I admit it; it's just a matter of time.

I am becoming more and more convinced that I'll need a custom nib to reproduce the writing style I want, and I'm becoming more and more eager to get recommendations and estimates on one from professionals. In fact, the only reason I'm not writing nibmeisters right now is that I really want to ink up the Pelikan M150 first. If I don't like the way Pelikans feel in my hand, that narrows my choices down to... one? My thoughts right now are either a custom nib for a Pelikan M200 (similar to, but slightly larger than, the M15), or a customized Namiki Falcon.

Of course, first I'm assuming that my customized nib would be possible. I'm asking for 0.1 to 0.5 variation, with no conscious effort, and no sharpness or roughness. This very well may be a "chose two" situation, and how much I'm willing to compromise will be inversely proportional to how much it's going to cost.

Actually, another reason I'm rather eager to get an estimate is so that I can budget for it better. My initial enthusiasm was supported by the saved allowance of several previous months where nothing interested me, so little was spent. That buffer is starting to wane now, and I'm going to have to start budgeting to get exactly what I want instead of dinking around trying to figure out what that is. Of course, I wouldn't know what that is if I hadn't dinked around, but I think I do now, so I can stop. (OK, you take my custom nib and grind it onto a Sheaffer Triumph nib on a periwinkle snorkel... OK, that's not going to happen. But let me dream for a second. Ahh...) Knowing how much this will cost me will let me better budget for pens to restore, which is pretty fun.

There's another problem. I have pens I like to write with, and pens I like to restore, and they don't always coincide. Sometimes, but not always.

People at FPN keep telling me dangerous things. First there was the thing about the saturated inks. Then someone pointed out to them, if they buy a pen at $100, enjoy it for a year, get bored, and resell it for $80, they don't view it as a loss, they view it as a rental fee.
Oh, that's a dangerous thing to tell me. There are many cases where I could live with that. ^_~