Frankenpens: the good, the baddies, and the hecking awesome
And a comment on the psyche of the person performing frankenpenning
Before we dig into this topic, I want to clarify the terminology for those readers who may be unfamiliar with the term ‘frankenpen’, be they new to the hobby, or just general purists. As we all know from English Lit 101 (or, let’s face it, the Internet), Marry Shelley wrote Frankenstein as a dare in 1818 while vacationing with Lord Byron and Percy Shelley who were being weird in the true manner of the 19th century aristocrats. Dr. Frankenstein collected body parts from various deceased (and unwilling) donors, sewed them up, and hoped to bring them — or it? — to life. The experiment was a success, and thus the first horror novel was born! When we translate the concept to fountain pens, we are left without sentience or horror, but we still get pretty good results: some pens can lend parts to other pens, and with a little magic, a pen made up of various parts that somehow work together is born!
Now why would one do something like that? Maybe you like your Pilot Metropolitan but wish it came in an extra fine nib, which it doesn’t, so you buy a Penmanship or a Kakuno and swap nibs. In doing that, you have created a frankenpen of sorts!
That being said, I wanted to explore the levels of frankenpenning; not all frankenpens are the same, and there’s more to it than ‘simply’ swapping nibs. I’m sure I’ll get flack about calling nib swapping frankenpenning, but hear me out: any pen that gets modified with parts that are not its own is technically a bunch of different pen parts — that weren’t intended to be put together — put together.
Without further ado, let’s start with level one — the good.
The good: you are swapping regular parts (level one)
Purists will disagree with me and say, ‘but,
, this is just a nib swap with extra steps, much like you’re being extra’, and I would agree with you. However, I am still technically correct1, based on the fully arbitrary way I interpret the definition. Point in question: even Goulet Pens encourage their customers to use their Jowo nibs to frankenpen Jinhaos.If you’re a level one frankenpenner, you have done one of the following: received a pen without the nib so you put your own nib in it; received a pen with a wonky nib and swapped it with a good nib; you received a pen with a perfectly fine steel nib but wanted an upgrade to gold, so you bought a $125 nib for your $100 pen; or, which is what I absolutely always do, you received a pen with an amazing nib, but you already have that nib so you bought another pen with a different nib in a boring color to act as a donor (and you hope you can sell the donor pen in the end).
The nib to pen price ratio was 125:160 and well worth it.
In most cases, it will be a straight swap. Your friction fit pen has nothing against your strong hands and grippy fingers, and so you pull the nib and the feed straight out, chuck the nib, frantically rush back to it to make sure it’s okay, and then fit the new nib on the feed and push them into your pen together.
Sometimes, your converter will be garbage (not naming names, but I will heavily imply that it’s something with three balls, low capacity, starts with a ‘con’ and ends with a ‘40’), and you’ll buy extra Majohn A1 converters because they’re what Con 50 should have been, and now your $160 Vanishing Point works as intended.
The baddies: you realize random nib units fit in your pen (level two)
I mean absolutely no disrespect when I say this, but I once won a Tianzi Urushi fountain pen which is absolutely gorgeous, but the nib leaves something to be desired. However, while investigating on the internets, I found out that I can put the whole Bock nib unit in this pen, straight swap. Sounds a bit level one-y, doesn’t it? Well, yes and no.
Titanium Bock nib in Tianzi Urushi
For example, we all love Penbbs pens and we know their nib selection is now pretty solid, with various calligraphy nibs being offered, and as of a few years back, you can upgrade your pen to a gold nib. Bock nib units will fit in the 456 model without even having to thread them in. Unscrew the Penbbs nib unit, push the Bock in. Voila, you now have a titanium nib in your Penbbs.
Penbbs 456: if you want, you can push the whole nib unit in.
I’d venture to say hacking nib units belong on level two as well. There are success stories about frankenpenners taking Jowo nibs and fitting them in Bock housings and vice versa; but you can also just find parts you need on Flexible Nib Factory and go wild.
The idea behind this level of mixing and matching is that you’re super happy about your pen but you’re also very anal about how you want it to write; I want titanium nibs in my Penbbs pens sometimes, and, so help me banana gods, I will have titanium nibs in my Penbbs pens.
Just note that not every Penbbs pen will take the Bock nib unit; frankly, not every pen within the same model will take it either. YMMV.
The hecking awesome: you like the nib so much you have a pen custom made to house it (level three)
Sometimes you have the most beautiful, juicy, broad nib in the most boring pen in the world. I may be thinking Pelikan M1000, but that’s your insinuation, not mine.
Anyway, as you may know from previous posts, I recently fell in love with the M1000 nib, and the plain body just doesn’t do it justice. Since the nib is hecking huge, it won’t fit in most other pens, plus it’s very likely keyed in or something even sillier than that; instead of suffering the sight of the boring body, the owner of this pen — before I pen-napped2 it — decided to have an independent maker create a pen around the nib. Basically, life is too short to use a boring pen3.
Don’t believe me? See for yourself.
The nibbage!
The idea is to find a maker who is as wild as you are and who is willing to accept the challenge of housing something that most people won’t be arsed to do. I’m no pen maker, but I assume it’s easier to just make a housing for a #6 Jowo or Bock nib. In figuring out how to fit a bigger, better nib into a new pen body, you’re doing the fountain pen community — and therefore, the world — a huge service.
That being said, getting to this level of frankenpenning is definitely something to strive for. Beware, though; once you start, it’s unlikely you’ll want — or even be able — to stop. You won’t have created a monster, don’t worry, because most of these pens will write perfectly well (unless of course you break parts while swapping them, and that’s why I want to make a PSA: do whatever you do with your pens t your own risk!). The real risk is the fact you will always want more.
Collecting fountain pens is going to bankrupt you at one point, but I still dare to say you’ll end up better off than Dr. Frankenstein.
Let me know what kind of monsters you’ve created — or what sort of a frankenpen you wish to have!
The best kind of correct.
Kidnapping the pen. I make up a lot of words in this blog don’t I.
I am paraphrasing the Retro 51 idea of course.
ah so what you're saying is that "frankenstein" is not the monster OR the doctor, but the doctor's pen. Finally that story makes sense to me. Thank you!
Same, same but a little different. I like ebonite so I asked Shawn Newton to modify one of his jumbo Nikko ebonite pens to accept an M1000 nib unit. Pelikans look alike (unless you spend a gob of dough on a limited edition). I now have a unique pen, with a top tier nib, while supporting an independent artist, for essentially the same price.