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