Levenger True Writer Fountain Pen Nib, Fine in the forefront

Normally when I buy a fountain pen, I like to get a nib that is either a fine or extra fine, but when I saw the Levenger True Writers on sale earlier this year, the only option was a medium nib.  I couldn’t pass up the deal on the great looking gun metal finish, so I grabbed it anyway, and was happy with its performance.  Recently I noticed that on the Levenger site they have replacement nibs available, so I ordered a fine to add to my True Writer.

I was excited to give my new Levenger True Writer an upgrade with this fine sized nib, so I quickly swapped out the medium-sized nib that it came with and loaded some Private Reserve Velvet Black in it because in the past I got really good results with that combination.  I figured I should just stick with what worked in the past.

Levenger True Writer Writing Sample with a Fine Nib

Once I had the ink loaded and ready to go I went straight to my Levenger daily planner to try out my new fine sized nib.  With the first few strokes of the pen, I ended up with what felt like a really wide line for a fine nib, so I gave it a few light scribbles to make sure I didnt just have a little bit of extra ink that may have collected on the tip of the nib.

Feeling as if my scribbling should have displaced any stray ink from the tip now, I went about writing again, only to find that the writing continued to produce what looked like way too wide of a line for a fine nib.   With confusion setting in, I double checked the stamp on each nib to make sure I didn’t somehow mix up the “F” and the “M” nibs.  Everything looked right, the “F” nib was the one in the True Writer, and the “M” nib was there soaking in a glass of water to clean it out.

Now that I was 100% sure that I had the right nib in the pen, I went back to doing some writing and was again looking at some pretty wide strokes, so as you can see in the writing sample I compared it to my Pelikan M215 with a fine nib, and you can see a drastic difference.  After coming to grips with the fact that this nib might be mislabeled somehow, I began to realize that it did write REALLY nicely.  I get the feeling that this might be a medium or bold nib that is marked incorrectly, but the smoothness and flow are really remarkable, and I love how it feels to write with it.

I’m going to have to give Levenger a call in the next few days to see if I can sort out whats going on here, so Ill be sure to update you.  They have excellent customer service, so I’m not at all worried and am sure that whatever the situation they will straighten it out for me…who knows, I could just be crazy and this is what a fine nib writes like.

Update 11/16/2009 – Well, the Customer Service at Levenger did not disappoint,  they apologized for the issue, put a new fine size nib in the mail to me, and emailed me a filled out FedEx shipping label to send the old one back.  Ill be putting the old one in the mail tomorrow, and Ill come back with an update to the review once I get the new one and test it out.

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