Leigh Reyes. My Life As a Verb.

You know how people band together to petition companies to bring back products?

I’m sure we won’t get enough to bring back the Osmiroid Drawing Pen Set, but for the sake of entry-level fountain pen obsessionistas, we should try. Where else can you get a nib with an overfeed, a medium stub and a copperplate nib in one package, together with a lever-filling pen body?

Seven assorted nibs. This was a great find on eBay, what I like to call a blurry photo win.

These are compatible with Esterbrook Renew-Points, according to Richard’s Pens (scroll down), but I haven’t tried that. There are more than enough nibs here for hours of playtime: Rola Extra Fine, Rola Hard Fine, Rola Soft Fine, Rola Hard Medium, Rola Soft Medium, Copperplate and Sketch.

I do have another Sketch nib in another Osmiroid. This one has most of the iridium intact, but it feels like it was the most-used one in the group.

The “hardness” or stiffness of the nib is achieved by changing the shape. The soft medium has sloping shoulders to allow the nib to feel “soft” while in use, whereas the hard nib has broad shoulders that taper to a stub-like shape. Even the feeds are different.

Is there enough difference in the way the nibs write to make each one valuable for someone who loves to draw?

Like most nib choices, it comes down to 1) feel in the hand during writing and 2) line on paper. The Sketch nib is slightly oblique, slightly stubby, and semi-flex.

I’ve enlarged all these samples for a better appreciation of the quality of the lines.

The Copperplate nib has very long tines, which allow it to become semi-flex, even if the metal itself feels like thick steel.

The medium hard and medium soft stubs don’t look that different on paper, as you can see. The difference is in how they feel while being used. The medium hard feels like a steel calligraphy nib; the medium soft feels closer to a standard gold nib.

I got mine for less than USD 50 on eBay. Good luck hunting down your set – it’s worth it.

I googled “Osmiroid 75″ and discovered that one  of my favorite flex nib artists wrote about his Osmiroid sketch pen on the Fountain Pen Network. It’s good to know that someone seems to like this unusual nib as much as I do, albeit he did write his review 5 years ago. (Antoniosz, if you’re reading this, do you still have that pen?) That review also has a very informative scanned image of the nib options available for the Osmiroid 65 and 75.

The Osmiroid 75 is a piston filler. The nib screws out, just like Pelikan and Esterbrook nibs.

At first, I thought the tip of the nib had worn down; and then I realized it was really this almost-stub. An large overfeed helps keep the tip supplied with ink. There is also a slit on either side of the rectangular cut-out in the middle of the nib, which reminds me of slits cut in steel nibs to make them more flexible. The feed is an unusual configuration as well.

My pen has a tiny crack near the ink window, which I hope to be able to seal. So far, though, it hasn’t been a problem.

Note the slight parting of the tines. Because of the shape of the nib, though, this slight spread makes for a wide line.

It’s a sweet nib for both writing and sketching.

I used Noodler’s Golden Brown in it before Noir Diamant, in an earlier sketch. The variety of lines that can be achieved by both changing the angle of the nib to the paper and the pressure is quite pleasing.

If you’re into fountain pens more for the result rather than the pen hoarding part of the hobby, you can’t do much better than a pen like this.