Have another great vintage nib to recommend.
I've been interested in the Leon Isaac's Company pens for quite a while now. The quality is always superb. Most of their pens are standard office-type pens. Most range from firm to firm-flex with a few semi-flex (like their version of the bank pen) with one exception, the #27 which is a very flexible and sharp spear-shaped pen. But it's a little long to use with an oblique holder.
Yesterday I received a mixed lot of Leon Isaacs pens, and in a box of the #12 falcon stubs (Leon Isaacs invented and had the first patent for a falcon stub before Esterbrook), I found a large group of a small, straight pen, their #14 "Teacher" pen.
These are about the same size as a Spencerian No.1 so they fit quite well within an oblique holder. The two I've tried I would rank somewhere between a Spencerian No. 1 and a vintage Gilliott's 303. It's more flexible and slightly sharper than the Spencerian (easily can flex to 5x the hairline width), but much smoother than a 303. The spring is nicely responsive without being stiff. It also impresses me as a much more robust and durable pen than the 303, and Leon Isaacs & Co pens are most definitely very well made and generally last longer. In their day they were more expensive than Esterbrooks and were known for their "Glucinum" finish. Glucinum is the old term used for beryllium. I've not been able to confirm that they actually used beryllium in the coating, but I'm not sticking one in my mouth to find out.
The bad news is that you'll probably never run into these in the wild. I've been collecting Leon Isaacs for over a year and this is the first time I've ever seen this number. The good news is that if you do, they'll probably be fairly cheap. For $15.99 plus shipping I was able to get 120 of the very nice Bank Pens (better even than the estimable Esterbrook 14), 80 of the Falcon stubs, and 96 of these #14 teacher pens. Plus a few random ones that had found their way in there. That's just around $0.5 cents a nib.
Anyway, in my continuing advocacy for the less-well-known pens of the past, I just thought I'd share with y'all another wonderful old pen that I think you would enjoy.
You can see below a very poor example of my writing. My hands are just not warmed up enough this morning (or warmed up in the wrong way, I've been typing all morning) and it's bad even for me, but you can get the idea. The x-height on this practice page is 6mm to give you an idea of scale.
