Sailor Specialty Nib Comparison Part 2: Cross Nibs!

Hi everyone, it's Daisy here. Welcome to today's video. Today we have essentially part three of our three-part series on Sailor Specialty Nibs. And in today's video, I'm going to be doing writing samples of the Cross Point Series Nibs within Sailor Specialty Nib lineup. So if you missed it, we've previously done a Sailor Specialty Nib overview video that was like part one. Part two was our Naginata Nib writing sample video, and part three is going to be the Cross Point Series Nibs. So all of these make up Sailor Specialty Nibs, which consists of seven different nibs, and I'll name them for you now. There's the Naginata Togi, there's the Naginata Fude Damanen, there's Naginata Concord, there's Naginata Emperor, and then on the Cross Point side, there's the Cross Point, Cross Music, and the Cross Concord. So four, three, seven, and today's video is going to be specifically looking at the three Cross Point Nibs. So what are the Sailor Specialty Nibs? If you haven't watched the previous videos and you're just here for this one, I'll give you a quick overview of them, very quick. The Sailor Specialty Nibs are made up of these seven nibs that were released by Sailor starting from 1991 with the Naginata Togi Nib. These nibs were worked on by Nobuyoshi Nagahara and Koyama Gunichi, who were two of Sailor's Nib Specialists at the time in 1991. After the Naginata Togi, several different nibs were developed, and all of these nibs have really, really unique looks to them, and the tippings on these nibs are ground in such a way that make them perfectly suited for Japanese character writing. So that's what their intended purpose is, is Japanese calligraphy or Chinese calligraphy writing. Another part of them is that a lot of them can be written with on different angles. So for today's writing sample, we're going to be writing with these nibs on a high angle, mid angle, and a low angle. We're going to be doing down strokes as well as cross strokes just to see if there's any variation there. And we're also going to be doing a very quintessential stroke in Japanese calligraphy called the Harai stroke. I myself, I don't write characters, I don't write Japanese or Chinese, but being able to write these strokes is a really, really important part of why these nibs were created. So I'm just gonna do my best to approximate these strokes to show you the ability of these nibs to be able to create really brush-like expressive strokes. And hopefully I'll do a good job there. So that's about it for the Sailor Specialty nibs. There's a bunch of them. There are some that were released a couple of times and are more exclusive or rare than others. And in the history of like the 30 or 40 years since they've been released, there have been more than just these seven. Some have been discontinued, some were only like a single time released, like I was saying. But today we have these seven. And specifically the cross point nibs, what's special about them is that they are in fact two nibs. So it's two nibs layered on top of each other. And sometimes they're called stacked nibs because you're basically stacking one nib on top of another nib. So stacked nibs or the cross point nibs have two nibs that produce a line going this way horizontally, as well as a line in between where the tines meet up going down vertically. And as a result, if you are looking at the nib from the tip of the nib, if you're looking straight at the nib, what you see when you look at these nibs, if you had like a zoomed in lens, is you would see a cross. You would see a vertical line and you would see a horizontal line of where these nibs are meeting. And that is where the name cross comes from. So I actually have a little picture to show you guys because it's hard to get a closeup on the camera. But these nibs, when you get them, come with this little booklet and Sailor has actually provided us with a zoomed in shot of the cross. So you can see here in this little booklet, this is exactly what the zoomed in shot looks like of a cross point series nib. You see the horizontal and you see the vertical and together they make a cross. Okay, so let's dive right in with some writing samples with the Cross Point, the Cross Music and the Cross Concord. I'm gonna start with the Cross Music here. You can see here as I'm turning the nib that it has this sort of V-shaped layer at the tines. And that is in fact that second nib that's stacked on top of the first nib. So the results of the nibs, which I forgot to mention earlier, why do this? The point of doing this is ink flow. So two stacked nibs and all of those crosses, that is where the ink can be supplied to the paper through capillary action. So as a result of having all those points of contact from the paper, you just get a really, really wet, juicy ink flow for all these pens. So this is the Cross Music. I'm gonna do a high angle here and an inverse. Okay, so you can see here from this writing sample that the top line here I produced with a high angle, the pen being held at a 90 degree angle to the paper. The middle line here was at mid angle to the paper and the bottom line here is at a very low angle to the paper. This line here with the needle point writing and the most faint writing, that is with the nib inversed. So, and then these are some quick cross strokes and down strokes at a high, mid and low angle. And then these are some of those calligraphy, Japanese calligraphy strokes called sweeping strokes. So you can do sweeping strokes in lots of different types of strokes, but sweeping just specifically speaks to the way that you're stopping the stroke. And in this type of Japanese calligraphy stroke, you are sweeping the brush upwards. So what you should see is a very faint line of ink with no ink pooling at the end of the stroke versus some of the other strokes, you would see a big pool of ink and maybe a dot because you're coming to a full stop at the end of the stroke. So this is a Harai stroke versus some of the other strokes that Japanese calligraphy uses. This is a nib that is kind of resembles an architect nib very closely. So at the mid angle and the low angle, you get these very sharp contrast, like look here, you get this very, very sharp contrast in between the down stroke and the cross stroke, which is essentially what you would see in an architect nib. But of course an architect nib doesn't get you the expressive calligraphy strokes that you would see here. And because of that stacked nib, you see shading even in like a blue, black, black ink, which you normally wouldn't see shading in because of how wet that ink flow is and how much ink is being supplied to the nib. All right, so next up, let's look at the cross points. The cross points I have here is a fun one. I love writing with this nib. It produces such thick, bold lines and it is so smooth and satisfying to write with. Even at a high angle here, this is like a medium, I would say. So like, or like a medium fine maybe. Oh no, I really think it's more of a medium. So if the finest line this pen can make is a medium, then can you imagine? This is the mid angle. Okay, it can't even fit the word fox on there. And then the low angle. So much ink. Oh my gosh. This would be so beautiful with like a shading ink or a sheening ink. Okay, and it's once again, not the best on the tip, which is a common thing that I'm seeing in the specialty nibs, except for maybe the Cloude de Manon and except for the Concord. Okay. Some cross strokes and down strokes. Okay, wow. And then here. Wow, okay. And then some calligraphy strokes. This pen is so fun to write with because of how thick the tipping is. It produces extraordinarily thick, bold characters in most of the angles that you're writing with. And because of how big the tipping is, it's really like so smooth to write with. And it just feels like the whole nib is making contact with the paper. There's no scratchiness whatsoever because of the combination of the large tipping. And it's like a flatter tipping. It's not a ball tipping that you would find in a lot of European broads. It's kind of like a flat tipping. And the 21 carat nib, it makes for such a fun writing experience. Highly recommend. Please try this pen out. It might not be the most functional for everyday writing in your journal, but I just think it's a great nib to know about. So the last nib, the third nib within the Crosspoint series is the Cross Concord. If you've watched the Naginata video with the writing samples of the Naginatas, you'll know that the Concord is a nib that has been ground to be bent downwards like a bird's beak. And this is the same thing, the Concord, but in a stacked nib version. So it's gonna be wetter, and writing in inverse will be even thicker. So this, we will test out. This is basically like a nib backwards. So I'll show you what that means. Across. Concord. Writing with the nib facing up, you get really consistent lines at all the angles. But where this pen starts to get fun is when you flip it upside down. So that's where it's a little different from the rest of the pens in the Specialty series. So I'm going to flip the nib upside down now, and I'm going to write on the tip. Basically, all of the variation that you're able to achieve is on the inverse in this nib. And then I'm going to write in the mid here. This is the mid. This is so wet. This is almost like, I don't know, this is like if I was watercoloring or something. And then low. So it's interesting, on the low angle, you actually get less broad lines. You get thinner lines than on the mid. The mid is where you get the juiciest one. And then for some cross strokes, consistent on the mid angle, holding the nib upright. On the reverse, you get consistent lines holding the nib at a high angle. And as you lower the nib, you see a big contrast, like an amazing contrast. As you lower the nib in the inverse position, you get some really high contrast between the down strokes and the cross strokes for this nib, which is very cool. And of course, I'm expecting that the strokes on the right side of the nib are not too special, but probably on the inverse side, just looking at the way this nib is ground, that's where this nib is gonna stand out. So that is the Cross Concord. Such a fascinating nib. Okay, so there you have it. That was the Cross Concord, the Cross Point, and the Cross Music. I'll give you guys a little look at all three of them next to each other. Okay, so we have the Cross Music, the Cross Concord, and the Cross Point. I think that the Cross Music is probably the most predictable in how it behaves when you're looking at it relative to the rest of the specialty nibs. And the most shocking are probably these two. The Cross Point is just so broad and so bold in almost all of its angles, producing such beautiful strokes. And the Cross Concord does all of this amazing stuff on the inverse, which is so interesting and fun. And it just has so much ink flow. It has so much wetness that it even brings out shading and sheen in inks that don't typically shade or sheen. So that is amazing. And we talked about these Harai strokes, these Japanese calligraphy strokes. I thought I would bring in a little writing sample from a Sailor Zoom nib to show you the comparison. I've done four different angles of writing, the cross strokes and the down strokes in a 21 carat Zoom nib. And I've also done the same brush stroke, the same sweeping brush stroke using a Zoom nib as I did using all of the Sailor specialty nibs. And you can see how incredibly different they are. The Zoom nib produces the same line width throughout the stroke, and it's very difficult to get that sort of whisper of a stroke that you feel when you're lifting the brush up or when you feel like it looks here like you're really lifting the brush up versus here, you can't really tell that it's supposed to be lifting at all. It's definitely not the same. And these specialty nibs truly do shine out when you're doing character writing, I will say that. So I hope you enjoyed these samples using cross point series within Sailor specialty nib lineup. Let us know if you have any questions in the comments. And for those of you who don't know, these Sailor specialty nibs are available for testing in our store. They are not online because Sailor has pretty strict rules about keeping them in brick and mortar shops. That's just part of the experience that they wanna promote with these. And I do think that trying them out is so important for these nibs because you really don't know what to expect until you try these and they're surprising and shocking in many ways, in good ways. So yeah, be sure to stop by the store if you are around and you wanna check these out and let us know if you have any questions at all in the comments. Thank you so much for watching. Bye.