
Originally Posted by
Skwerlmasta
I contacted the seller and he clarified that the nib barely flexed and there was no line variation. I'm probably going to go to Peyton Street Pens to get an actual flex nib. The lady in my life is going to work through the American Cursive book and I thought the flex pen might give her writing a little flair. They have some Eversharp pens that have some line variation. A little more expensive but I've dealt with them once before and they seem to have a good reputation.
Valentine's gift, can't go cheap and miss the mark. Ahhh, nothing says love like a fountain pen.
A decade or more back, I accumulated several Eversharp pens because they have nice nibs and are easy to re-sac. The nibs range from slightly soft to soft, but I never happened across what I would call a flexible nib.
That's a problem in definition. "Flexible nibs" were sold as such, and in very small numbers, into the 1940s. The US market, which seems to have been the largest market in the world, wanted harder nibs to write Palmer Method -- the style taught in American schools. Palmer aims at clear writing, quickly laid down and easy to read. It does not aim at penmanship artistry; it was meant for business writing. Some German pen companies sold flexible nibs into the 1950s, now nicknamed "wet noodles". From the 1950s onward, at least in the US, we knew a "flexible" nib as something used in art classes, often in calligraphy, by dip pens. When, about fifteen years ago, interest revived in flexible nibs, we had no continuing contact with flexible nibbed fountain pens, and only a certainty that some famous pens from the 1930s had been flexible, such as some Waterman 52s.
Mostly, we are re-creating what we think a flexible nib would have been long ago.
That's why I said that the Eversharp pens I found had "soft" nibs. They are comfortable, with just the right amount of "give". None of them, though, wanted to write "line variation". Any would have complained if I tried to press enough to spread the tines. Eversharp might have made some Skylines with flexible nibs for the small flex market, and so might Sheaffer and Parker, but the Parker 51 and Sheaffer Triumph nib would have been hard to flex. I suspect that the seller is being accurate when he says that his fine-nib Skyline has a little flex.
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