Pen Vocabulary

Here you can see the various parts of a pen and the names for each part.
This may help when we’re talking about your pen.

006

005

The nipple on the back of the housing is the part that the converter fits to.  I’m often asked to make pens with vintage nibs to take converters but the problem with this is that they don’t have a nipple.  The nipple helps with flow by creating capillary action from the converter into the feed to the nib.  If you cut the nipple off the feed above and tried to write with it, you would experience some skipping and poor performance.  The feed nipple inside the housing nipple is very important to flow.

 

001

The barrel shoulder, or the step, is what the cap lip seals against.

008

010

The inner shoulder is where the lip of the section seals inside the cap.  This helps keep it from drying out.  On some models the cap lip is where the seal is made.


Problems with  your parts.

If you commonly remove your nib unit for cleaning be very careful not to over tighten.  Doing so can possibly stress the housing and create a small crack.  There may be instances where the housing is never removed but still cracks.  Sometimes these things just happen, but luckily, not very often.

cracked housing

3 thoughts on “Pen Vocabulary”

  1. Well this is the vocabulary about pen parts. You may please add more like filling mechanisms, nib tips- round F M B etc, then Italic-cursive and crisp/ oblique, left-handed etc. Also some problems like skipping, singing, blurping may be added. You can perhaps enlarge the scope by making it Glossary -cum- Tutorial. It will make pen users aware of what to ask for and what to check while buying a pen from a store.

  2. Hi. Im teaching English to a student online who sells books and is just about to sell pens on Ebay. He will find this vocabulary extremely useful so thank you! I just read about your kickstart project too. I think it is amazing that you do something so giving to your students and also have a real genuine creative passion for something like this. A big thumbs up from me! 🙂

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