread as I would like, and it’s also quite hard to get really thin lines with it. The other disadvantage is that I cannot use it to write with gold ink, which would clog a fountain pen. Obtaining a decent dip pen nib was therefore essential.
Following on from my recent completed calligraphy project, I have been doing some research into dip pen nibs, because I was absolutely clueless about what to get. As a complete novice, I bought a job lot from Amazon some time ago and most of them were rubbish. A few of them came complete with reservoirs, and I have been using one of these with some success. The reservoir is a separate metal piece which clips on underneath the nib, to hold more ink with each dip in the ink bottle. This means you can do a lot more writing before having to re-dip. These nibs are OK but they aren’t very flexible so they don’t have a lot of spread, making it difficult to get nice thicks and thins in the calligraphy.
There are very few nibs which come complete with reservoirs and mostly these are flat nibs for a different type of calligraphy from copperplate. I simply couldn’t find any separate reservoirs to attach to my existing nibs, apart from one or two which would only fit specific nibs, most of which were not suitable for my purpose.
I then read that pointed nibs for copperplate and similar calligraphy styles did not have reservoirs because they didn’t use so much ink as flat nibs. I thought that was the end of the road for this line of research and was prepared to give up, and go for a flexible nib designed for copperplate which had a nice spread for thicks and thins, and put up with having to dip frequently.
I searched for the best nibs for this, and came across several sites which listed half a dozen nibs suitable for beginners. The two beginner-style nibs which came up consistently, and which would produce a nice spread, were the Nikko G and the Leonardt Steno 40 calligraphy nib, aka “the Blue Pumpkin,” coloured blue.
I found both of these on Tom’s Studio. He has a lot of different calligrapy stuff and I put a couple each of the above pens in my basket, and then discovered something I’d never seen in my researches – the “One Dip Wonder,” which I think is Tom’s own invention – this tiny device serves as a reservoir that will fit any nib!
My nibs arrived today and here are some photos.
The One Dip Wonder consists of a very small magnet surrounded by a spring. The device simply clicks into place behind the hole in the surface of the nib. I tried it with the Blue Pumpkin nib today and was very pleasantly surprised – I got quite a bit of mileage between dips!
The Blue Pumpkin is the only one of the nibs I’ve tried so far. It has a wonderful spread and is very smooth to use. I am so happy that I have at last found some good advice on nibs and was able to get something suitable.
A trial run
This is part of a page from Day 3 of my current short course on calligraphy flourishes, to show that the Blue Pumkin nib produces nice shades on the letters.
So far so good! I’m hoping the Nikko G will behave as well.
A near disaster
I was extremely careful washing the nib and the One Dip Wonder when I’d finished using them. It would be all too easy to wash the latter down the drain! I took them back to the desk and noticed that the spring from the reservoir was missing and I just had the tiny magnet. Fortunately I found the little spring on the floor so all was well. When in place on the nib, the two parts stay together fine, but I think I’m going to add a tiny blob of glue to keep them together. I did buy three of these little reservoirs but don’t want to lose any at such an early stage of the game!
