I got this Noodler AHAB flex nib pen to practice line variations. Conventional fountain pens have a nib that writes a consistent width line, e.g, a FINE nib will write a fine line, a BROAD nib writes a wider broad line and so on. A flexible nib is pressure sensitive. The more pressure we press on the pen when writing, the wider line it writes and therefore creates letters of different width for a more artistic presentation. It does require a lot of practice.

Here the nib's both sides were ground out to make the tip more flexible and it worked. Of course now it looks uglier than before but I'm an engineer by training and function is always more important than form.

I received a dip pen and 10 different nibs today. The easy of nib exchanges, the flexibility of the nib and the line variations of a dip pen is hard to match.

This is a test to check the effectiveness of any Ultrasonic cleaner: suspend a piece of aluminum foil (those used in the kitchen) in the water and let it run for a few minutes. This is how it looked like after running the ultrasonic cleaner for 3 minutes with plain water and no detergent or cleaning solution. Amazing, isn't it? The tiny indentations were created by the microscopic action of the microscopic water bubbles created by the high frequency (42 KHz) of the ultrasonic cleaner. These bubbles constantly formed/exploded on the surface of the object to remove any particles that clung to the surface.

I attended my first pen show at the Los Angeles International Pen Show at Manhattan Beach, California. It was nice to see all the pens in one place and I had the chance to try out several pens with ink.