Nibs

The Google Plus Fountain Pen community hosted a post on Frankenpens Friday, about putting the best parts of fountain pens together to make a super pen. I mentioned that I had shaped a worn nib into a cursive italic, which created several requests for more detail. This post is from three comments.

At New Year’s, I became dissatisfied with my over ten year old red Pelikan Future fountain pen. It was blobbing, just worn out.

Not an expensive pen, but one of five different color Futures of my EDC. There’s a principal involved.

I read a post on Brad Dowdy’s blog, The Pen Addict,  Grinding Your Own Nibs - Ludwig Tan, and bought the stone and sandpaper on ebay.

Then I started watching sbrebrown on YouTube, and collecting nib maintenance posts:

How to turn a fountain pen nib to italic or stub,

Fountain Pen Guide Series, Session 1: Nibs, Feeds, and How They Come Together, and

Richard Binder’s 3 part series on Nibs.

The wet/dry sandpaper and foam nail file more useful than the stone (too fine), and I've come to work tentatively, coming back a day later rather than going too fast.

First I smooth off the bottom of the nib ball, to make it somewhat flat. I want to leave some iridium on the bottom.

Then I hold the pen straight up, top of nib facing right. I set the top of the pen toward me to get the cursive slant and draw the nib over the abrasive surface, left to right, checking by dipping the nib in ink and trying it, every five to ten strokes.

When I get a good difference between wide down and narrow across, I polish with a few strokes on the manicure foam board. This is all shown on the web pages above.

A cursive differs from a stub in that my pen is held at an angle to the lines on the paper. A cursive is ground slanted 20 degrees so the right edge is shorter than the left. When it is naturally held above the paper, the front of the nib lines up with the horizontal lines.

I don’t use the figure ‘8’s to check the italic, I use a small vertical line next to a small horizontal line. I’m done when it looks like a 3 to 1 difference.

This is for taking notes, about the size of 14 point type, so a really wide nib isn’t as good as a narrower one. I like something about as wide as the Lamy Safari 1.1 stub nib or the Nemosyne Singularity .6mm calligraphy nib.

That foam board nail file is my preferred tool for final smoothing of each nib.

The red Pelikan took the longest because I was so tentative. After a dozen sessions, occasionally despairing it would ever come back, as of yesterday it is lovely, and back in rotation. During the same 10 weeks, I cursived the blue Pelikan future, a custom wood pen with a #6 nib, a new Kaigelu 382 and a new Jinhao 500.

I learned  that I like cursive italic nibs for line variation more than flex or broad nibs. I write fast, with light pressure, and enjoy an interesting swath of ink.

When I started, I was quite concerned about destroying a nib. That blotto red pelikan forced me to try. After all, I’m not cheap, I’m frugal!

So far I haven’t destroyed a nib, yet. I figure by now I’m well ahead.

For other how-to maker stuff, try Square, Triangle, Circle.  

Lennie’s Market

“God sells all things at the price of labor”

Leonardo da Vinci

Way before open source!

The Third Industrial Revolution Is Beginning

Edmund Pendleton, the Assistant Director of the Mtech VentureAccelerator at the University of Maryland, was a panelist at The Democratization of Innovation meeting.

He observed we are entering the third industrial revolution. The shift from local shops to locating multiple crafts and trades in a factory setting was the hallmark of the first industrial revolution. The second revolution was the creation of mass production of products. The emerging third industrial revolution is digital building.

Instead of working by hand, or through robotic assembly, digital building combines digital files and duplication equipment – 3D copiers – to create the product. This is an additive manufacturing process – start with nothing and end with a finished product without human or robotic assembly.

This star was created from code sent to a MakerBot Replicator – it is made of white plastic. This technique is being used to fabricate 32 panels for the new Boeing 787 aircraft – and these panels can not be made using traditional assembly  methods.

Before this technology was available, products were made primarily by custom assembly or subtractive manufacturing – taking away from the raw material to yield the finished part or product.

Beyond the technical novelty, this approach fits perfectly in the Maker Economy of 1-2-3 member organizations who collaborate with others and seek the most efficient materials and production for their goods.

The digital file – coded in one location – shipped by email to a manufacturing location anywhere there is capacity and price efficiencies – the user buy on-line – a shipper delivers it to the user directly or via a local retail outlet.

Sounds futuristic – but Amazon and Barnes and Noble are doing something similar today for books. How far away are we for receiving a replacement part for the dishwasher, ordered by the on-board computer chip in the dishwasher itself - with no human involvement until the replacement part is taken from the delivery truck?

What are your thoughts about a third industrial revolution?

Makers – The Future Is Now!

Makers is a future business fantasy by Cory Doctorow with the view of a society where traditional business structure has broken down and the economy is in the tank. Sound familiar – like what you read in today's newspaper?

Instead of relying on organizations to provide jobs, plan what to do and produce, and sign paychecks on regular intervals - in Makers, individuals or a few collaborators are making and selling things. Others are buying things that meet a need with a value to the buyer.

For raw materials, makers reuse already manufactured parts from discarded items – junk – adapted for innovative uses - much different from their original purpose.

They focus on what users want and need to make something to fill that void, by adding some dreams and ingenuity. As inventors, impossibility just a challenge; as entrepreneurs, simplicity and low expense are core principles.

In the book, makers reused boogie-woogie Elmo parts to make smart cars, created 3D printers, and developed self-replicating machines (machines that make working copies of themselves).

Rewind the tape to present day.

Today we have self driving cars in prototype (Nevada has approved these cars) and self parking cars are in the showroom of five major auto brands.

3D printers are being used by several industries – there are 32 parts on the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner fabricated by 3D printers. In addition, physical objects can now be copied in three dimensions – like this bust of Doctorow:

Machines that can make copies of their parts exist now – development of self-assembly is moving closer to self replicating reality.

When Xbox came out with the Kinect to sense game player movement – tinkerers immediately bought them to reuse the components to create cheap 3D imaging capability for the home PC.

The old Heath Kit and Erector Set crowd of tinkerers is still around, but has evolved to an open-source knowledge-base approach of developing innovative ideas. Code, concepts, and applied experience are shared and this collaborative environment fosters creativity and permits people to develop their ideas into products or services for sale.

One of the most visible maker communities today is app developers – individual coders who find a need and create a smartphone, tablet, or computer application to fill the void - “I have an app for that”. Agile, quick, and effective in satisfying user wants, priced cheap, and available directly to the buyer.

The New Normal is the changed structure of how we do business. The individual now plays a more significant role in the 'how' of business than merely being a cog in the machinery. However, because of the rapidly changing reality, we must keep current and continue to learn and evolve to remain viable in the workforce.

To learn about the current business environment, read Makers – a book about the future. Even its distribution is non-traditional...download it free from the internet.

The future is now. How do you see it?

Please join us 6 pm, March 13th, at the Capital Technology Management Hub, where Sales Lab’s Jack Gates presents Rainmaker 12, Lessons from Makers, followed by the featured CTMH Presentation, Sales Lab’s Dick Davies speaking about The Direct Economy, How to Profit from The Most Lucrative Market in the History of the World!