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| 2012 era TWSBI 540, originally with Broad nib, but now with a Pendleton Brown Butter Line Stub |
I purchased the TWSBI back in the heyday of the 540, when everyone was getting them and they were all breaking. I had another TWSBI 540 that broke, but this particular TWSBI that holds the BLS has survived so far. Maybe I've been lucky in that regard, but even if it does break, I'm pretty sure that the nib will fit into one of the newer TWSBI models, the 580, so I'm not too worried about it. When I first got the pen, before the nib modification, the nib/feed were so dry that the pen couldn't even lay down a line on paper. I could have fixed the dryness problem myself, but I had been reading about Pendleton Brown's work on internet forums, so I figured what the heck, may as well send the defective TWSBI off to have a pro work on in, and get a great stub ground at the same time.
Dealing with Pendleton couldn't have been easier. I send him an email telling him what I had and what I wanted, and he replied in the affirmative. I packed the pen up in some bubble wrap and put all that inside an old glasses case, to prevent any damage while in transit, then mailed it off to the Georgia address. As an aside, folks, let me tell you: through college I worked for one of the big shipping companies, so I can say with some authority that packages are treated EXTREMELY roughly by both human handlers and sorting machinery. Don't ever, EVER underpack your valuables.
Pendleton emailed me in about a month when the work was done. I paypaled him the $40 for the work (this was a couple of years ago, prices may have changed), and I got the pen back in the mail shortly after. He had reshaped the pen's tip into his own variety of the chisel-shaped "stub" grind that he calls "Butter Line Stub". He also adjusted the wetness of the pen, at my request, to a 7 on the 1-10 scale.
How does it write? True to its name, the BLS writes with a "butter smooth" line that is a 7/10 wetness, which is a fairly wet line. It works best when you are holding the pen correctly so that the stub tip is square to the paper, not tilted up on edge, rotated, or otherwise askew. Because of their chisel-shaped tip, stubs and italic cut pens are generally less forgiving of the user's writing position than regular round nibs, and the BLS is no exception. The chisel shape is what imparts the aesthetically pleasing line width variation on the horizontal vs. vertical pen strokes, and this pen does that well. With these types of nibs, line variation is most pronounced in cursive italic nibs having very sharp, square edges (chisel-shaped with 90 degree corners). Stub nibs and less severely cut italic nibs have slightly rounded corners to smooth out the writing experience for the user, at the expense of greater line variation. With his BLS, Pendleton Brown has achieved a great balance between writing smoothness (user friendliness) and line variation. Not quite as user-friendly and forgiving as a regular Broad nib, but with loads more line variation. Not nearly as sensitive to writing position as a standard Cursive Italic, but with less line variation. The BLS is a great balance between those two extremes and is a great daily user.
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| Pendleton Butter Line Stub, Noodler's Liberty's Elysium ink, on Clairefontaine 90g paper |