Three stub nib questions

This was posted to Fountain Pen Network also, so no grief for the duplication please.

I'm new to stub nibs but was curious so I acquired a Pilot Plumix Hand Lettering Calligraphy Set (their name, not mine.) I have actually enjoyed writing with the pens and have been surprised by both how easily I can produce strokes of varying width and how much I enjoy doing so. The pen are gaudy $10 plastic bodied pens, but I'm impressed how well the nibs function. The nibs may not be butter smooth, but they are good enough for me. Based on what I can gather from various sources of information, these are really stub, not italic nibs.

The box the set came in describes the nib as Fine (0.44 mm), Medium (0.58 mm), and Broad (0.70 mm.) It's not clear to me what these numbers mean. I'm used to seeing stub nibs described as anything from 0.8 to 1.8 mm and I'm not sure exactly what that means either. I do know that bigger is wider, but that's about it. I found a posting on the Goulet website that equated the Plumix Medium nib to the 1.0 mm stub that can be selected for the Pilot Metropolitan.

What exactly do these various numbers mean? And if, as I suspect, two different size scales are being used here, what, if any relationship exists between them?

How difficult is it to take a standard nib, such as a medium or broad, and turn it into a stub nib? Obviously, the wider the standard nib, the more latitude you have in the width of the finished stub. How much latitude? Does it take a source nib like a triple broad to produce, say, a 1.5 mm stub? Is the conversion process essentially flattening and broadening the tip, shaping the tipping material to be flatter, and then smoothing the whole thing into its finished form?

Obviously this is fine, precision work at a very small scale. If I EVER attempted it, it would be on a cheap, potentially throwaway pen. I'm assuming this really needs to be done by a professional nibmeister.

Having said that, are there any nibmeisters in the Dallas - Fort Worth area that you'd recommend who can convert a standard nib into a stub nib?

thanks,
richard hargrove
--
“They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.”
- Esmerelda Weatherwax

Terry Pratchett. Equal Rites

http://www.richardspens.com/ref/nibs/beyond.htm - then scroll down to "The Stub Nib"

It's not that difficult to make a B nib into a stub nib. Read everything experts like Richard Binder say about how to do it, watch as many YouTube videos on grinding nibs as you can, and try to do it on very cheap steel nibs first.

There is a thread on here that dneal posted about it, but very sadly it has now lost it's pictures. So you wanna grind yer own nibs

The basic idea is that you need to turn a ball of tipping into an almost flat piece of tipping with a slightly angled edge on the end that you write on. Plus slightly rounded corners so it isn't as sharp as an italic nib.

The Plumix nib has no tipping, but they're fun and reliable. I only have one genuine stub (going by Richard's definition): a factory italic in a Pelikan 120, and it's WONDERFUL.

One of these days I want to try grinding an architect point.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sailor Kenshin

The Plumix nib has no tipping, but they're fun and reliable. I only have one genuine stub (going by Richard's definition): a factory italic in a Pelikan 120, and it's WONDERFUL.

One of these days I want to try grinding an architect point.

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An architect point is more difficult simply because many nibs don't have much depth of tipping from the nib tip along the nib length. You need to imagine an italic nib held vertical then turned around by 90 degrees and stuck onto the end of your nib. Instead of writing on say an EF nib with ball of tipping, that tipping needs to be an extended line of tipping. That way you will get narrow vertical strokes (from the EF tip width) and wide horizontal strokes (from the length of the line of tipping)