Architect’s Nib

The nib style is called variously an Architect’s, Hebrew or Arabic nib. I think of it as the opposite of a stub, in that it provides thin downstrokes and thick cross-strokes.

Here is a closeup of the writing. The ink is Caran d’Ache Electric Orange. I love the “o”s — they look elliptical and three-dimensional.

Here’s the nib.

And here’s what it ends up being: fun. It’s fun to write with and I think it’s fun to read. I have horrible handwriting, but this nib has style.

Dan’s grind is smooth and just as easy for me to write with as any stub or even regular round nib. He does say the writing is very dependent on the angle of the nib to the paper, but I didn’t know that and I just wrote with it normally. He said it’s a very popular grind and works well for both righties and lefties, over-writers, under-writers or side-writers. And I can throw in another category: it works well for me, the messy, fast writer.

This nib started as a broad, which means the line width measures about 0.9 mm across and 0.4 mm down. That’s actually a little broad for me, so I will probably opt to do this with a fine nib, which would give me a nib stroke measuring 0.6 mm across by 0.2 mm down.

Here is a comparison of the broad and fine Architect’s nibs. The broad Architect’s nib uses the orange ink, and the fine uses the blue ink and is written by Dan.

Dan has a better writing sample on his blog here.

And finally, I want to mention the pen briefly. It is a prototype Karas Kustoms Fountain K pen, which will be out in a few weeks. I’m going to write an post about this pen soon, because it was entirely new to me and I am quite taken with it.