Tag: Nib Grind

The Tinkering of a Fountain Pen to Meet My Exacting Standards

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Sometimes you can’t find or afford a device that fully meets your needs. With a little bit of tinkering, however, you may be able to modify an existing device to meet your specifications. Last week I wrote about making modifications to an off the shelf keyboard with off the shelf parts. This type of tinkering works well for a lot of different projects where all you have to do to make modifications is swap between a variety of different parts with different attributes. In other cases, tinkering requires more extensive and sometimes irreversible modifications. Such was the case with one of the fountain pens I tinkered with. 

The pen in question is called the Opus 88 Koloro, and while I liked its high ink capacity, standard-sized nib that could be easily swapped, and feel in my hand, I found the nib a bit boring, the grip section very slippery, especially during long note taking sessions, and the cap, which required more than two full revolutions to remove, impractical. 

 

An interesting nib

Nib with Architect Grind

Nib with Architect Grind

In a blog post last semester, I wrote about the different types of nib “grinds” as features of tinkerability for fountain pens. One of my favorite grinds is called an architect nib, which has very thin down strokes and very thick cross strokes. While I have begun to grind my own nibs, this one was done by a nibmeister, Kirk Speer. The grind makes the exact same nib much more interesting and fun to write with.

A grippy grip

Sand-papered Grip Section

Sand-papered Grip Section

The stock grip section, which is shiny, textureless plastic, was slippery to hold. To fix this, I used some sandpaper to scratch up the grip section and make it tackier in the hand. I made horizontal circles, perpendicular to the length of the pen, so the rough ridges would create better grip. Though the aesthetic cohesiveness with the rest of the shiny plastic on the pen was all but gone, its usefulness, which is my priority, was improved.

A one twist cap

Ground-down threads

Ground-down threads

The last change I made was to reduce the number of rotations it took to unscrew the cap. To do this, I physically removed about half of the length of threads on the pen barrel. I used a dremel tool to remove the threads, then I smoothed the transition between the threads and grip with the same grit sandpaper I used for the grip. 

 

Concluding thoughts–technique

Some of these modifications do not require a high level of precision; it is hard to over-sand the grip section. But others are very delicate. The two main “subtractive” processes–grinding down a nib and reducing the threads–are permanent. If you go too far and remove too much, there is not much you can do about it. This is a lesson I learned through my own mistakes; it’s very easy to take a look at something, think you know what you need to do, and just keep working at it. By the time you check it again, you’ve irreparably changed it. So it is important to work very slowly and check often. You can see and track the changes on a smaller scale, and adjust before the changes are permanent. 

Many tinkering projects require making permanent changes like I made to this pen. The stakes are higher when the tinkering is irreversible, but when you get it right, the results are rewarding. In addition to the satisfaction of a device that works exactly the way you want it to, you will have the joy of tinkering it yourself.

 

Fountain Pen Companies That Get Tinkering Right

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I discussed last week how fountain pens are great writing implements to tinker with. Much of that is by their nature– from ink to nibs to body styles, fountain pens simply have more options out of the gate than ballpoint pens do. Some of the possibilities, however, come from fountain pen makers’ willingness to offer repairability, customizability, and tinkerability. In this post, I will highlight three companies that get tinkering right. 

 

TWSBI

TWSBI makes fountain pens with somewhat complicated filling systems. Their least expensive model, the TWSBI Eco is a “piston filler,” which is a pen with a piston mounted into the body. Piston fillers fill their entire barrels with ink as the piston moves down and up with a knob at the back of the pen. TWSBI produces several other models of piston-filling pens, and a vacuum filling pen, which fills with ink as a plunger purges the barrel of the pen of air when depressed, and the vacuum sucks ink into the barrel.

Complicated filling systems such as those TWSBI includes on its pens were typically reserved for high end, luxury pens before TWSBI introduced them in relatively cheap pens. The unfortunate truth is with a complicated filling system can come less reliability and increased need for maintenance. In particular, the piston on a piston filler or plunger of a vacuum filler can get stuck, needing a lubricant to run smoothly again. 

With every piston and vacuum filling penTWSBI includes the tool you need to disassemble it completely and the silicone grease used as a lubricant. Even better, if you break any part of the pen (with the exception of the nib), TWSBI will replace it, and the user only has to pay the cost of shipping. Repair and replacement are not only possible (which itself is rare for fountain pen companies), but also affordable. 

 

SchonDSGN

Ian Schon is a machinist who designed a fountain pen called the Pocket 6, which fits a large #6 sized nib into a small pen body. Aside from being a novel pen for its small size, it takes a standard nib unit, which means nibs are easily swapped between different grip sections. 

Where SchonDSGN excels from a tinkering front is the continuous development and improvement of the design, which is made available to modify or upgrade existing pens. I originally bought the pen with a Bock nib, a brand which is generally considered to be less reliable and a worse writing experience than the other major nib manufacturer, Jowo. Unfortunately, Jowo and Bock nib units are not interchangeable. Later, SchonDSGN released a new pen grip with threads for better Jowo nib, and made this part available to modify existing pens. After the initial release of the Jowo-compatible grip, a grip section with a completely different shape and material was released. It was also compatible with every model of Pocket 6, and it is the grip section that I used on my own pen.


Unlike most pens, where most possibilities for change and customizations stop after the pen is purchased, Schon DSGN pens keep evolving, and even an old pen can be modified to be something new. 

 

Nibmeisters

In my first blog post, I hinted at nib grinding, which is the act of taking a round nib and, well, grinding parts of the metal away to give the nib a specific shape, which affects the look (and feel) of the writing. Though I personally grind my own nibs, many fountain pen users who are less inclined to do their own tinkering can still use and experience custom nib grinds. Nibmeisters customize, tune, and repair (tinker with!) the nibs of pens people send to them, unlocking a new frontier of writing style and experience formerly inaccessible to people not comfortable with tinkering for themselves.