If you’re determined to work on your own nibs – and if you own and buy a lot of pens, you should learn some basic stuff – here are a couple of notes to hopefully help you out.
1- tine gap.
To test tine gap I run a bit of .002″ thick brass shim between the tines. If it’s really tight, ink may not flow worth a squat, and your pen will write very dry or not at all. You have to be careful not to adjust the gap too wide, or it’ll still behave poorly. It could write too wet, or ink won’t flow b/c the gap is too wide, impeding capillary action.
2 – tine alignment.
You’ll do alignment as you adjust the tine gap.
Sometimes you’ll have a little trouble adjusting things, and you might even bang your head against your desk like I do (don’t be like me), so it MIGHT be that your tip is twisted a little bit.
3 – twist.
If you look at your nib straight on with loupes, you might see something like one of these:
To adjust the twist, and get the tine walls sort of parallel with each other, I do this:
4 – final touches.
Put things back together and do any final adjustments you might need. Just don’t over adjust b/c you’ll have to go backwards and then you might mess up your nib and then you’ll be banging your head against your desk like I do sometimes.
If you want to send your other pens off for tuning or grinds, this is a not totally complete list of folks in the US that I recommend.
There are other great resources online so go search around.
This one is good-
Richard Binder nib tuning workshop.
And this blog also from Richard.
This is fun – Sheaffer’s Right to the Point.