Author Topic: Nib Tuning and quality control  (Read 3509 times)

Offline RobertFontaine

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Nib Tuning and quality control
« on: February 02, 2017, 11:47:30 PM »
After 30 minutes of touching up on a barber stone, inking, touching up on a barber stone, inking my 1 of 10  303 Nibs seems very close to good.   Does anyone have a friend at Gillott?  These have the potential to be the best but they are frustratingly uneven and inconsistent from nib to nib.

I so very much want to love them.    Would I pay 20, 30, 50% more.   I certainly would.  G Nibs just don't compare for fine writing.   Maybe I should just start buying goose feathers.

Offline schin

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Re: Nib Tuning and quality control
« Reply #1 on: February 03, 2017, 01:03:51 PM »
Did you get your 303s from Johnneal recently? The quality of the batch they have was improved vastly.
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Offline Krapprot

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Re: Nib Tuning and quality control
« Reply #2 on: February 03, 2017, 05:42:18 PM »
@schin

How would you say the vintage 303s compare to the quality of this new batch of 303s?



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Offline schin

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Re: Nib Tuning and quality control
« Reply #3 on: February 03, 2017, 06:18:27 PM »
The vintage 303s are superb! They're brown in color and very well made. Each one is comparable to an esterbrook 357. I treasure them very much.

The modern blue 303 doesn't live up to the hype. 1/3 of each nib does not work well, is scratchy and generally unreliable.

But recently Johnneal has a new and improved 303, also blue, which I like very much. In fact I just bought a whole bunch the other day. It's not as good as the vintage brown 303 in my opinion, but is still very good indeed. However, I don't know if there is a discernable difference between the two blue 303s just by looking.
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Offline Krapprot

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Re: Nib Tuning and quality control
« Reply #4 on: February 03, 2017, 07:52:29 PM »
Thanks for the info, @schin.   I'm going to set aside the old 303s I've got and not bother to even touch them until I've developed enough skill to justify using any of them.    At this point, I'm still a long way off.

Cheers,



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Offline sheila247

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Re: Nib Tuning and quality control
« Reply #5 on: February 03, 2017, 10:06:18 PM »
The last batch I bought from JohnNeal (after Gilliott re-machined them) still had quite a few that were unusable.   :'(  Right now John Neal is out of 303s but they have been in contact with Gillott and the next batch should be better.   I love the 303 but the lack of quality control is very frustrating.  I have started using the Leonardt 700 - the swells aren't as thick but the hairlines are beautiful and I haven't had any quality issues.  (Knocks on Wood and crosses my fingers that I didn't just jinx myself)

Offline RobertFontaine

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Re: Nib Tuning and quality control
« Reply #6 on: February 04, 2017, 02:15:18 AM »
Thanks, for those of you having used the Gillott 303's for a while I would appreciate some context.   Is this simply an issue with most recent production run or a general issue with them?    I don't have an issue buying 20 or 30 at a time and getting 10 good nibs a month.   They are cheap.   That said it's a bit of a gamble hoping that I'm going to get enough good nibs for the month ordering 5 or so at a time.   I have a nice little barbers razor stone that I can tidy up the nib with when the nib has ragged edges but it is going to take some more practice to find a thin tip that is still smooth.  It's easy to get a smooth nib if you grind down the nib tip but you lose the nice thin line.   Similarly it's also easy to get a very sharp point but keeping it from having burs and a giving it a round edge rather than a knife edge tricky.

I am going to try have some 3M chromium oxide paper that is around 30,000 grit that I can use to polish the nib edges that I'm going to try.  I will also break  one of my japanese wet stones out of storage as a finer grind than the barber hone.   

It seems like these are made out of a fairly soft steel (as opposed to a hard modern stainless) Hard to tell yet.   It might be nice to know.  The  modern stones of equal grit tend to be more aggressive and work better with modern hard steels.   The softer steels from the 1800's like the japanese wet stones and chromium oxide a lot more than the nortons and the shapton 20/30k stones.   

I will probably sacrifice a few nibs to see if I can come up with consistent way of making these more pleasant.

Are these nibs laser cut or stamped?   If stamped maybe they are trying to get too many nibs out of a stamp or the stamp got overheated lost it's temper and wore out before expected life.   I have no idea if stamps like these can be resharpened/retempered if overheated etc.   I suspect that quite a bit could be done depending on whether they are actually making money on these nibs.    It's hard to imagine that there is any real profit in the nib business.




Offline JohnNealBooks

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Re: Nib Tuning and quality control
« Reply #7 on: February 04, 2017, 10:36:55 AM »
The Gillott 303, oh how I hate to love this nib!  It is true that the nib was reworked earlier this year and several batches were AMAZING...then we got a batch in late November that was not nearly as great.  I and my staff individually tested about 20 gross (2880 nibs) to find about 40% were "no good"!!  We have since sold all of the good nibs and have been out of stock for weeks. I hope to have the next batch in mid February and will be spot testing them before sending them to customers. 

We have made Gillott aware of the recent problem and indeed have been working with them for over a year to get the quality up.  I trust that Gillott will figure out the problem. 

The nibs are stamped, not laser cut. 


Offline JanisTX

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Re: Nib Tuning and quality control
« Reply #8 on: February 04, 2017, 11:46:42 AM »
@JohnNealBooks :  Maybe they should try laser cutting them.  It's very frustrating to have such poor quality control!!

Janis

Offline RobertFontaine

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Re: Nib Tuning and quality control
« Reply #9 on: February 05, 2017, 01:31:40 AM »

The Japanese feather disposable straight razor blades, as well as most of the modern razor blades, are laser cut.   This allows for a surreal level of precision with modern steels but you may have noticed that these products are also very expensive.   I suspect that the tooling required would be a very large outlay for a product with very little volume.

On the other end, world class razors can be made by a smith in a workshop with a good understanding of the steel.     The original 303's were made with a tool stamp so it seems likely that the question is of the quality and temper of the tool and the quality and temper of the nib.    If there was a great batch followed by a bad batch one of the two seems likely if it is a matter of edge quality of the nib.

I wonder a bit whether tumbling them in a very fine sand in one of the vibrators used for shell casings might not also resolve some of the issues.   Finding a media soft enough to polish without being so aggressive as to ruin the point would be trial and error but could probably be done in mass rather than hand working nibs post production.

I have to dig out some of my own polishing media this week to see what is easiest at home.    Given the complex curves, and the thin steel I think that the 3m chromium oxide paper from lee valley, powder or stick is likely a pretty decent polish.   Flat stones are only good for tip shaping.   Diamond grit even at 30k is so much more aggressive I suspect on this still that it will chip out the nibs.   I have a 50X scope somewhere in my pile that I will have to dig out as well.     If someone here has a USB microscope and decent light it would be nice to get some high-resolution pictures to see what the real starting point is.  My 5X monocle isn't good enough to really see what is going on and I'm just guessing by touch.

Offline AndyT

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Re: Nib Tuning and quality control
« Reply #10 on: February 05, 2017, 03:53:06 AM »
These are the two best known texts on steel pen manufacture:

Henry Bore
A.A.S. Charles

In addition I made pdfs of a couple of articles:

1838
1883

Thought that might provide a bit of perspective.

Offline JanisTX

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Re: Nib Tuning and quality control
« Reply #11 on: February 05, 2017, 08:44:00 AM »
@AndyT :  That's fascinating!

Janis

Offline AAAndrew

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Re: Nib Tuning and quality control
« Reply #12 on: February 05, 2017, 11:07:43 AM »
Great sources, Andy, including a few I haven't seen before.

Here's one about the manufacturing of pens from the American perspective, with pictures. From what I understand, the process was pretty much the same on both sides of the Atlantic. Not a surprise as the American makers started out with British workers to shows us how it's done.

https://books.google.com/books?id=x6HPAAAAMAAJ&lpg=PA352&ots=IRSLVkodJ9&dq=Washington%20Medallion%20Pen%20company%20patent&pg=PA348#v=onepage&q=Washington%20Medallion%20Pen%20company%20patent&f=false

And here is a list of major British manufacturers. There were a lot more smaller makers who came and went but these were the big guns in the industry.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120313001645/http://bobmiles.bulldoghome.com/pages/bobmiles_bulldoghome_com/morepentrade.htm

Check out my steel pen history blog
https://thesteelpen.com/

Offline RobertFontaine

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Re: Nib Tuning and quality control
« Reply #13 on: February 05, 2017, 07:31:52 PM »
The level of hand finishing required/described in the original process is a problem for sustaining profitability.   I can't imagine that the volume sold could be very high either so it's kind of tough.   On one hand, you have a product that has a volume of sales that can only support a small cottage industry.  On the other hand, to take advantage of modern manufacturing techniques you need a high volume for you product runs.       Some research into DIY laser cutters might result in an affordable manufacturing method.  Tooling for laser cutters is low cost once you have the tool.  Cuts would be burr free and precise.

Still, it would have to be a labor of love.   There is no way that you could sell a million pieces per year.  Likely not 100k pieces per year.  10k pieces even seem high.   How it would pay for the labour and overhead is beyond me.

Offline Peter Oliver

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Re: Nib Tuning and quality control
« Reply #14 on: February 05, 2017, 08:22:57 PM »
Experienced pen users often talk about fine flexible nibs wearing out.
 I have not been using nibs long enough to even know when a nib is past it's best,  but I cannot help wonder why they are not re-tuned by polishing/grinding to extend their life.
 Is it simply that nibs are (or used to be ) so cheap and easily available new,  that the effort involved was simply not worth it?
With some good fine vintage flexible nibs being hard to get, I would have thought they could be re-tuned many times before discarding them?
So tuning new nibs to get perfection is one thing, but do others re-tune their old " worn out" nibs? Do old nibs ever have to be thrown out (other than corroded ones)?
« Last Edit: February 05, 2017, 08:27:38 PM by Peter Oliver »