To grind a nib or not to grind a nib, part two
This week’s post is a continuation of my reflection on the benefits of both round tipped nibs and — this week — of ground nibs. You can find last week’s thoughts on round nibs here.
Nib grinders, in just the past few years, have experimented in earnest with new and exciting ways to alter the shape of a pen’s tipping. And so, alter the writing experience.
Nib grinds, as I see it, add drama to the writing experience, tailor your pen to serve a specific kind of writing, and turn a pen into more than one writer.
Flair and dramatics. One of the more popular justifications for grinding a fountain pen nib is to add fun and flair to your writing. Joy is a valid reason to grind a nib. Writing should be joyful.
Stub and italic nibs offer a lovely ribboning effect to your writing. Your writing will look vaguely calligraphic as horizontal lines are narrow while vertical lines are comparatively broad. An architect grind offers the inverse.
All sorts of fancy ribbons
Targeted unitaskers. Other grinds tailor the writing experience to suit specific jobs or kinds of writing. Having the right tool for the job makes any day smoother.
Needlepoint grinds, for example, shrink the surface area of a nib’s tipping. Exceptionally small writing is possible. And, I’m told, whisp-fine lines allow sketching to be granular and detailed.
Size ain’t everything
Large width stubs — like 1.5+ mm Pilot Parallels — are great for large writing or particularly artsy hand lettering. They are also great at highlighting text if you pair one with a subtle color like Sailor 123.
Oblique grinds, as another example of a unitasker grind, angle your nib’s end to suit grips that rotate a pen while writing. So your nib will meet the paper straight on even when your natural grip hold the pen at a unique angle. Comfortable and smooth, regardless.
Take that, physics
Multitaskers. My favorite reason to grind a nib is to convert one pen into more than one pen. Options for nib grinds that write one way normally and a second way if you hold your pen feed-side-up have multiplied in recent years.
Some architect grinds, for instance, sport EF or XXF writing tips on their reverse sides. Such nibs offer the ability to write large, ribbony letters and smaller precise letters without changing pens. Sailor’s Zoom nibs offer similar, if subtler, multitasking without a trip to a nibgrinder.
Zoom zoom
Recently, nuanced “reverse grind” options from many nib grinders allow you to add a round-ish writing tip to many stock M, B and B+ nibs. Accomplishing similar dual-function writing. Mark Bacas’ Predator Hybrid is a favorite of mine.
Across all of these benefits, most ground nibs require training and practice. Stub nibs, especially italics, can have sharp edges that catch or tear paper if you rotate your pen. Architect grinds are sharp, by design, and write best at studied angles to the page. Many grinds forsake a glass-smooth writing experience for a unique line or extending the utility of a pen.
Either way, I see the benefit to both ground and round nibs. I have a healthy balance of both in my collection.
This week’s Inked Tines update includes my most recent currently inked writing tools.
Toolset
Pens. The standout pen and ink combination this week is most definitely the TWSBI Vac700R. It was my pocket carry whenever I left the house. The cursive stub italic is my most forgiving italic nib. It writes well at odd angles in pocket notebook. Aurora Borealis sheened well in my Cosmo Air Light journal. Journaling, reading notes, pocket notes. 2/5 full.
Va-va voom
TWSBI ECO-T (EF) — 1/2. Daily driver. Well-behaved true EF line. Just wet enough to bring out Oyster Grey’s halos. Fun and problem-free task management. Reading notes, scratch notes, d&d notes.
Nakaya Neostandard (B) — 1/2. Subtle, beautiful pen. Subtle, beautiful purple-pink ink. An oft-reached-for accent combo for reading notes. Not one complaint. Accent reading notes, journaling, d&d notes.
Franklin-Christoph 03 (F SIG) — 1/2. Koiame’s orange stood out well against Oyster Grey in reading notes. A tad dry, which translated into feeling the SIG’s sharp edges. Slow, deliberate writing was the most enjoyable: journaling, reading notes.
Pelikan m805 (F Architect) — 3/5. Power journaling duo. Sharp architect creates strong line variation. Generous Pelikan feed led Akkerman to shade nicely. Surprisingly reliable reading notes. Journaling, accent reading notes, meeting notes.
Visconti Homo Sapiens (F) — ??. Didn’t reach for this combination often. Suspect having the Nakaya also inked with purple took away from the novelty of a black pen inked with purple ink. Did make multriple appearances on d&d night and while working in my commonplace notebook. Accent reading notes, d&d notes.
Notebooks. Work bujo. Hobonichi Plain A5 Notebook. No weekly. No task management. One new page of scratch notes for an unplanned meeting with a research a student.
I used the ECO. The round EF nib allowed me to scribble while maintaining eye contact more-or-less. I boxed the topic itself with the easily scanned orange Koiame.
I offer my research students a set amount of office hours each month over the summer. These are times they can pop into my Zoom room to ask questions as they narrow down on their research topics for the coming school year.
This student is interested (for the moment) in exploring discrepancies in broadband access across socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged communities. Rock on.
Upon reflection as I write this post, perhaps I could use an “August School Prep” spread for tasks that build up haphazardly throughout the summer? Thank you, blogging.
Journal. Unbranded A5 Cosmo Air Light. Seven new pages this week. Three new entries. One was a brief two-thirds-of-a-page accounting of my Thursday. The other two are analytic reflections.
I used three pen and ink combinations for journaling: the Franklin-Christoph, TWSBI Vac, and ECO. Two ground nibs and one round nib.
The Vac even had a beer
Sunday’s entry thought through the ongoing transfer of files from my backup drive to my new computer. I’ve transitioned into using an iPad Pro as my primary computer. I have a golden opportunity to tweak how I organize my files. Searchability is my priority.
Wednesday’s entry broke down some end-of-year lessons to I want to take into next year. The TWSBI Vac helped out.
Commonplace. Elemental Paper A5 Iodine. 14 new pages. Progress stands at page 61 of the notebook. Control over my days has translated into far more reading and research time. A majority of my analytic work takes place in a commonplace notebook.
I’m wrapping up commonplace notes for Stanley’s How Fascism Works. Processing notes on the final chapter. Stanley uses the final chapter to lay out the overall process of how fascist propaganda feeds into political actions that degrade the democratic foundations of a society.
Tell a false and degrading narrative about a minority group, create policy that makes evidence of the narrative, then use the narrative to justify repeating the false stereotype. Scary, and important.
I’m presently using Elemental Paper’s Iodine notebook. Elemental Paper has since closed its shop. However, this Tomoe River notebook is beautiful and lays flat. The dot grid is useful. The beautiful coloring and iodine-ish purple theme encourages me to revisit my common place notes.
Together, the aesthetics keep me coming back to my reading. And the notebook’s design ensures my notes prove usable.
Written dry. All six pens survived the week.
A combination of factors explains why all of my pens remain inked. I spread my writing out more-or-less evenly across all six pens this week.
I also have four piston fillers inked. That’s a lot more liquid on hand than is typical.
A plethora of ink?
Newly inked. I successfully resisted a mid-week urge to re-ink my newest Kaweco Sport. The black and burnt-orange color way I’ve cobbled together is magnetic. More on the Kaweco below.
The collection
Incoming / new orders. The shade of my still-new Fox colored Kaweco Sport plays all the right notes for me. I ordered a black clip to accompany the black EF nib I swapped into the pen.
A championship close-up
Together, the look is fetching — and stealthy. The orange really pops against the custom black trim.
A quick story about the black clip. This is my second black Kaweco clip — and my first.
I initially ordered a black clip from Yoseka when I ordered the Fox from The Pen Thing. My partner and I filled out the order with other items to pass the free shipping threshold.
Then, when Yoseka’s carefully packaged collection of stationery arrived, I overlooked the clip in the bottom corner of the bag — and I threw it out. Excitement over my first TWSBI ECO trumped carefully checking that I had all of my ordered items.
So, I ordered another clip. This time from Goulet Pens. I got a black clip, a rubberized pad for pulling nibs and feeds — and a lollipop. That’ll teach me.
Outgoing / trades or sales. Procrastinating on sending my Parker Vacumatic out for repair has paid off.
Last week, months since packing the Vacumatic, my vintage Esterbook J stopped writing. And started gently leaking.
I carefully removed the section. Once disassembled, I could see that the sac — which holds ink — had torn at its base. The pen will need a new sac installed and sealed with shellac before the J will write again.
R-rated pen gore
This particular Esterbrook was the first vintage pen I restored. I found the pen laying inside a dusty pen cup in a local antique shop. The owner sold me the pen for $10.
I did a decent job of cleaning out the dried and shattered remnants of the pen’s original sac and installing a new sac. My work on the j-bar — which squeezes the sac to empty and fill the pen — was amateur. But the process was fun.
Why not send this Esterbrook alongside my Parker to have the j-bar installed properly?
Currently reading and listening
Fiction. With more time in my hands this week, Sanderson rejoined the reading circle.
I enjoyed two more chapters of Sanderson’s Rhythm of War. Jasnah and Shallan continue on as favorite characters. My Ravenclaw heart is drawn toward their bookish personalities. Jasnah is assertively intellectual. Shallan is decidedly more introverted.
Nonfiction. Balkinization (a stellar law blog) ran a virtual symposium this week. A handful of legal scholars weighed in with their takes on Kurt Lash’s new collection of primary sources on political talk surrounding the 13, 14, and 15th amendments. These amendments reconstructed the constitutional arena after the US Civil War.
What I find interesting is how Lash’s book became the object of a debate around whether laws should be interpreted within our best guesses as to the authors’ intended meanings (originalism) or within our modern context. Cool, and important.
Reading through multiple scholars’ takes on the issue also helps me to make up my own mind.
And reading the symposium’s essays gave me my first experience reading and annotating with the new Apple Pencil. More on this experience in a future week.
Music. Youth Lagoon’s The Year of Hibernation continually came up on my Spotify custom mixes. By Thursday, I was listening to the album on repeat. Gorram effective advertising.
Imagine a sleepy, lethargic Vampire Weekend.
