Observe the photograph above. In it, you will see my first love.
Yes, it all started out with a £20 dip pen from Pen Heaven. It's why I'm here, reviewing, restoring and rambling about stationery, because although the TWSBI given to me by a friend was my first fountain pen, it is this budget dip pen that first sparked my interest in fancy writing instruments.
I can't even remember why I started searching for a fountain pen to buy. I do know that I came across this dip pen, with the magnificent black feather, wooden stand and gold metal detailing, and immediately knew I had to have it. At the time, I was entirely ignorant as to what to look for in a fountain pen, how one worked, what ink you were meant to use... I was, in fact, entirely clueless about the whole thing in September 2020. Only a year and a half ago, I'd have looked at you with a face as blank as an egg if you had started talking about sections, pen sacs and ink converters.
Merriment will surely ensue when I inform you that, when I ordered it online, I thought the quill was a fountain pen. I spent half an hour trying to fill it with ink before I realised it didn't have a filling mechanism.
(Chuckles sagely) The folly of an ignorant fool.
So I had purchased a quill pen with a metal nib, but I remained undeterred. In fact, I rather liked the fact that I had just bought a medieval-style writing instrument.
I got some black Diamine acrylic ink and practiced calligraphy for a while. But the pen was always rather difficult to use. The steel did rust at the top of the nib, despite the fact I carefully washed and dried it, and the nib was scratchy. When I got my first actual fountain pen, I realised that the nib wasn't very good at all - no tipping material, just raw steel with a sharp end, which was why I was having difficulty using it. I thought it was my fault that it kept tearing the page I was writing on, but it was due to the cheap nib.
Since I couldn't comfortably use the pen, it became a desk accessory. A very pretty one, but it was a shame that I couldn't use it.
I was very bored on Monday. Nothing to review, I couldn't persuade my brain to produce a good magazine article, and I sat on my desk chair mindlessly strumming out a couple of songs on one of my guitars. My gaze landed on the dip pen. It stood there, forlorn. I can't stand anything looking sad, even an inanimate object, so I decided to Make It Usable.
My weapon of choice? Some 600 grain sandpaper that was included with my Ystudio pen. I did not have nib grinding tools, or micromesh, or any of the things you are supposed to use, but then again I rarely do. I don't think about the tools I don't have, I make the best of what I have lying around at the time. Since the sandpaper was on the windowsill, that's what I used.
I had read a few articles about adjusting nibs before, so my first attempt was:
1. Check that the tines are aligned. I didn't have a loupe or a microscope, but upon close inspection I could tell that the tines were indeed in their correct positions.
2. Slowly draw a figure-of-eight pattern no more than eight times on the sandpaper.
3. Test nib.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
That... didn't work.
Second attempt.
1. Scap the previous method.
2. Gently sand down the end of the nib to form a flat 'foot' instead of a needle point (since there wasn't any tipping material, I didn't worry about sanding it down too much).
3. Test nib.
The result was fascinating. I had managed to turn it into a scalpel! When I tried to write, the nib cheerfully sliced a clean slit in the paper. This was amazing, but not the effect I had hoped to acheive.
I needed to get more scientific about the whole thing.
1. Write some letters.
2. Identify the problem - the left tine was very sharp and pointy, which made it dig into the paper.
3. Bend the tine with one finger in order to maneouver the sandpaper into the correct position to grind down the specific problem area.
4. Test nib.
5. Sand down a tiny scratchy bit on the right tine.
6. Repeat step 4.
It would be an understatement to say it was fixed. It felt frictionless! I was using very smooth paper, but I had somehow managed to sand the whole thing so that it wrote perfectly. No scratchiness at all, the pen simply flew across the page. The paper wasn't shredded, and the cheap nib now performed to a Franklin-Christoph standard. And those pens are very smooth.
I wouldn't recommend trying this experiment on a nib with tipping material. If you grind that off, the pen will never perform as well as it used to. Since mine was simply raw steel, I tried the experiment, and got very lucky. I was, of course, methodical about it - it wasn't entirely a fluke - but for a first attempt with only sandpaper, I couldn't be happier with the result. I can use the poor neglected dip pen again, and it produces beautiful calligraphy! So you see, even a beginner can sometimes repair problems that you would normally have to pay somebody to fix. If you aren't too worried about possibly making the problem worse, a DIY solution may be a worthwhile experiment.