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Old 14 August 2017, 05:53 PM   #1
Formulansx
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The Platinum Century 3776 in soft fine

Well the pen looks great in Bourgogne Red with gold trim but the soft fine gold nib is kind of just ok. It's super fine but I guess that's to be expected of a Japanese fine. The problem is the "soft" part. It's a stiff nib. You can get a small amount of line variation but It's nowhere near what I expected. I only paid about $80 from Japan, so at that price, I can't complain. It definitely has a place in my collection, but I was hoping for a little more, ya know?? The music nib is awesome but it was also about 2x as much. Also without any spring but that nib is super smooth and puts down a great line. The soft fine nib on this pen might be my first venture into adding "flex" to a nib. Probably 100 hours of research later, I might be able to get the guts up to modify it!






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Old 14 August 2017, 09:08 PM   #2
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Correct. Soft Fine nibs are not meant to be flexible or allow line variation. They can be abused to give line width variation and in many YouTube videos are so abused but that only leads to the early death of the nib.

Soft nibs are meant to be slightly springy and appropriate for short delicate strokes such as found used in Kanji.
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Old 15 August 2017, 01:51 PM   #3
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Good information.

I had run into a couple of SF nibs in the past just looking around and meant to look up what they were all about and just forgot.

Thanks for sharing!
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Old 16 August 2017, 03:19 AM   #4
Formulansx
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Seems like I had different expectations of the nib beyond what it was designed for. The internet really likes to insist this is a springy nib for some reason. I did some research on adding flex/spring and there's all sorts of crazy ideas out there! This is going to take time to avoid ruining the nib
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Old 16 August 2017, 07:19 AM   #5
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You can't believe everything on the internet and far too often what is KNOWN is simply repeated fantasy.
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Old 20 August 2017, 06:45 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jar View Post
You can't believe everything on the internet and far too often what is KNOWN is simply repeated fantasy.
It's really surprising how all the reviews I read on this nib completely missed it. It's no very soft at all. You're point about it's intended use makes sense now that I've been writing with the nib for a while now. Not one review of the nib I found brought this up though. It was all spring and even comparison to vintage flex of all things. Sometimes the internet can't be trusted. I wouldn't mind a little wetter nib though. I might do some work to this one, albeit slow work, but work nonetheless.
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Old 20 August 2017, 09:25 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Formulansx View Post
It's really surprising how all the reviews I read on this nib completely missed it. It's no very soft at all. You're point about it's intended use makes sense now that I've been writing with the nib for a while now. Not one review of the nib I found brought this up though. It was all spring and even comparison to vintage flex of all things. Sometimes the internet can't be trusted. I wouldn't mind a little wetter nib though. I might do some work to this one, albeit slow work, but work nonetheless.
I'm glad it makes sense to you and the soft nibs really do make the slightly different strokes essential to Kanji possible; tiny almost brush like variations.

Every nib will flex at least once and far too often what I see particularly in YouTube videos is not flex but abuse.
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Old 21 August 2017, 05:36 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jar View Post
I'm glad it makes sense to you and the soft nibs really do make the slightly different strokes essential to Kanji possible; tiny almost brush like variations.

Every nib will flex at least once and far too often what I see particularly in YouTube videos is not flex but abuse.
I don't think Kanji makes much of an appearance in lean manufacturing, but if it does, I'm damn sure going to find it now that I have the right nib for the job!
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