azkid (January 14th, 2020), Deb (January 14th, 2020), Jon Szanto (January 14th, 2020)
After thinking about this posted opinion more, it occurred to me that when we write with a vintage nib, as I do with the several Esterbrook restorations, I would not definitively say with any smidgeon of evidence that I am not experiencing the writing habits of the previous owner, if any previous owner beyond obvious damage.
Last edited by Chrissy; January 14th, 2020 at 11:18 PM.
Regards, Chrissy | My Review Blog: inkyfountainpens
Agreed. It's possible but not common. Some years ago I had a Waterman 12 which was extremely worn, both on the barrel which had lost all its chasing where the owner had held it and on the nib which was worn flat at the angle the owner had used it. This was a pen which had evidently been used daily for work for decades and was absolutely worn out. That's the only pen, out of thousands, that I have seen in that condition. With that pen you would have inherited the original owner's very heavy-handed writing habit. I have seen others that have been slightly flattened, again evidently by years of use. Those nibs are readily returned to their original condition by a few minutes use of an abrasive. What you usually see in pens 80 to 100 years old is that the tipping material retains the original shape and is hardly worn at all. There would be no sense in going to the trouble and expense of adding tipping material to a nib if it wore easily or quickly.
I tend to think that the pen instructs the hand as has been mentioned but there is one pen that seems to defy that assumption and it's the EF nibs on the Platinum President. A group of four of us bought them at the same time and we all - oddly - had the same experience. The pen in my case was thoroughly flushed before use. The nib started out dry and extremely firm. I write with as little pressure as possible and like the nib to do the work, in part due to my intense dislike of feedback (wrong pen and nib you might say!). As a result I got quite a bit of skipping. Used it for a week and changed inks and still had the same issues as did the other three. The seller was happy to send a replacement nib and feed but asked me to persist for a while and see how it progressed. I used it almost solely for a month with many inks and by the end of that period the nib developed a small bit of softness. Now I mean seriously small, but notably not as firm as when I got it, but I would really only have noticed this through pressing slightly on the nib as I didn't (and still don't) note this through normal writing. The other thing was the flow of the ink improved very dramatically by the end of that month. It's now a daily desk pen, used for quick notes and such. It's not a gusher, but it's not as dry as it was to begin with and not as firm. The experience of the others was the same. I just thought it was a little odd and it did feel like the nib had a kind of breaking in period. I guess it could have been very stubborn manufacturing oils still in there, but it felt a little more than that to me.
I used one of the first Parker 45's, a medium, and used it for six years. I thought it wrote wetter and better every year. I had chipped off the imitation hood being an in-a-hurry teenager, and thought I had pushed the tines slightly apart.
Most likely, I adjusted my hand to the 45, which was so much more comfortable than the fine-point Sheaffer school pen I had used before.
Incidentally, I gave my P-45 to a girl I had a crush on (we had gone out a lot, but...). Bought another Parker 45 to start college, and pressed down on the nib to widen the tines. It did not write like my older pen. A guess: all I'd done is mess up the nib.
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