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Knock Me Over with a Feather Touch


I was surprised to discover recently that I have seven vintage Sheaffer pens with the Feather Touch No. 5 nib. Surprised, I think, because until a short time ago, this particular Sheaffer nib just hadn't made much of an impression on me. Not that I thought they were bad nibs, it was just that among my many Sheaffers I have so many excellent triumph, No. 3, No. 33, Lifetime, and inlaid nibs that the Feather Touch nibs were lost in the crowd.

The best nib I have ever written with was an extra-fine inlaid nib on my father's PFM III. One of my absolute favorites in my current collection is a fine palladium triumph nib on a Statesman snorkel: smooth, wet, never skips, a true pleasure. And I have a host of other excellent vintage Sheaffer nibs.

But the Feather Touch nibs, despite my having seven of them, had slipped under my radar. As I recall, the first couple of times I had used these nibs I found them either a bit scratchy or just a little lacking in personality in comparison to other Sheaffer nibs. Then a few weeks ago, in looking through my repair queue, I came across a burgundy Admiral touchdown filler I had acquired on ebay perhaps six months earlier but hadn't worked on yet. So I cleaned the nib and feed, replaced the sac and o-ring, gave it a quick polish, and inked it up with Aurora Black.

Wow, what a surprise! A wet extra-fine, perfect for writing mathematics; a very firm nib (a "nail") but really nice. This prompted me to take a closer look at all my FT No. 5 nibs. The photo above is of a FT No. 5 for a lever-filler; it will get a new sac later today. I also have two other Admiral touchdowns in the queue (one in black, one in green) that will be taken care of soon. In checking the seven FT No. 5 nibs I have, three are extra-fines, three are fines, and one seems to be a medium. One of the fine nibs is scratchy due to misaligned tines; it will also be worked on soon. I will be paying a bit more attention to these pens and making an effort to work them into the rotation more often.

If you enjoy resacing lever-fills and touchdowns, you can often get such pens with a FT No. 5 nib on ebay, where they are plentiful, for very little money. I've gotten most of mine for less than $15, and some of them, including the burgundy Admiral that has so impressed me, for less than $10. If you don't want to do the resacing, these pens can often be found with new sacs in the $25-$50 range. Vintage Sheaffers, you gotta love 'em.

Tools of choice today:
Sheaffer burgundy Admiral touchdown with EF Feather Touch No. 5 nib and Aurora Black ink
Cross Townsend with EF nib and Hero Doctor Blue-Black ink

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