Nib units

Fountain pen nib units have always been a bit of a mystery to me so I decided to start an article where I bring together a list of all the types and which pens use them. This is very much a work-in-progress and I hope to add more so that I can keep track of which pens can donate/receive each nib unit. I’ve largely borrowed photos from other sources and credited them as often as I can.

So, why do we have nib units? Well, all fountain pens lay down the ink using a metal nib which wraps around a plastic/ebonite feed, which delivers a constant ink flow to the nib. They are usually seperate items that just get held together by friction inside the grip/section but manufacturers quickly cottoned on to the idea that users wanted to swap out nibs but they didn’t like to fiddle with parts. To make it much easier they designed screw-in nib-units and they also discovered that they are quicker and easier to put together in the factory too, plus being more reliable because the feed and nib are held inside a case so it’s impossible to misalign them.

By far the biggest 3rd party manufacturers of nib units are the old German companies Bock & Jowo. In fact many pen well-know manufacturers have their own nib designs but they will actually get Bock or Jowo to make them using their housings. So the nib units from one manufacturer can often be swapped to another, if you know which brand uses which unit housing. Unfortunately though there are a plethora of different nib unit designs and of course, because they screw into the sections, you need to match the nib unit to the section that was made to receive it but here is a list of all the ones that I could find.

Asvine is interesting in that they are offering their own nib units OR Bock OR Jowo nib units in some of their pens. This allows you to swap in any unit you have from a compatible manufacturer and take advantage of different nib widths because Chinese companies tend to just stick to what sells there (EF, F & M). You still can’t buy the Asvine nib version and put a Bock or Jowo into it because the sections are specific to the nib family, but it still makes it possible to buy the Asvine Bock pen and then swap into it a Bock unit from another pen you already own or even buy off-the-shelf Bock nib units – even gold ones!

Lastly, you’ll notice a bit of terminology such as nib width and nib size which you need to get to grips with because that explains why some units can’t just be swapped even in the same manufacturer. So, nib width is just the width of the line it draws (EF, F, M, B, 1.1 etc) while nib size is the width of the actual metal nib. The majority are just measured by the diameter of the feed that it wraps around – usually 5mm, 6mm & 8mm which gets abbreviated to #5, #6 & #8.

Nib unit brands and which pens they are compatible with

Brand	Images	Which pens use them
Bock #6		Kaweco, Caran D’Ache, Conid, Conway Stewart, Delta, Edison, Graf von Faber Castell, Franklin Christoph, Monteverde, Pelikan, Stipula, and Visconti. They are also options on the Asvine V126, V169, V200, P20 & P30.
Jowo #6		Conklin, Monteverde, Esterbrook (Estie), Maiora, Opus 88, Edison, Bexley, Faber Castell. They are also options on the Asvine V126, V169, (V200?), P20 & P30.
Asvine #6		V126, V169, V200, P20 & P30
Asvine #8		P36, P50
Esterbrook (old)		J-series
Esterbrook (new)		Jr
Hongdian 26
Hongdian 32
Jinhao 26		Jinhao 82, 82 mini & 100 mini
Jinhao 35 (#6)		100 / X350 / 9056 / 9036
Jinhao 40 (#8)		x159 / 9019
Majohn / Moonman		Majohn C1, C4, T5, 600S, 800 & T1
Majohn / Moonman 35		Majohn Q1
Majohn / Moonman Dlike		Majohn new moon 2 or 3, Hunyuan, M7
Wingsung / Yongsheng / Junlai #6		629 (usually bought as a unit with the converter attached)
Wingsung / Yongsheng / Junlai #8		630
Montblanc	(no image yet)