"Aaron W. Hsu" wrote in message
...
"Jimmy" writes:

There's an idea germinating here - "ruggedised" fountain pens. Think
of
the pen equivalent of sports watches. I wonder if you can make a nib
out
of tungsten carbide.

How flexible is the nib? :-) That's my biggest complaint on a lot of
modern pens. They don't have a soft or springy enough give to make
writing nice. They all feel like writing with chisels, or at least,
most
do.

Although some of my pens have flexible nibs, I don't have the skill to
use them well. Hard-as-nails, glassy smooth nibs can be a lot of fun,
though. I tried a Waterman Carene, and loved it, but not its price-tag.

Fascinating, all this metallurgy stuff in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten_carbide

Maybe the "ruggedised" pen needs to have acceleration sensors, that will
retract a conventional nib promptly when it experiences gravity's 10
m/s/s.

I've heard you can get springy titanium nibs - have you experimented?

--
Alan