Intro: Personally, when I’m taking notes during class or while at work I prefer a fine line so that way I can fit as much onto a page or write small if needed. I initially only owned a Lamy EF steel nib and I was curious about how the other main Extra Fine Nibs measured up. So, I purchased a Faber-Castell LOOM and a TWSBI 580 Diamond (with my own money) and I sought out to find which one performed closes to my preference.
Testing Criteria: I would test each nib with with two criteria, line thickness and nib smoothness. I chose only these two because I felt like these were the most important because typically the finer a nib gets the more likely it will be to have feedback. So if a nib was finer but smoother that would make it a clear winner.
Line thickness: I tested line thickness by drawing lines on a page with pre-set lines with thicknesses on it. The lines are both vertical and horizontal. I would draw some lines and compare to see which most closely resembled the line that I drew.
Result (winner is thinnest): 1st: TWSBI 580
2nd: Faber-Castell LOOM
3rd: Lamy Steel (Aion)
Smoothness: It was hard for me to quantify smoothness because I didn’t want someone to watch the video just have me verbally say “oh yeah that feels smoother” because feeling can be manipulated if you like a pen or if it is more comfortable. So I figured out if I put a weight at the end of a paper and write lines a smoother nib would be able to write further from the weight without moving the paper.
Result (winner is smoothest): 1st: Lamy Steel (Aion)
2nd: Faber-Castell LOOM
3rd: TWSBI 580
Conclusion: Each of the Extra fine nibs performed with their own unique characteristics. The Lamy is the “fattest writer” but is the smoothest, and the TWSBI 580 is the “finest” but has the most feedback, and the Faber-Castell LOOM is in-between. With this I would say the Faber-castell is the “winner” because it has a good balance between feedback and line thickness.
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