On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 01:33:00 +0000, MatthewK
wrote:

How are you doing with your nib grinding? What are you using? There
is some good advice, not so good advice on this on FPN. I like the
idea of keeping the pen inked so you can test what you're doing as you
do it. And one other thing I know about this--you've got to **** up a
few before you start getting it right.

Pretty good I think. The directions I'm using are in "A
Italic way to Beautiful Handwriting" by Fred Eager. The book
was $4 dollars on the internet. These instructions seem better
though: http://www.marcuslink.com/pens/nibs.html

I read those instructions at the marcus site awhile back. I can't
remember how useful I thought they were.

I used a ceramic spyderco (brown) hone and finished it up on a
micromesh nailboard 600 grit.

Micromesh 600, as I remember, is much finer than 600 grit sandpaper.
You can get very fine sandpaper at the auto parts store.

I did the pilot purple varsity and have ground it down to no
tipping material, just messing arround. I was able to get
things to look right on paper but it was still scratchy. The
problem was I ground the nib as an oblique by mistake. I need
to dig up a decent magnifying glass or loupe and find my
finishing papers.

A 10x loupe--I'd say this is required. I've also got a 30x loupe You
can get those pilots where they aren't scratchy. And you'll get
better results on better nibs, but I lost my interest in nib grinding
and ground only one Waterman Phileas--the nib came out fine, but it
was skipping, and I got busy with other stuff and never got back to
it.

On the Pilots--try going for a stub and see how that works.

This takes more time than what I'd have thought.

I also bought a white arkansas stone. You can find flawed ones on
eBay pretty cheap that are fine for nib grinding.

My handwriting is just so much better with an italic nib or a stub.
But I'm not gonna pay Richard Binder $150 to grind one. I'm sure he
does a good job and all that. Hell, one day I might pay him to grind
one.

But I heard from somebody that Dillo on FPN does a good job too, and a
lot cheaper.

Too bad Nathan doesn't still do work on pens. He might have kept the
pens he worked on for awhile--one time he kept somebody's pen for a
year--but nobody complains with the results, including the guy who's
pen he worked on for a year.

And then there's Old Griz. I'm sure Old Griz could grind a nib, but
after the way he talked about me on FPN the other day, I'd probably
send mine to somebody else. But anybody else might be fine with Old
Griz.

I wonder how much Old Griz would charge to grind and refill six
Pilots, with his drilling through the rear end process.

I'm avoiding pen purchases like the plague right now but I've
mostly had good experiences with chinese pens. Hero is my
favorite cause I love the aerometric fillers.

Thanks for the video links and I'll look at them later, on another
computer. I'm running so much protection here I can't get a video to
load right now.