Anybody unsmoothed a nib?

[FredRydr]

Oh, never mind. It's all just speculation.

[Deb]

Agree with Fred above! I don't give a tuppenny damn what people did or didn't do with their pen in the 40s or earlier. I just find it ridiculous that people assert that they know what was generally done. Personally, I unsmooth nibs that are too slippery. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that people did things to make their pens to work as they wanted in the past but I have no idea whether they did or not. I remember what my parents and even grandparents did but that has no bearing whatsoever on what was generally done.

[dneal]

While I generally agree with Fred and Deb in that it doesn’t really make any difference to me, it is a curious question.

I found that Germany is a very fountain pen oriented culture. Schoolchildren still learn to write with them. They’re not uncommon and everyone knows how to use them. They’re common in even department stores and if you ask to see one you are automatically offered the opportunity to dip test. They appreciate nice pens (one man at the driver’s license office noticed my Nakaya piccolo, asked to see it, and was complimentary). They’re commonly given as New Years gifts. That aspect of society (fountain pens being ubiquitous) is probably as close as we’re going to find to 40’s society and use of writing implements.

So go to google.de and search for “füllhalter reparatur” (fountain pen repair). Compare just the volume of results to the English phrase on google.com. What do we extrapolate from that? I suppose that there could be a bunch of Germans that keep breaking their pens and need them repaired. It could also be that how a pen writes (which includes smooth vs scratchy) is of some minor importance.

[Deb]

My husband is 70 and remembers that in the 50s any of the newsagents in Thurso, where he grew up, would take in pens for repair. Usually that was for a new sac but I expect those technicians offered the same range of services that our repair men and women do today, often backed by a manufacturer in those days. For instance, if your Conway Stewart needed work done you took it to Russel & Leslie. He doesn't know if any of the others specialised.

Is today's generation of pen-users specially sensitive to their pens' writing characteristics? Would our predecessors, who depended much more on the one and only pen most of them would have, endure a pen which could be made to suit them better very easily, with all those technicians to hand? Does it seem too strange that some writers - then as now - found a very smooth nib slippery and unpleasant and a candidate for minor adjustment?