Best Flex Nibs for Fountain Pens? My Reviews

hello everyone I'm Matthew from the wet pen comm in the beautiful but rainy Pacific Northwest I've been using fountain pens for decades but just a few months ago I watched one of those amazing videos of someone effortlessly writing in a gorgeous Spencerian script and I became fascinated with Flex nibs and I decided to get one I might as well mention now that this is not going to be one of those videos I don't do any sort of calligraphy I just like the idea of being able to add a little extra character to my writing when I feel like it anyway I didn't want to use a dip pen because I do most of my writing while I'm traveling and that's just not very practical and I didn't want to spend a fortune on some vintage flex nib fountain pen but I did find a few different current options to try out and they each had their own advantages first I started looking through the options on the market for flex and head pins and I ordered one of these I had seen the options from Noodlers pens like the Ahab and a few other popular models but then I saw the Conklin omni-flex nib on a derp graph with a narrow waist like this I figured that the flex must be really good and I'm very happy with the pen itself it feels good in the hand it's nice and solid and well balanced but when I inked it up and gave it a try but the results were disappointing despite the fact that the neighb looks as though it should be very soft and flexi it hardly flexes at all there is some flex as you can see but even when I give the nib quite a bit of pressure really too much my line width doesn't thicken up a whole lot [Music] so I continued my search and discovered that a lot of people are converting their cheap gin how pens and using them with zebra G dip pen nibs I watched a video and it looked pretty easy so I went onto Amazon and I bought a pack of five of these gin how at 750 pens for about seventeen dollars and a pack of ten zebra G nibs for about eight if you want to do this I'd recommend getting the more expensive titanium nibs which won't wear out so quickly this is the stock nib on the Jinhae pen which looks pretty normal except that this one has a patchy sunset all over it if taken out of the pen you can see that the zebra G nib is pretty similar in size although you will need to flatten it out a little bit with some pliers it takes some work and it was a good thing that I bought five of these pens because I almost immediately destroyed the feed on my first one after an excessively flattened nib got stuck halfway into the section if you want a detailed video about how to do this conversion let me know in the comments but once you get it right it'll look something like this add some ink and the result is pretty awesome [Music] when you don't flex the nib you get a very fine needle thin line of ink but with even just a little bit of pressure the springy metal of the nib flexes out wonderfully and you get this amazing contrast between the thick flex lines and the fine lines of the straight tip and you get this for the cost of a $4 pen and $1 nib [Music] unfortunately though the tip of this nib is very scratchy there's no ball tip on the end so it will sometimes snag fibers and cut into your paper and these are disposable nibs that will need to be replaced regularly which means repeating this whole installation process so again I started looking for better options and that was when I found this this is the ultra Flex nibs sold by a fountain pen revolution it's a standard number six nib so it will work in all of these gin hub pens without any modification and of course any other pen like my Conklin der Graf that takes a number six nib also and compared to the zebra nib it's quick and easy to install just take the nib in the crook of your finger and grab it with your thumb and pull the nib and the plastic feeds straight out without twisting from there the nib and the feed are separate and you just get rid of the original nib and put the new one in its place on the feed [Music] locate the flat side of the hole in the pen section and push the new nib and feed back in this one isn't aligned properly and I'll have to fix it when I'm not doing this on camera I've ordered three of these things now including one with a gold vest because once you get the nib in the Flex is wonderful it's soft and springing you like the zebra nib and since it has an extra fine ball tip and is intended for fountain pens it's great for everyday writing and should last for years incidentally this video is not sponsored by anyone it's just the product of my current obsession [Music] the tip is not quite as fine as the zebra nib but you can still get a very fine line depending on your ink I happen to be using some wet ones here [Music] the other downside is that these nibs cost $19 each more than my set of five jintao pens of course if you're comparing this to the cost of a flex nib pen like my dura graph or especially a vintage pen $19 really isn't much but it is more than the zebra G nib setup and if you're just interested in playing around for the Flex nib that may be enough for you so to sum things up the Conklin omni-flex nib on the der graaf has the advantage of being simple and reliable but it's expensive and more importantly just doesn't really flex very much the zebra G nib on the jintao pens on the other hand is nice and cheap and it can give you a needle thin line and the nib is very soft and flexible unfortunately they're also tricky to install and once they are installed they're not especially reliable the tip is pretty scratchy and it doesn't feel great for day-to-day writing and the nibs wear out and have to be changed regularly for me the fpr Ultraflex nib is a best of both worlds option it costs less than 20 bucks and since it's a standard size it's easy to install on any pen that takes a standard number 6 nib it has wonderful flex and it's reliable like any other good fountain pen nib that said the nib is not quite as fun as zebra Gnip and of course it costs more than 80 cents it's also more work than buying a pen with a nib already in it although you can also buy those from the fountain pen revolution site I just haven't done it yet so what do you think are there better flex nib options out there for fountain pens I'd love to hear about them if there are I'm no expert with Flex nibs so take this for what it's worth just the experiences of a novice but I'm hoping that my experiences here might help some other beginners know what to expect from what's out there if you're interested in seeing more videos like this about inks and pens just give me a thumbs up and subscribe below and that's it enjoy your pens and don't forget to actually use them see you next time [Music]

Channel: The Wet Pen

Views: 183,278

Keywords: fountain pen, pen, flex nib, thewetpen, jinhao, zebra g, nib, convertion, conversion, calligraphy, writing, handwriting, ink

Id: 7OTRS3sGE4c

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 13 2020