🥇 Grade: B
🏠 Housing: Nikko Red Ebonite, JOWO #6
🔱 Nib: Warranted 14 Kt
🖋️ Line Spec: F/EF – 3B | 0.30mm V / 0.25mm H – 1.18mm (4.72x)
🌡️ Flexibility Pressure: 380g Flex
📐 Dimensions: 22.98mm nib length past housing
⚖️ Weight: 2.010g

Unflexed you're writing a 0.30mm downstroke against a 0.25mm cross stroke, so there's a little contrast in the line before you ask for anything. Push forward with moderate pressure and the tines open to a 3B at 1.18mm, about 4.7x, and the snap on the return is clean and controlled. That 1.18mm ceiling keeps the swell inside normal line spacing, so the nib stays comfortable on everyday pages and still has real flourish in it.

The stamp settles the gold and nothing else. Through the first two decades of the century almost no American pen company struck its own nibs; they bought from specialist gold-pen shops, Aikin Lambert, Fairchild, Heath, Eagle and smaller Manhattan outfits, put their own name on the barrel, and let the nib go out with a carat mark alone. The shops then got swallowed. Waterman absorbed Aikin Lambert's nibmaking around 1910 and Fairchild's operation appears to have followed within a few years, which is why a nib wearing only a gold guarantee belongs to the earlier stretch of that arc. It also means three identities sit on a pen like this and none of them match: the brand on the barrel, the mark on the nib, and whoever actually made it.

I've rated this B. There's light wear from use on the gold and nothing structural anywhere, the imprint reads clearly, and the tines are original and sitting even with the tipping intact. Standard bench work on this one: tines brought into alignment, tipping smoothed and brought up to a polish, then a fitting and flow tune with the feed and housing together. It sits in a red Nikko ebonite JOWO #6 housing on a matching ebonite feed, heat-set, and wrote its test as a finished unit.

Tested on Tomoe River 68gsm White with Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Black.