The ItaliFine -- Inspired by the Fine Nibs of Yesterday

Everybody loves a “twofer” — two donuts, or pairs of shoes, or T-shirts, for the price of one. How about two fountain pens for the price of one? It’s not impossible! All it takes is a ball-point nib.

A ball-point nib, so called because its tip is rounded and polished on both top and bottom, writes finer when held upside down than when held normally, giving the user the convenience and economy of two pens in the space — and at the price — of one. A medium ball point writes fine when inverted; a fine writes extra fine.
Parker Vacumatic nib, dated 1941	Sheaffer’s FeatherTouch nib, c. 1941

In 1932, with the introduction of its immensely successful Vacumatic, Parker quietly began quantity production of ball-point nibs. At about the same time, Parker’s main competitor, Sheaffer, began producing its own ball point, the famous FeatherTouch. (Don’t confuse ball-point nibs with ballpoint pens — they’re a horse of an entirely different color.)

Gone But Not Forgotten

As a collector with a penchant for digging into obscure trivia, I had been aware of ball points for some time before I put two and two together — after all, both companies eventually abandoned the production of ball points, and many collectors today aren’t even aware that such a thing ever existed. One day I realized that thousands of these reversible nibs still exist. In these increasingly technology-laden times, when carrying one pen instead of two leaves a little more room in a briefcase or purse for a Palm Pilot or a cellphone, the ball-point concept makes good sense. It inspired me to grind a ball point for myself, and I quickly discovered how useful the ability to switch instantly from fine to extra fine can be, especially for rapid pen sketching. The pen whose nib I had used for my experiment immediately became my sketching pen, and now I rarely draw with any other pen.

Sketch made with ball-point F/XF nib; Waterman Havana Brown ink

The Plot (Nib) Thickens (Widens)

Then one day a client approached me with an intriguing proposition. He travels a great deal, and he was looking for a way to minimize the size of his travel kit by carrying a single pen that would produce dramatic line variation for signatures and script while also serving as a utilitarian pen for taking notes. He inquired if I could grind a combination nib for him that would be a cursive italic when he held the pen right side up and a fine when he held it upside down. If I could, he said, he wanted the combo ground on one of his PFMs. Talk about a challenge! Any regrinding of a PFM nib is exciting because it’s entirely too easy to catch the recurved upper surface on the wheel, producing a nasty scar that can’t be entirely removed. This procedure, though, promised to be even more nerve-wracking because I would have to hold the pen against the wheel at a tightly controlled diagonal. Twice.

Not having attempted such a project, I didn’t know the answer to his question. But I determined to find out.

Obviously, you don’t start a project like this by dragging out a nice minty PFM and slapping it against the wheel. Instead, I chucked up a fresh Pelikan M200 broad nib assembly and let ’er rip. Normally, I grind the top surface, then the end, then the under surface, adjusting the thickness and top-to-bottom alignment with the underside grind. For the combo nib, however, it seemed to make more sense to grind the end and the under surface first to establish the basic conformation of the nib before cutting the two diagonals to create the steeply peaked apex that would become the fine point. The final shape would depend not on two nearly-parallel surfaces but on three surfaces intersecting in a roughly pyramidal configuration.

The tip took shape rapidly; within minutes I had a nib with four flat surfaces on what had until then been a ball of tipping material. The grinding operation finished, I applied sandpaper to finish the shape and then polished and adjusted the nib, and and then it was time to test it. Carefully I started writing on a test pad — et voilà! It worked!

ItaliFine regrind of Pelikan M200 nib by Richard Binder, 2003

The proof of the pudding is in the tasting, as they say, and the proof of the nib is in the writing. The nib pictured above created the following writing sample.

Writing sample from nib illustrated above, shown 2X actual size; Waterman Blue-Black ink

I ground a second nib to be sure I really understood how it worked, and then I gave my client the good news. He responded by sending me a PFM to regrind. When I sent it back, he tested it and then sent me the following report in an email message:

The pen arrived safely today. Just inked it and am doing some real work for tomorrow with the pen. I’m putting down some final thoughts for my presentation tomorrow and am writing notes in a book I’m currently reading. Most REMARKABLE — the pen really works as intended! Richard, thanks for doing what I’ve always wanted but never thought possible.

He went on to suggest that I might want to give my new nib a name of some sort, and the name that sprang to mind immediately was ItaliFine. A little work with an illustration program on my computer yielded a snazzy trademark:

Another client virtually snatched the second Pelikan ItaliFine out of my hands, so I had to grind a couple to take to shows.

And there you have it: The reinvention of an old nib design, made new to please modern writers who love line variation but still need a less exotic nib for some uses. Something tells me that most innovations in pen design happened pretty much the same way: Someone had an idea, someone did a little hacking, and a product was born. So . . . what’s your idea?

© 2003 Richard F. Binder	richard@richardspens.com	http://www.richardspens.com/