Platinum 3776 Fine Nib close up photo

[Zed101]

hi folks,
Just got myself a Platinum 4776 with a Fine Nib. It’s a bit scratchy for me. I took magnified photos of the nib. Is this normal? Looks like there’s no iridium tip at all.https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190823/e99542c47cf67401f10f5d7cbe5c2926.jpg



https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190823/8a81fdfc6ed31f9cef4122be8b0005c9.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190823/398b117f4f328b3f888f84da52ec1fcf.jpg

[awa54]

It's very hard to tell from your photos, but the amount of hard tipping material on a fine or extra-fine nib can be very small and still quite functional. I'd be more interested in the tipping visible from the underside of the nib (where it actually contacts paper) than how much shows on the top.

As far as it being scratchy, often even a tiny mis-alignment of the tines can make a fine nib a bit scuffy, the finer the nib, the smaller the margin for smooth writing... often even perfectly aligned nibs in the XF or "needlepoint" range are rough on all but the best fountain pen friendly papers.

On a related tangent, un-tipped gold nibs can be very smooth writers, they just wear quickly and change geometry as they wear.

[Zed101]

It's very hard to tell from your photos, but the amount of hard tipping material on a fine or extra-fine nib can be very small and still quite functional. I'd be more interested in the tipping visible from the underside of the nib (where it actually contacts paper) than how much shows on the top.

As far as it being scratchy, often even a tiny mis-alignment of the tines can make a fine nib a bit scuffy, the finer the nib, the smaller the margin for smooth writing... often even perfectly aligned nibs in the XF or "needlepoint" range are rough on all but the best fountain pen friendly papers.

On a related tangent, un-tipped gold nibs can be very smooth writers, they just wear quickly and change geometry as they wear.

thank you for your informative response. I do have some photos of the nib from below.https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190824/6ba68268b47402fa00cc73357cd74622.jpg



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[awa54]

Hmmmm.... That's a *very* small amount of "iridium" (usually an alloy containing several metals such as osmium, ruthenium and even iridium ;) ), I'd wager that somone tried to tune or re-profile this nib and overdid it with either too much grinding or using too coarse of an abrasive.

Nibs can be re-tipped, but since it's a current production pen a replacement nib is likely to be more economical. If it's not a terrible writer, that tipping might last many years of normal use, but there isn't really enough left to do anything to correct its wtiting characteristics, except a bit of smoothing with *extremely* fine abrasives.

[KrazyIvan]

Your first picture makes it look like a misaligned tine. The scratchiness would be on the horizontal stroke going from right to left. looking at the nib from the bottom though, it is not as apparent.