New Nib Day: Schon Design L'il Dipper

A lot of people have been talking about the L'il Dipper dip nib from Schon Design, so I succumbed to FOMO and bought one, even though I have plenty of other dip pens and ink swatching tools already. 😅

One of the draws for this particular dip nib is that it can be threaded into almost any pen body that accepts JoWo nib housings. Since it was nearby, I put the L'il Dipper into this Little Pen Designs Acadia pen in the "papillion" acrylic material from Turnt Pen Co.

The main selling point is that the unique shape of this nib allows many different line widths, from very broad strokes to extra-fine lines, adjustable via writing angle. A video from Schon Design shows off the capabilities. Since I just got this nib yesterday and played around with it a little bit, I have some first impressions.

First a little background context: When I started making my ink swatch "trading cards" I settled on using a folded nib for ink swatching because I wanted something pretty easy to clean and would be simple to make a large swatch. But after a while I wanted a different way to swatch because the folded nib put down a lot of ink and didn't show shading properties that well as a result.

I recently started using a glass eyedropper to drip a couple drops of ink onto paper, then spread the ink around with a flat metal cap of a glass sample vial. I found that this made a lighter swatch and had enough saturation differences to see what it looked like both in lighter applications and heavier pooling. This was a good option, but I had to use a separate glass nib pen to write the swatch label.

Enter the L'il Dipper! Its shape allows a huge range of line variation, but doesn't just dump the ink heavily like the folded nib tends to do.

This nib is different from other dip nibs in that you have to use it in particular orientations if you want to write. In the video above it can be seen that there's a slit down the full length of the nib, with a screw that keeps the slit at a specific width. If you want to write, you have to orient the nib with the screw either facing to the left or right, which orients the slit vertically as it would be in a regular fountain pen nib. You can then adjust the writing angle to adjust line width.

I found that with my regular writing angle of around 45-50 degrees, if I wrote with the screw "eye" facing out to the left, the line width remained constant, whether vertical or horizontal. You'll also see that the flat part of the nib is down in that orientation, but I was only using the tip of the nib when writing, so the flat area wasn't affecting the writing.

If I wrote with the curved side down at my regular writing angle, or with the screw to the right, then the line variation looks like an architect nib, where downstrokes are thin, and horizontal strokes are thicker.

In the writing sample for Wearingeul (ignore the misspelling below 🤦‍♀️) The Sorrows of Young Werther, I showed some vertical and horizontal strokes with the nib in the orientations I described above. I am not sure if I could get proficient enough with writing using the L'il Dipper to clearly show its architect nib style with my small writing (because I prefer architect grinds), but it's cool to know that it's possible.

If you look closely in the swatches, you can see some lines that look like they might be scratches to the paper, but I'm not sure if they actually are. The nib did not feel scratchy to me when I was laying down broad strokes of ink. I really like that you can clearly see shading and pooling. I haven't tried any shimmer inks yet, but I suspect this nib will really show off both the ink and shimmer characteristics well.

The nib cleaned off well swishing it around in a container of water, then dabbing it dry with a cloth. But I did notice later that unless I specifically shoved a corner of paper towel into the screw area, some traces of ink remained there even after thorough swishing in water.

I didn't notice this until after I had used the nib with 3 different bottles of ink, so I'm annoyed that a trace of ink from the first and second bottles were introduced when I dipped into the second and third bottles. It was a miniscule amount, since I did wash and dry off the nib before dipping again, but a non-zero amount nonetheless. Keep a little brush handy to scrub at the screw hole to really clean out the ink, especially if you use a shimmer or pigment ink.

Well, that's all I have so far. I will be using the L'il Dipper for my ink swatching from now on and report back on any other UX notes I may have. Let me know if you have a L'il Dipper and have any tips on how to use it well.