Alright so here’s that Parker Frontier with the creepy nib that was tipped twice. As you can see here, that seam between the extra ball of tipping makes for a blotchy and scratchy writing experience that just won’t do, so I’m giving this thing a nose job.
It’s been a long time since I’ve done any nib grinding so I decided to take it slow, and did all the grinding by hand on an arkansas stone instead of taking out the Dremel grinding wheel.
I ground the top off completely level with the rest of the nib, and took in the sides until that wrinkle disappeared. On the underside, I used the corner of the stone to round out the bottom until the wrinkle was not longer in the way of the writing surface of the nib. After all the strangeness from the double tipping was ground down, I decided to shape it into a cursive italic nib. Smoothing was done on 2500, 6000, and 12000 micro mesh.
And the pics:
Before:
After:
A “sticky” note:
While I haven’t shown it here I thought it might be useful to note that some models of the Parker Frontier were made with a soft-touch finish. After many years this soft-touch finish can degrade into a gooey sticky mess. Don’t chuck your pen out if this has happened to you!
The soft touch finish (or what’s left of it) can be removed with rubbing alcohol and some elbow grease. The material underneath is a very pleasant pearlescent plastic. It’s so nice I really don’t understand why they covered it up with the soft-touch yuck anyway.
Nib/Crease 