I like art materials. I have accumulated quite a lot over the last few years. I used to work away from home for extended periods and always found time to check out Cass Art and Jackson’s before heading home. I would walk through the door and my wife’s usual greeting was Christmas has come early, again … Surely, the next time I was home I would start sketching and painting. This never happened, buying them and actually using them were mutually exclusive. Then I retired and had no excuse. At the start of 2026 I went sketching on a weekend course in Grantchester and things took a turn.
A few weeks later I found myself writing the following confession to the course group:
My name is David and I am a penaholic. It started four weeks ago in a church hall, of all places, in a sleepy Cambridgeshire village, where I met like-minded people; good and honest people. Or so I thought.
I should have known better. The village was notorious in the 1960s for having a murder every week for eight weeks every year [geddit? Grantchester – see TV series]. I digress.
Some of the people — and they know who they are — talked about pens. Pen collections. Pen shows. Capless pens. And not only about fine nibs, but ultra extra fine nibs. At that point they might as well have been handing out crack cocaine.
One bloke, the ringleader obviously, spoke about Posting nibs and Music nibs, and casually mentioned where to get them.
That was it. I was gone.
Now here I am. Five days clean. It’s been hard. I tell myself I’ll be fine.
My only advice? Stay away from these people… at least until June.
Things have not improved, just ask Cult Pens, my fountain pen retailer of choice. If I was a gambler the betting shop would not allow me to bet anymore given the money I have spent. Fortunately, for Cult Pens they have no such moral responsibility.
I did indeed buy those UEF and Music nib pens along with several more since. I intend to write about and show these pens and anything else in the way of paper and ink that the Loose Nib fancies. They will be far from technical reviews and are unlikely to discuss finials, tines and barrels and will be more about how they look and feel to write and sketch with. There are plenty of YouTubers who discuss the ins and outs of pens and do this very well too.
The Platinum Century 3776 with Ultra Extra Fine Nib and probably most peoples favourite water proof ink, Platinum Carbon Black.
This is a lovely pen with a lovely weight and balance. It is super fine; fine, generally, being the choice of most urban sketches which is also the size I prefer for general fountain pen writing – I am not a fan of bolder nibs. The nib is so fine it can almost tear into some cheaper paper and clog the nib up. But on 165gsm plus paper it moves really well with some feedback which I like to feel as the nib moves across the page.
As I mentioned the Platinum was my first sketching pen. My first pen after leaving school was a Montblanc Classique, purchased when I formed my own one-man company in 2008, with the intent of signing big money contracts. This pen had a medium size nib, not that I was aware in 2008 that pens came with varying size nibs. My Montblanc was what they* call a wet writer, that is, it dumped a river of ink when the nib touched the paper and the line is a lot bolder in width than I like to write with, but who cares it was a Montblanc**. Needless to say I didn’t sign any contracts with it, let alone any big money ones, and I, sadly, didn’t really enjoy writing with it given its bolder, smoother (as opposed to a nib with feedback) and wetter line.
There is also a difference in sizes between western and eastern manufacturers. Japanese nibs generally tend to write finer than their European counterparts, although there is no universal standard and individual manufacturers vary. As a rough rule of thumb, a Japanese Medium, for example, can often produce a line closer to what a European manufacturer might call Fine.
So my Lamys and Kawecos, both German brands, were both purchased in the smallest nib sizes I could get, which at the time of purchase I thought they would not be far off the Platinum UEF, but they were and a lot off. I have been able to resolve my wider nib issues by purchasing standalone nibs and changing the bolder nibs with finer nib sizes. Both these companies make spare nibs for interchanging with pens, at a much cheaper price than buying a new pen with a different size nib. They are so simple to change that even I could do it. Well done Kaweco and Lamy!
The Kaweco’s are very small in length and the plastic ones super lightweight. I love my brass version which has a great weight, as you would expect. The Lamy Safari’s are used by most Urban Sketchers or were at the start of many sketcher’s fountain pen journey. It is almost like a rites of passage for any Urban Sketcher. They are relatively cheap so in someways it is a no brainer to get one.
They are excellent pens and if you use the converters you can fill them with waterproof ink if your sketch is going to use any watercolour. Most of the Kaweco and Lamy cartridges I have used tend to be water-soluble.
As good as these pens are, you may have gathered I don’t tend to use these pens much now and being the founder/ CEO/ FD of The Loose Nib, social hierarchy dictates I use a more sophisticated pen(s) to reflect my social standing.
Given my references to the word nib in the text above, you can probably understand my reasoning in calling this website the Loose Nib!
Onto the next pen …
*’They’ being pen officiandos of the fountain pen world.
** With all my recent purchases I have stayed clear of Montblanc pens, mainly because I hear that even their extra fine nibs are still pretty bold. Nevertheless if a MB 146 or 149 crossed my path at a fair price I would probably bite the hand that offered it.
The Loose Nib 
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