A Fountain Pen Nib Roundup

[mcwetboy]

When iridium-tipped nibs aren’t made of iridium: Joshua Danley looks at the history of using iridium in fountain pen nib tipping, and discovers that modern fountain pens advertised as being iridium-tipped actually aren’t. “In an effort to seek clarity on this issue, I reached out to Pelikan directly, contacting Jens Meyer, Pelikan’s Global Marketing Manager for their fine writing instruments. After consulting with the relevant parties, Jens was gracious enough to confirm that Pelikan’s nibs are in fact tipped with an alloy of tungsten and ruthenium, something of an industry standard these days.” Ruthenium is similar to iridium but a lot cheaper; it seems that “iridium” is now a term of art that doesn’t have much to do with the periodic table.

Pilot makes 16 different sizes and types of nibs for its Custom line of fountain pens, but until recently only a few of the more specialized nibs were available in the North American market.¹ But now the Custom Heritage 912 is now available in North America with its full set of 15 nibs,² and Pilot’s been sending out review units of said full set: see Brad Dowdy’s review on The Pen Addict and Mike Matteson’s reviews on YouTube. (For my part, I’ll have more to say about the Waverly nib, which I have in both a Custom 742 and a Custom Heritage 912, at some point in the future; suffice to say that I adore that nib.)

Speaking of the CH 912, Yoseka Stationery compares Pilot’s extremely fine Posting nib to the Platinum 3776 Century’s ultra-extra-fine nib, plus the extra-fine nib found on the order-of-magnitude cheaper Pilot Kaküno. All of which enable extremely tiny writing.

Mirrored from Jonathan Crowe.