How to Increase Enjoyment of a Pen You've Had For Awhile 

Thank-you for this, Stephen. I have over 300 fountain pens and while most have been satisfactory to fantastic from acquisition onwards, some have needed ‘attention’. This has always centred around nibs; either patient tuning or replacement. It is rare to find that nib ‘surgery’ hasn’t made a noticeable, sometimes drastic improvement! 👍🖊️👍

I’ve had a Kaweco Sport laying around for sometime now and after watching one of your older videos on the Kaweco calligraphy set, I bought a 2.3 nib. I now find myself into medieval calligraphy and really enjoying it. For $14.00 I’m having the time of my life. Thanks for the inspiration.

I bought some dirt cheap pens and nibs to mess with nib modification at one point and I had lots of fun with that but I think the biggest positive improvement I made was placing the medium sharp italic nib from my pilot plumix (a $10 refillable but virtually disposable and not particularly well built pen), into my pilot metropolitan which had an ok fine nib, but the italic gave my writing with the pen significantly more character while using the better looking and feeling metropolitain.

I've definitely been in this position. Amazing pen - lacklustre nib. One of my Leonardo's was like this. Most amazing material, comfortable, and a nib that just didn't.... work for me. I tried everything. Increased flow, smoothed, even tried to shape it very slightly, but nothing would work. I just didn't click with it. So, I threw a PenBBS calligraphy in it. Sacrilege for some, but it has transformed the pen into one that is as enjoyable as it should be. 'Consider the nib' - 100%.

Cool Video, I really like that take. I have tinkered my hole life, especially with Pelikan nibs. I love that they are easy to unscrew and reinsert in other Pelikan. And no matter what, up to now it always work switching nibs from vintage 140 or M100 up to M600. Vice versa. Never hat a problem. And so it is eays to put one of your favorite nib in other pen. Oh and self grinding and tuning nibs is not so hard as it seems as long as you have a little knack for fine work. It is amazing to give your own nibs a personal touch.

Leonardo is a great brand for this. One pen so many nib options. It almost makes me want to part ways with my 146. The ability to go from EF to stub to M in a couple minutes by screwing in different nib units is an amazing feature

Great tip here, I too have experimented with removing a nib from a pen and putting in another unit which has made the pen so much more enjoyable to use. As you say it elevates the pen

Great advice (no surprise). I've gone the nib meister route a few times -- Mike Ma suyama did his magic on my Pelkian M800 turning it into a delightful cursive italic and Gena Salorino put her "perspective" on my Namiki Impression; that latter sat in storage for eons as it just wrote too broad for my hand and now it's in use quite often! I've also done light smoothing of some of my own nibs (mostly taking sharp corners off of some italic nibs). Heck, sometimes a different ink brings a former storage queen pen to life!

Most recently I bought a number of Franklin Christoph's S.I.G nibs (not affiliated). One of them, the EF version, is now in my Opus 88 Twilight Sonata LE - quite the fantastic combination in my mind. Before that I bought cheap (legit) Sailor Progears on eBay for their nibs and put those in nice Italian piston fillers using JoWo adaptors.

I wholeheartedly agree with switching the nib in one way or another. I currently have a fine VP that I ground to an ef cursive italic, a Gravitas pocket with an ef Franklin Christoph nib, and an Asvine V200 with an FPR ultra flex and ebonite feed. Transformed all those pens from pens I like and occasionally reach for, to pens I can't stop thinking about. The majority of my future pen purchases now revolve around the option to swap or grind the nibs to something that I would enjoy more if it isn't quite scratching the right itch when I put it to paper.

Thank you for bringing up this topic. I decided to hold off buying any pens for a while and use what I have, perhaps to "thin out the herd", if you know what I mean. I decided to buy new ink to use. Perhaps I will find that a new ink will increase my interest in using my pens that have been sitting for a while. Some of these inks cost more than the pen I am using! I will also determine whether the pen suits my hand for better or worse. What once was enjoyable may not be so, now. Or, the ink and pen combination may make the pen too wet or dry. Funny about that, inks. Some work better in some pens and not in others. In doing so, I have found, so far that my preference for nibs has changed. I was a diehard fan of narrower nibs. Now, broader nibs are appealing. Maybe the pen is great but the nib is not to my taste, anymore. I am also finding the ink capacity of a pen has become of more interest to me. Standard converters hold too little ink. My experiment includes to see which pens can be used as eyedropper filled. One that was surprising is the Sailor King of Pen. It is a fabulous eyedropper. Good topic, Stephen

Great video! Very helpful :) We've all had those pens that just stay in storage and we need a little push to enjoy them (again)

About nibs, I’ve just found that the Jinhao Nr8 nibs (the one you find on the X159 or 9019 and on sell on Amazon) are perfectly interchangeable with the Bock Nr8. So if you have a quite expensive pen (which is quite the case if she has a Nr8 gold Bock nib) and you want to play with different size you can do. I’ve just changed the nib on my Delta DV Original Oversize with an EF Jinhao nib (I bought it with the M Bock nib). PS you have to change the nib only, keeping the feeder and the mounting.

Bought a pineider twin tank touchdown and absolutely hated the steel nib on it with a passion. Stiff as a nail and super dry. Ended up being able to put a JoWo Conklin on it and I use it more now. Only the conklin versions would thread in the section though. I'm probably going to try a stub and see if that makes me like it even more. Great video and glad you are giving people good ideas if they aren't satisfied.

Another great video Stephen

Good idea. Ink and paper can also make a big difference.

Great tips! Thank you!

I have the Edison Beaumont Unicorn pen. Since my wife likes unicorns I purchased the Carolina Pen Companies Unicorn Autopsy stub nib to go with it and threw that on there and it is my carry around pen now.

Try 'creating ' Frank pens and see your creativity blossom. Think of the possibilities they throw up.

Awesome presentation. After a cursory Googling, I couldn't connect the dots between Nahvalur and Kyuseido to divine what other nibs might be compatible in my Kyuseidos. Can you make some additional suggestions?

What size stub is the Danitrio? I have a Waterman Charleston EF that I'm thinking about having ground into a stub. But it's a small nib and I think it would end up being somewhere between a .7 and .8? I fear anything wider would shorten the nib too much.

I do own probably 200 pens, always trying to find the “one”, you must “kiss” many pens before found it your “prince”😂

What is the Name of the first pen you Shows …. The Demonstrator with titanium? Could not understand the name …. Thanks a lot