Just wanted to share a project that has kept my attention for some time. If you get into vintage fountain pens, you will quickly find that the old solid gold nibs were a unique breed compared to newer pen design. With the malleability of gold as a metal, flex nibs were far more common and writing styles often took advantage of the ability to get a lot of line width variation, immediately from a pen.
Steel Flex Dip Pen Nibs. Middle is the Brause: "Blue Pumpkin"
Flex nibs simply put are softer tines that will spread wide with pressure on the paper. depending on pressure, generally applied on the downstroke, you can get very wide lines. With little or no pressure, the same nib will create a spider silk thin line. A talented Calligrapher [not me!] can do wonderful things with these nibs. Dip pen nibs often retain these wide abilities. And there are a lot of vintage Dip Pen nibs out there. They are designed to be used at the end of a holder and repeatedly dipped to use. Something that takes a lot of patience and timing to not run out at a bad moment! Some dip pens, [I have found] can be adapted to be used in fountain pens. It's not a far leap. If he style of the nib is close to the dimensions of a fountain pens section and feed, you are pretty much there.
"Blue Pumpkin"
on Dip Pen w/overlayer blade
This was my project. There is a fairly famous Dip Pen Nib by Brause, called the Blue Pumpkin. Distinctly gun blued and a very Rococco design. It's very good at flex writing and quite fun to use as intended, a dip pen. The modern lazy in me quickly starts to think. What if you could feed ink to this pen? Even on a dip, I'd tried overlaid blades and even found a wooden holder that was able to hold a fountain pen feeder and the nib, so that I cold get a good long writing dip at a go ...
Since I could do this, the next logical step would be to find a pen that took a similar nib width? I found that my India sourced SERWEX 1362 Demo pen was almost made to order. The Dip Pen nib is close to a #5, so there are actually a good many pens that could take this modification, Jinhao and Baoer make a lot of #5 nibbed models.
The benefits of the Serwex was several though. Despite being quite affordable, they are clutchless pump pens. This means they have an internal pump system in them, ironically similar to a mighty MontBlanc. The back end of the pen allows you to rotate it and thus you can pump it with ink as well as prime the nib as you go. This is very handy for an ink guzzling flex nib. The model I used is a Demo pen and clear, so modding it gives you a clear view of what is going on, not necessary, but handy. Lastly, the Serwex has an ebonite feed. As well you can get other ebonite feeds that will fit it and they are made for flex nibs that will fit the pen normally. So, you may ask, why the Blue Pumkin modification? Well, modern steel flex pens are only just flexy. And very stiff in their handling. The Dip Pen nibs are steel as well. But shaped, and thin and cut to flex further than ink will go. You can't get the same results with a thicker fountain pen nib, unless you go back to those vintage gold beauties ...
The ebonite feeder I chose, fit the Blue Pumkin almost as if it were made for it. Now the Blue has a highly domed blade. No feed can be expected to lay flat under it. There is a large air gap. But if you position the feed it will touch at the tip of the nib and this will allow enough flow of ink to give you a long writing session without break. The nib sucks ink like mad and you do have to prime the pen as you go because the tank empties quicker than what is normal.
I had to fashion a small copper shim to go under the feeder, just to make the section and nib/feed snug. Originally I used pop can aluminium which is one of the best project materials available, but the one copper layer, thicker, was a lot cleaner and more durable when you want to pull the pen apart for cleaning &tc.
Despite the rather long nib, it still will fit under the capped tight pen. The result a portable super flex fountain pen.
