Once upon a time, about three years ago, I bought a Scribo Piuma, Altrove because (1) it was pretty, (2) it was on sale, and (3) it had a flex nib. Nib options were limited so the only flex option left was the 14kt gold Broad Flex. I clicked buy and anxiously waited for it to arrive. I inked it up right away with the best ink match I had and I was whelmed - not over-, not under-, just whelmed. I think part of it was the not-quite-as-perfect ink match as I had thought, but I just wasn’t loving writing with it. (Sorry, no picture of this first inking because I really didn’t enjoy the combination, despite using it for a few weeks.)
Everyone had been raving about the Scribo and their amazing nibs, especially their flex nibs and I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t raving about it too. I was so unexcited about it that I thought it had to be the ink. So I changed inks, and while I liked it better, it still wasn’t good enough. Mind you, it’s not the nib, it was a nice writer, it was smooth, it was juicy, it was flexy. So let me be very clear that it’s not because it was a bad nib. The main thing about flex nibs is line variation, and while there was line variation, the fact that it was a broad nib meant that it gives you a broad-to-broader line, instead of the thin-to-broad lines of traditional flex dip nibs, which was more what I wanted.
I didn’t want to turn this Broad into a Fine or Extra Fine, but thought maybe it could use a little slimming down. So I had Gena Salorino of Custom Nib Studio grind it down to a Medium Broad, while maintaining its current level of flexiness and feel (aka its smoothness on the paper). Gena did a great job, which made the nib feel a lot better, but I still didn’t love it. I eventually set the pen aside in the “last ditch pile”, a pen purgatory, if you will, where I would decide if I would keep it or sell it. It would remain in this pile for over a year while awaiting its fate.
Better with a different ink (Robert Oster’s Cosmic Swirl) and a slight nib reduction.
Fast forward to earlier this year, I decided to ink up the Piuma Altrove because it was decision time. The latest ink pairing was even better so I liked it more, and convinced myself to get another Piuma since there was another sale. This time I got the Piuma in the Levante Orange colorway. All the while, I kept asking myself why I would get another Piuma when I didn’t love the one I already had. On one hand, the price was too good to refuse, and on the other hand, maybe all I needed was a different nib size. I will admit that these were all terrible reasons/rationalizations and you know what’s coming up next: I bought it anyway. I was hoping to get an Extra Fine or Fine Flex, but ended up with my favorite/go-to nib size, Medium.
I inked up the Levante Orange 18kt gold Medium with Kobe #8 Arima Amber, a favorite orangey brown ink, and, sigh, it was fine. I mean, it wrote well, but once again I wasn't wowed. It was a great ink match, it had good flow but it just didn’t excite me. Admit it, you knew this was coming, right? Like there was no way this was going to work out. But wait, there’s more…
Knowing that it shouldn’t make a difference, I decided to swap the nibs. The nib/feed was a tight fit for one of the Piumas so I had Gena pull both nibs and feeds and swap them at the Pacific Northwest Show earlier this summer. No tuning, no grinds, no nib work, just a simple nib/feed swap. And holy moly, Batman, it worked! With the 18kt gold Medium nib now in the Altrove Piuma, it now sparked some serious joy! And the 14kt gold Medium Broad Flex in the Levante Orange Piuma was just the perfect amount of “oomph” that this pen needed!
I can’t explain it but I love this “regular” Medium nib in the Altrove so much more now!
And the juicy flex nib just feels right in the Levante!
Both the Kobe #8 in the Levante Orange and Van Dieman’s Spotted Sun Orchid in the Altrove were in the pens before and after the nib swap, so it’s not the ink that made the difference. From a nib standpoint, they felt the same in both pens (pulling the nib/feed in this case didn’t change how they wrote), but they didn’t “feel right” in their original setup.
Moral(s) of the story:
- Buy all the pens so you can do nib swaps if you don’t like one of them? No, no, no, but if you happen to have a compatible nib from another pen, try a nib swap, you might like them both even better.
- If that’s not an option, and frankly, it was definitely an expensive gamble, clean out the pen and try it with different inks and papers. I already use a variety of papers with my pens, but preferring to matchy matchy my inks and pens can be a bit more limiting. Still, I had quite a few ink choices and some of them definitely made me enjoy the pen a lot more than its initial inking.
- Try a nib grind - I knew pretty quickly that a Broad flex was just too broad for me, so why not experiment with a slight nib reduction? I might have gone for a cursive italic too. Sometimes a nib grind, or even adding (or removing) some feedback is just what the nib needs to feel amazing.
- Set it aside and really think about why you’re keeping the pen if you don’t love it. I loved the material of the Altrove and I just had a gut feeling that the nib should feel enjoyable, but I also know that we don’t all like the same things, so maybe the nib wasn’t for me. And keeping a pen that’s pretty, that I don’t want to ink up, is a terrible reason for me to own a pen.
So happy together!
In summary, don’t be afraid to try something, even if it doesn’t make sense. By all accounts, swapping the nibs shouldn’t have made a difference, but it did. Obviously this wasn’t a dramatic change, nor was changing inks, or getting a nib reduction, and sometimes doing all of these things (and more) still won’t rescue a purchase that just doesn’t jive with you. But for me, all of those things put together, especially the nib swap, resulted in two pens that I LOVE instead of two pens that I was thinking about selling. Maybe two wrongs really do make a write ;-) And they wrote happily ever after.
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