hello there inquiring minds welcome to the first in a series of short videos on fountain pen
related topics that may well be a series limited to one we'll see no boring guitars no long-winded
intros laced with obscure video cutaway references just a shorty video on a fountain pen topic
and today's topic is baby's bottom baby's bottom is that annoying random skipping you get from some
fountain pens usually the ones you paid more than a mortgage payment for it happens on many fountain
pen nibs usually those that are broader in line thickness and is the result of a slight over
polishing of the nib as a consequence the tipping material on the nib ends up looking like a baby's
bum with the bombs crack forming a gap between the ink and the slit and the paper itself keeping the
ink from flowing onto the page i've had a few nibs like this and i've solved this issue fairly easily
in just a couple of minutes but heed my warning do not try this at home i am a trained professional
admittedly i'm not trained in anything related to fountain pens but nevertheless
do not try this on any pen you value enough to start legal proceedings against me if you fail
that's right i lawyered up you little [ __ ] and if you're going to sue anyone to my colleague
just an hour north of me dr stephen brown as i stole this whole routine from him thanks dr brown
so let's get down to it my new ranga abby abby something abby who abby
has a touch of baby's butt so we need to eliminate that little cleft between the cheeks
by removing some tipping material now that tipping material is generally comprised of a very hard
iridium alloy and it takes some hefty abrasive to remove it professional nib meisters will use
a grinding wheel or a dremel tool or something dangerously destructive like that but we're gonna
do this manually you'll need a set of micro mesh abrasives i got this set of seven pads for around
18 canadian at lee valley tools they range in coarseness or grit from the very gritty 1800 grit
to the not so gritty 12 000 grit what is a grit anyways it's made out of corn gonna eat it or not
and you need some water which i have in this syringe
and then you need some patience i called my technique of making a pen bbs nib right wetter
the seven strokes to inky happiness that's where you take a pen bbs nib usually the
fine ones they're typically very dry and open it up by giving it slight pressure in seven strokes
and it makes them very wet indeed but dr sbre brown's technique is the eight strokes of infinity
this is where you take your baby butt nib and give it eight infinity loops one two three four
five six seven eight horizontally and eight vertical five six seven eight on the progressive
micro mesh grids starting from the 1800 and finishing with the 12 000
so let's start by demonstrating some of the skipping that i'm getting on this nib sometimes
it works okay sometimes it doesn't work okay i wrote for about five minutes with it last night
and it seemed to write okay but every so often i'd try to write the word the and i'd get a skip
at the top of the line so we're going to start with the 1800 grit a little bit of water on it
and it's best to do this with the pen inked up so you can give it a test
after each micro micromesh and we're going to give it some figure eights using the same
angle that i normally use of my pen to the page and just with light pressure don't grind it in
one two three four five six seven eight two three four five six seven eight
now we're not going to get ink flow of course but i'm feeling that there's a lot of feedback
now because that coarse grit has really roughed up that surface
but it's removing material as we do that so now we're going to use the 2400 grit
now we're going to move up to the 3200 grit
should get progressively smoother on the page and then we're into the 4000 grit
and we move up to the 6000 grit
and then the 8000 grit
this is the penultimate grit before we get to the really ultra smoothing with the 12 000
and so you should be feeling a bit of feedback but it should be fairly smooth
now at this point i'll want to polish off some of that feedback but just leave enough
that i feel comfortable with on the page i like a little bit of feedback
from my fountain pens not so much from my viewers but from my fountain pens
and then we go to the 12 000 grit which is the smoothing and polishing
i just give it a little bit of a rotation at the end there
just to get knock off any burrs and we'll prime that feed now the other thing that happens when
you're polishing that you're knocking off material on the end there and so that grit
gets caught between the times and so can cause ink flow issues so i just take the thinnest
uh spark plug gapping tool uh point zero two inches point zero five one millimetres
and just put it in the breather hole right there and just floss the nib just like that
absolutely no issues whatsoever
yeah so that's uh still got good deal feedback on it
so i might just give it a little bit more of the 12 000
just to polish it up a little bit again you can go
a little bit further with the smoother grits because they're not as aggressive
be very careful with the heaviest grits as they take off a lot of material
nice the ink is still a little bit thin because of all the water but this is writing like a
charm now a snake charm so it's smooth as a baby's butt now without the crack
so there you have it i hope you enjoyed this little shortie
let me know in the comments and that just leaves for me to say thank you for watching
and that's all she wrote i made this