Thursday Morning Fun

[Cob]

I missed the postie yesterday, so went this morniing to the delivery office and picked up three pens all Mabie Todds.

One of the pens is an un-numbered SM200/60; it has a wonderful broad flexible nib - just like the one that arrived on another SM200/60 I bought about eight months ago. It was cheap (cap lip cracks) but described as being in working order, which indeed it is - after a fashion.

Opening it up gave me a good laugh:

Tinysac.jpg

I shall repair the cracked cap, and think very carefully about investing in a new sac - one must be careful you know!

Cob

[Chrissy]

Maybe that's called the 'belt and braces' version of installing a new sac??

[Dreck]

I'll bet that makes a good tight seal -- if you can get the section into the barrel.

[ainterne]

lol....Hey Paul, how would you describe that? On careful owner and 15 not so careful :-)..... Lets face it, if you tried to describe that sac, it would be a bit of a stretch.....lol...

Seriously though, you seem to do well picking up those broad flex nibs, I never seem to find them... Some of the writing examples you showed on previous pens, then look really nice to use based on your examples. I meant to ask you, do you think that different regions have more dependencies to specific nib types? e.g Do the French for example generally favor a type of nib over another, against perhaps
users from the North of England for example? Or is there no correlation between the area's? I wondered if any one has seen that because of writing styles taught in different area's years ago.... It seems to me that the Mabie Todds have more flexible broad nibs than other pens, is that true?

[Cob]

Yes indeed and about enough ink to drown an incautious gnat.

I spend far too much time in front of this computer and i spend too much money buying tatty pens gambling on the nib, which really to me is the pen (as indeed it once was in historical terms). I have far too few data to be able to answer your questions. I can say that I have a bag of nibs here removed from scrappy pens amongst them maybe eight Swan 2s; they are all medium or medium fine and I suppose semi flexible. I have a few No 3s all but one is fine and all again are semi-flexible at best. I have also three blackbird nibs (semi-flex again) and a couple of Swan 1s which more uncharacteristically are again semi-flex.

As I say, it's gambling on my part; these nibs I have listed are all perfectly good nibs - but as we all know, flex sells.

As for Mabie Todd in general, I should hazard a guess based on limited knowledge, that broad flex is perhaps more commonly found amongst Canadian Waterman's Ideal nibs. I have a bag with I think five Ideal nibs, English, French, US and Canadian. Only one is flexible and it is fine and came from a US-made No 42 Safety Pen. And then again I have had four Mentmore pens: three nails and one absolute super-flex beauty! A lottery.

So there you are: the short answer is I don't know!

Rgds

Cob