My first experience with a flexible nib was a vintage 14K gold Waterman Ideal No.2 that was fitted on a Parker Parkette. I was curious why the nib wasn’t original up until I wrote with it. The way the nib bounced across the page and responded to the pressure of my hand opened up a whole new layer of fascination I had with fountain pens. Early writing styles (before the invention of the carbon-copy ~1954) were expressive and required practice to control the pressure applied when doing so. The pens developed for this style of writing had nibs that were designed to deliver line variation and ink feeds that work with this nib to keep pace. A lot of fountain pen users seek this type of nib but the downside to the vintage nib is that they cannot be easily replaced if they break or crack.

     My quest has been to find a modern equivalent to a vintage flex pen. I have tried flexible pens from a few different manufacturers (Noodler’s, Pilot, Omas, FPR, Visconti, ..) and all of them required more pressure than I expected when writing. The tines would more often than not dig or scratch into the page and exhaust my hand in the process. 

     During a script writing class I was exposed to a dip pen, it had a nib that flexed the way vintage pens did plus I was able to get a similar line variation with little effort. The drawback was that I had to dip the nib more frequently than I liked and watch the nib closely to see how much ink remained in order not to run out of ink mid character. The amount of ink that came off the nib was difficult to control. This exercise gave me an appreciation for dip pen users everywhere, it was not for me though. 

     My search led me to the “Noodler’s Ahab flex mod”; it is a way to reshape the standard Ahab nib to flex more easily. The nib modification does take some time and a steady hand. I did the modification on my bender grinder and was pleased with the results. The ink channel on the feed also needed to be deepened to keep up with the demands the nib would have. The feed of the Ahab is ebonite and can be easily modified with a sharp knife being careful not to slip out of the channel. The results were what I hoped for but the nib had a difficult time performing consistently due to its shape. 

     Then I stumbled on an idea were someone had fit a dip nib on the Noodler’s Ahad feed (or Konrad, both use the same feed) with positive results. I tried the same using my Noodler’s Konrad and a Speedball artists nib. With the feed (and nib) set further back into the section than intended this combination works like a charm, I applied A little heat to the ebonite feed to set it closer to the nib for better ink flow but that was it. I used a modified feed from a previous pen, so it is imperative that the ink channel be deepened for proper ink flow. This combination of nib and pen opens up the door for an economical modern flex pen, with nibs that can be easily found. Enjoy.