Nibs form a very important part of fountain pens as it is the nibs which directly come in contact with paper and are responsible for the quality of writing. The different parts of the nib include the tip or a point, a slit, tines, a breather hole and the base.

Shapes and Sizes

Most of the tips of nibs are round and are available in different sizes like fine, medium and broad. Some of the tips are also available in different shapes like stub, italic, oblique, reverse oblique and 360 degree nibs.

The Breather Hole

All nibs have a hole called a breather hole for letting air into the feed. Breather holes also help in relieving the stress from the nib and help reduce the chances of cracking of the nibs during extensive use. Breather holes come in various shapes like round, heart or crescent.

The Slit and Tines

Nibs have a thin and long slit from the tip to the breather hole. This slit lets the ink flow down to the paper through capillary action. The parts of the nib on either side of the slit are called tines. Although, most of the nibs of fountain pens have a single slit, some of them may have more than one slit and hence have more than two tines. Several slits are made especially in broad calligraphy pens to increase the ink flow.

The Base

The nib contains a base which is usually fixed into the pen and is not visible unless the nib is disassembled. Some nibs also have decorative scrollwork or imprints about the type of nibs.

Nib Materials

The tip of the nib is soldered with a pellet of hard metal and is usually made of a harder material like iridium. Metals like gold or silver, if used for the tip will wear out relatively quick.

The most common materials that were used for making the nibs are gold and steel. Gold is often a preferred material for the nibs because of its flexibility and the non-corrosive nature. Most of the vintage pens have gold nibs.

The nibs of modern pens are made of a mix of steel, gold plated steel and solid gold depending on the price of the pen. The gold used for the nibs in vintage pens is 14K while that used in modern nibs is typically 18K. Steel is a cheaper metal when compared to gold and silver and is often used in the lower priced modern pens.

Nib Corrosion and Corrosive Ink

Some of the steel nibs may corrode with time, but corrosion is not that serious of a problem. Most of the nibs made of good stainless steel are less prone to corrosion and are also durable. The ink used in earlier days was considerably more harsh and acidic than the present day ink. This was the reason gold proved to be the most preferred material for making nibs. Although, expensive, the nibs made of gold lasted longer than the steel nibs.

Fountain pens have reservoirs for holding its ink and these reservoirs need to be filled. There are a good number of pen filling mechanisms to choose from so let’s just cover a few of them.

Eyedroppers – The Early Ink Filler

The eyedropper was the most commonly used method for filling ink reservoirs in the early fountain pens. This required just unscrewing the reservoir section and filling the ink reservoir directly with ink. But the mess of filling ink through an eyedropper called for the need of more efficient ink fillers. It was then that many other self filling mechanisms were developed. The self fillers have a rubber sac to hold the ink and when these sacs are compressed and released they absorb the ink. The modern ink filling mechanisms have almost completely replaced the use of eye dropper.

Crescent Filler

Crescent filler developed by Conklin in 1901 was the first self filling pen to have been mass produced. The crescent filling system has an arch shaped crescent attached to a stiff metal pressure bar. The crescent portion projects out from the pen, through the slot and the pressure bar located in the barrel. There is a C shaped rubber ring that is located between the crescent and the barrel. This ring prevents the accidental pushing of the crescent. To fill the ink, one must just turn the ring to line up with the crescent and then press the crescent to squeeze the ink sac.

Lever Filler

Lever filler was patented by Walter. A. Sheaffer in 1908. Lever had a lever outside on the pen barrel. On pressing this lever, a springy bar inside the barrel is pushed to compress the rubber ink sac. When the lever is released, ink is sucked into the pen through air pressure.

Coin and Matchstick Filler

Coin and matchstick filler are similar to the lever fillers, but do not have any levers on the barrel. Instead, a coin or match stick is used to push the spring inside. Button filler is another filling mechanism similar to lever filler. Here pressing a button squeezes the ink sac.

Piston Filling

Piston filling is the most common ink filling mechanism for modern pens. This type of filling has a knob at the end of the pen which needs to be unscrewed. On unscrewing the knob, the piston is drawn up filling the ink into the sac.

Touchdown and Snorkel Filler

Touchdown filler, introduced in 1949 by Sheaffer is a complex type of ink filling mechanism. In this, the top of the barrel has a cap which needs to be unscrewed so that the plunger attached is drawn to its full length. The nib of the pen is immersed in ink and the plunger is pushed to compress and release the ink sac, making the sac absorb ink. Snorkel introduced by Sheaffer is similar to the touchdown filler except that it has a long thin tube extending from the pen which needs to be immersed into the ink.

Capillary Filling

Capillary filling introduced in the Parker 61 by Parker worked on the principle of capillary action. This type of filling required you to unscrew the other end of the pen and dip the pen into an ink bottle. The ink was filled into the reservoir through the capillary action. This type of filling encountered problems like ink clogging and drying up and hence was discontinued.

Cartridges

The use of cartridges for refilling fountain pens is now widely used in most of modern pens. This type of pen filling is done by just replacing a plastic cartridge in the pen.

An ink chamber and delivery system placed inside the pen was patented by M. Klein and Henry W. Wynne in 1867. US patent #68445.

After the dip pens made an exit, fountain pens were the pens of choice by the majority of people. In this type of pen, there is an internal reservoir which stores the liquid ink. A typical fountain pen will not require you to put any pressure while writing as the ink is drawn through a feed to the nib and then finally to the paper. It just requires capillary and gravity, not mechanical pressure!

The typical “fountain pens” had reservoirs that could be filled either manually by using an eye dropper or a syringe or in a suction way in which the ink would be transferred directly from the nib to the reservoir.

Pace of Advancement

Right from the 10th century when quills were used as the form of writing till the 19th century when the progress in developing a reliable and useful pen was brought into existence the method and pens for writing have been experimented with. The pace and changes happening were slow because people lacked understanding about the differential air pressure and also the corrosive ink made the process worse.

The First Fountain Pen

It was in 1827, that a Romanian Inventor Petrache Poenaru invented the first fountain pen with a replaceable ink cartridge. This was the first design that allowed for smooth and easy writing, without having to deal with unwanted ink dripping and scratching troubles.

Mass Production

An iridium-tipped gold nib, hard rubber and free flowing ink were the only ones which made the process of using fountain pens more common and also popular. During the 1880s these fountain pens began to get manufactured in bulk amounts.

Waterman and Writ were the most principal producers of the bulk orders for the fountain pens during the era and then Waterman ousted Writ from the competition and remained the world leading producer till the year of 1920.

Then there were huge alterations made in the overall design features of the fountain pen, generally because of the persistent problem of manual filling of ink and also the messy leakage problem. This is when Waterman came up with a design called twist filler which solved many of the the problems.

In 1940’s and 1950’s the dominance of fountain pens were at the peak as early ball point pens were very expensive and many had leakage problems. It was during this decade that Parker 51, Scheaffer Snorkel and Eversharp Skyline gained heights!