Tiny Pens Are Stalking Me.

Yes, the latest hobby is still going strong. ^_~ But I'm gonna learn how to restore Sheaffer touchdowns soon! By necessity if nothing else. ^_~

Now, I'm purposely collecting vintage ladies' purse and ringtop pens, which means I also end up with some gentlemen's vest pocket pens in the mix. (Don't always see the clip before I bid. And sometimes it's just too damn cute to pass up anyway.) And those are all tiny by definition. But I'm not talking about those.

I'm talking about my everyday (well, semi-everyday) pens. I keep ending up with pens between 4-1/4" and 4-3/4" long. My very first vintage surprised me by being that small. The first Esterbrook I got was an SJ, which is that size. The BHR ringtop I got is that size. (OK, it's a ringtop, so it doesn't count.) I found another Esterbrook with a good nib at a local antique mall. Got it home, it turned out to be another SJ. Funniest, though, is that I bought a modern Pelikan M150 from Pendemonium when they had their end-of-year sale. Opened up? Same size as the Esterbrook SJs.

The nice thing though is that it's not a bad size for my tiny hands. Even better if it posts well.

Remember the Mabie Todd Swan that the person who sold me the Snorkel was going to send me. It arrived. My gosh, what a sweet pen! The cap, as warned, is banged up, but it's such a dark blue that it's hard to see in use, and it is sooooo smooth. He might stay in my rotation for a while.
And ironically, since I patched the cap with wax, that Snorkel is the most reliable pen in my cup right now. Hasn't hesitated to start once since then.

Now, you know the damaged Esterbrook nib that produced the writing I fell in love with. Well, it's smoothing itself out a little bit, which is good. But I was really studying it, and I think I've figured out what's going on. (No, really this time!) The slightest bit of pressure, even just that of the weight of the pen, immediately spreads the tines to produce a light of around .4 mm. So what's really happening when I write isn't that writing pressure is spreading it so much as lightening that pressure on the upstroke is drawing the tines back together to make a fine line (possibly all the finer because of the single bent tine.) The 9048 nib came in, but I don't feel like getting my fingers even more magenta by hot-swapping, so I'll try it out once either my blue SJ runs out of ink or I get a sack in one of my others. I'm kind of hoping an undamaged Esterbrook "flexie" nib might act the same way. If so, that might always explain why most people get little if any flex out of them, since most people keep more pressure than I do throughout their letterforms.

If not, I'm again toying with the idea of seeing if a nibmeister can't custom grind something to reproduce that behavior. I can even send them the Esterbrook nib that does it for an example if they want. It doesn't help that I discovered that isellpens.com has full M200s for $55, and I personally like the blue marble on those better than just about anything else on the Sovereign line. I keep trying to talk myself into a more expensive "more adult" pen (no, I don't know why), and I keep coming back to "but I like the blue marble", so why fight it?

Of course, I want to try out the M150 before buying another Pelikan.
And I'd like to try an Esterbrook 9314-F nib and a Duke 209 calligraphy pen before investing in a custom nib. If I just keep buying pens, maybe I'll never get to it. Of course, I'll have more that way than just going with the custom nib. But I'll have a bunch of pens out of the deal.
(I know, I only have two hands. I can't write with any more than that at a time.  ^_~)