A little micromesh to save the day...

It seems like more often I am receiving fountain pen nibs that don't feel as smooth as I think they should be or the tines are not aligned properly or maybe other things I can't see that make what is supposed to be a great pen feel like a dud to me. It's frustrating, especially at the price point that some of these pens are selling for. My favorite workhorse pen is a Pilot with a "CM'' nib and I have had a couple myself. I recently sold one and the customer noted that it was not as smooth as they expected so we met and, lo and behold, it really was not the same nib I was used to having. We traded it out and the next one was like butter, as expected.

Just a couple weeks ago I purchased an Esterbrook Jurassic button filler for myself. It's lovely to look at and has a new filling mechanism for me so that's fun and I ordered it with a 1.1 Stub nib which I love. Theoretically this should have been perfect for me...but I hated it. It was leaving ink blobs and you could see lines where the tines touched the paper...it just did not write well and I regretted the purchase. A couple of days ago I got to thinking about the Pilot CM that I ended up fixing with just a few swipes of micromesh so I figured I would give that a try on this Esterbrook. Guess what?? Problem solved! It's a easy enough thing to do but I still don't think the end user should have to do this...I would love some more thorough quality checks. In any case this Esterbrook has been my only pen in use since then and I am loving it!