Regrinding fountain pen nibs

[mrcook4570]

This topic came up in another thread and caught my attention. I sometimes have customers looking for different nibs, and because of the lack of availability of a variety of nibs for the Gent, I would be very interested in learning how to regrind them to different writing grades. I would greatly appreciate any advice or links to information on this.

I realize that top quality services are out there, but I am just looking to obtain decent results on steel nibs. TIA

 

[vick]

http://www.marcuslink.com/pens/nibs.html

I have never reground a nib so cannot speak about how good the article is.

 

[mrcook4570]

Thanks for the link. The instructions were very straight forward. My first try, I was able to achieve the line that I wanted, but was very scratchy. I need to polish the nib more.

 

[RussFairfield]

For what it's worth, I have ground the steel nibs for myself to make them write with a thinner line, and more flexible: but I would never do it for someone else. The problem is that any thinning or narrowing of the tines removes the protective plating, and exposing the steel along the edge. Even if you are working on only the Iridium on the tip, it is difficult to do anything without removing some of the plating on the steel. Once done, the exposed steel starts to corrode very quickly because most of the inks we uae are acidic. The rest of the plating starts coming soon after that.

I would leave the reshaping to the solid 14k and 18k nibs.