Kaweco 475N BER- CONTRA Nib Tipping

[Jeph]

I have also recently aquired a Kaweco 475N. This is still just a school pen, but a much better quality one than the ones I am used to.
The trim was tarnished and there is a liitle corrosion but it cleaned up very well.
The piston draw is strong so I did not bother trying to remove it.
The nib unit came out with no problems and the inside of the pen was clean.

My issue is the nib. It is the steel BER- CONTRA nib. It looks to me not only that the nib is slightly bent down, but the end of the tipping is absolutely flat. If you hold the pen in the exact right position, it is smooth. But that sweet spot is very, very small.

I have 3 questions for people who may have seen or know about the Kaweco BER- CONTRA nibs:

1) What does BER- CONTRA mean?
2) Does it look like this nib is bent down?
3) Is this tipping profile normal?

Thanks

Kaweco 475N Capped.jpgKaweco 475N Open.jpgKaweco 475N Nib.jpgKaweco 475N Nib Side.jpgKaweco 475N Tipping.jpg

[Ernst Bitterman]

I don't know about "normal", but it does look very like a Lamy 99's tipping which I got; flat-footed, and at that angle. Even the tines were a little depressed, although not to that extent. This may tell us something about the writing drills German school kids were put through in a specific generation.

[Jeph]

Eventually I got back around to fighting with this nib. It turned out better than I had expected it to.

When I removed the nib and feed from the nib collar, there was a good deal of nib rot under the collar. That no longer surprises me on vintage steel nibs. The "19" and "71N" hidden by the collar still contained gold wash. I went ahead and polished it away.

I managed to return the nib to really close to straight for an amateur, and then smoothed the ridges down to make a passable pen. It now lays down a nice, wet EF line smoothly. The sweet spot is not huge, but you have to do contortions to get far enough out of the sweet spot for the nib to offer you tooth. Overall, not a bad pen.

Kaweco 475N BER-CONTRA.jpgKaweco 475 Straight Nib.jpg