eBay vintage nib review
Recently I was browsing on eBay and saw a pen that was advertised as vintage flexible parts pen. The pen has no cap and the barrel is faded, however the nib seems to be in good shape. Eventually I paid $30 for it, thinking if it's not flexible at least I got a pretty good 14k gold nib to play with.
When I got the pen, the nib and feed were pretty stuck and covered with dried up ink. It took me a while to get it loose. Eventually the nib came off and I cleaned it with some solvents.
Now I face another challenge. I need to find a new home for the nib. Normally I go with noodler's nib creeper, but it doesn't really fit well with the vintage No2. Nibs. Then it occurred to me that I have some reforms 1745. Maybe I'll give it a try. Lo and behold, it fits perfectly. However, the feed of the reform didn't quite match up to the vintage feed so more work needs to be done.
Luckily the feed of Reform 1745 is made out of ebonite. So I deepened the air channel as well as the ink channel. Also shape the tip of the feed so it would not protrude out. I also heat set the feed so there is no gap between the feed and the nib.
Here are some picture comparing the normal and modified feed.
The nib unit on the right is the modified and on the left is the original.
The difference in the ink/air channel.
So after all the hard work, I can finally put the pen together and test the pen.
Here is a shot of everything put together.
Now the moment that everybody has been waiting for. The writing sample.
Much to my surprise, the nib is very flexible indeed.Normally you would expect eBay seller to be a little bit exaggerated. I guess the seller was right about the nib being flexible. It flex pretty easily, I would say easier then my waterman's 52 1/2v. Since its really hard to describe in word how flexible a pen is. I'll just let the picture do the talking.
Cheers,
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