To grind a nib or not to grind a nib, part one
A conversation with a pen friend of mine a few months ago has been rattling around in my head since. He said he struggles to understand how someone can buy a new pen with a lovely round nib and immediately walk to a nibmeister to have it ground.
I have love for both round and ground nibs. They each add value to the writing experience. This week, I’m thinking through the benefits of unground, round nibs.
Tip o’ the nib to ya
Round nibs, according to my friend’s thinking, write the way that pens are designed to write. A smooth and consistent EF, or F, or B line.
And I’ll add that round nibs are forgiving. The “sweet spot” angle of nib to paper wherein the ink flows smoothly extends far around the ball of the nib. The more surface area, the more ink lays down. And the wider your sweet spot of smooth flowing ink.
Considering use, forgiving round nibs keep my writing smooth even when I’m rushing to quickly scrawl a note; or writing at severe angles to the page of a pocket notebook. I’ve also found that especially soft metals like palladium do well with round nibs.
But then there is so much fun to be had with nib grinds. But that’s for next week.
This week’s Inked Tines update includes my most recent currently inked writing tools.
Toolset
Pens. No single pen stood out beyond the others. Due to how well each pen and ink combination worked together this week. A rising tide floats all pens?
Kaweco Sport (EF) — Empty. Smooth, narrow EF nib. Coal left a dark, uniform near-black line. Convenient pocket carry. Excellent round nib for quickly scrawled grading notes. Task management, grading, reading notes, meeting notes, pocket notes.
Esterbrook J (9128) — Empty. True EF line unflexed to a M flexed line. Fun for headings and reading notes. Backup daily driver starting on Wednesday. Fun, if delicate, writer. Emptied during D&D Saturday night. Task management, reading notes, meeting notes, D&D notes.
Monteverde Rodeo Drive (1.1) — Empty. Metal pens are rare within my collection. This combo made for a subtle accent as the rose gold shimmer is most visible at an angle. Wet, wide lines best for larger writing. Journaling, meeting notes.
Pelikan m805 (F Architect) — 4/5. Sharp architect grind added fun line variation to slowly written journal entries. Reading notes were enjoyable to write, but Akkerman #7 is a tad too dark to contrast clearly against Colorverse Matter. Journaling, reading notes, D&D notes.
TWSBI Vac (F-CSI) — 1/2. Backup pocket carry. Bondi Blue pops, making reading notes easily scannable. The CSI nib encourages sheen while forgiving slight rotations when I write at odd angles in my pocket notebook. Pocket notes, reading notes, journaling, D&D notes.
Franklin-Christoph 03 (F SIG) — 4/5. A dry combination. Brings out the sharp edges of the SIG grind. Excellent shading. Fun to write with where I can take my time and slowly form letters: journaling, reading notes, manuscript marking.
Visconti Homo Sapiens (F) — ??. The night I journaled with this pair was the most enjoyable journaling session of the week. Round palladium nibs write more consistently than my ground CI. Journaling, reading notes.
Notebooks. Work bujo. Hobonichi A5 Plain Notebook. 12 new pages this past week. The school year rounds out at page 176. In the second bujo of the year. Add 270 pages from the school year’s first bullet journal. The 20-21 school year took place across 446 A5 pages. It’s nice to feel accomplished.
Last week’s final week of work-writing involved two pages for a new weekly spread, two pages of scratch notes from grading, and eight pages of meeting notes. The week’s work consisted of meetings, grading, and a lot of outreach to parents (i.e. more meetings).
I experimented with a new weekly spread, inspired by the significant.notes Instagram account. The layout comprises one running list down the center of the page. A margin of eight columns pads the left-hand side of the page. The margin highlights where one day’s work stopped and another day’s work began.
Mmm, tasty columns
Unfortunately I cannot share images of my own spread in its entirety because my tasks are sprinkled with students’ and families’ names. Everyone likes artsy photos of stationery, though. Right?
Journal. Unbranded A5 Cosmo Air Light Notebook. Four new entries amount to nine new pages.
3 1/2 months of progress
Two entries are short. Less than one page each. These were both exhausted evening summaries of each day.
The other two are quite long. The Visconti Homo Sapiens was by far the most fun to journal with. My Cosmo Air Light paper encouraged generous amounts of gold sheen out of Yama Budo.
Positively gilded
Written dry. Three pens gave all of themselves within the tornado of end-of-year meetings. The new Kaweco Sport Fox, the Esterbrook and the Monteverde Rodeo Drive.
The Monteverde sports a 1.1 mm stub nib and a two-channel feed. Add the wet Schwarz Rose to the mix and the pen is a firehose. Two days of meetings saw the pen mostly empty. A long journal entry on Wednesday emptied the pen. No complaints.
The Kaweco was my go-to daily driver until it dried up on Tuesday afternoon. The EF nib is truly lovely. Enough that I used this pen for just about every writing job for two days. Everything from task management to pocket notes.
The Esterbrook J ran empty while planning out attacks during D&D Saturday night. My character is an Investigator, which requires tracking multiple skills and effects simultaneously. A fun merger of gaming and bullet journaling.
Newly inked. I withheld the urge to ink up my new pen all week. Is it Sunday yet? I revisit my currently inked most Sundays.
The collection
Incoming / new orders. Wednesday developed into a new pen day, care of the USPS delivering a package from Yoseka Stationery two days early. No complaints.
Welcome into the collection my first TWSBI Eco — in mint. With an EF nib. Because: me.
The triangular grip is surprisingly comfortable with my uncommon grip. And the piston arrived well lubricated and smooth.
The nib appears in tune. Writing next week will confirm.
Outgoing / trades or sales. I drove to a great pen friend, Mark’s, house on Sunday afternoon to deliver a bagful of ink samples.
I was the lucky winner of 16 Troublemaker ink samples in a generous giveaway back in 2019. I wasn’t drawn to them, as a group, in the two years since.
That said, I used up nearly all of three: Autumn Rain Gray (a dark, grungy green), Petrichor (a fun, whispy grey), and Simoun (a mid-toned blue sheen monster). The remainder sat in their vials.
I make a point of distributing inks to friends — and sometimes virtual pen-folk — when they’ve lay dormant in my collection. Letting go makes space for inks that make me smile while I write.
So now my Troublemakers are rabble-rousing in a loving home and are already seeing use — especially Hanging Rice.
Thank you, Mark. May the force be with you.
Currently reading and listening
Fiction. Political history took over my reading time. No fiction reading this week.
Nonfiction. I finished Schulman’s Let the Record Show this week. A little over 440 more pages — many of which are decorated with margin notes and highlights. Her history tells the story of ACT UP’s anti-AIDS activism through the stories of the individual activists involved.
Annotations of wonderment
I spent hours on Thursday and Friday reflecting on how I can use Schulman’s vignettes and mini-essays in next year’s LGBTQ Studies class. I keep coming back to Chapter 19, which documents youth activists’ efforts within — and journeys into — what became known as YELL, the Youth Education Life Line.
I’m also drawn to Schulman’s history of Larry Kramer’s, Maxine Wolfe’s, and Mark Harrington’s iterations of ACT UP’s inside-outside strategy. In short, its a history of wriggling governmental action.
Lastly, I read a lot of essays on politics and education. Two stood out enough to warrant conversion into PDF and margin notes. Lee Drutman’s essay reflects on the merits and dangers of a two-party political system, focused on the relative presence of polarization across six differently countries.
The other is an essay by veteran educator Lelac Almagor on her experiences teaching virtually and hybrid this past school year. Almagor’s thoughts overlap with my own, especially where she argues the community-building teachers do outside of the official school curriculum was missed this year.
Music. Two lo-if artists I enjoy released a collaboration EP this week: Kinship. Sleepy Fish and mommy are worth a listen if you enjoy mellow music to write or think over.
Bonus: A picture of our fish, Smoochie. A small reward for making it to the end.
