Essential Guide to Feather Quill Pens (2020)

If you're looking to try quills and haven't previously worked with anything other than modern instruments, it is very likely a wise idea to start with an inexpensive, steel-nibbed fountain pen, such as the Lamy Safari or Pilot Metropolitan, as an intermediate step.

One of the things you learn as you become familiar with nibbed pens of any kind is that they can, and indeed must, be used with much less pressure than more modern types. The ink is much thinner than that of a ballpoint or rollerball, so less pressure is necessary for ink to flow into the paper; too, a nib is much more mechanically delicate, and using the same force you would with a ball pen will eventually damage it. (Or, if it's a gold nib, not so eventually.)

This is why starter fountain pens have always had steel nibs. Originally, these tools were used to teach writing to children, who would of necessity abuse their pens somewhat in the process of learning how not to do that. These days in many countries schools instead teach writing with pencils, but that in itself tends to create the bad habit of using excess force that someone learning to use nibbed pens will still need to overcome. (I certainly did! My hand doesn't hurt when I write any more, too, which is really nice.)

Just as fountain pen nibs are more delicate than ball pens, quill nibs are more delicate than even fountain pens. So if you haven't used a nib before, I would definitely advise first getting at least basic familiarity with a fountain pen, lest you frustrate yourself by constantly breaking quills.

(I'll be honest, I don't think a quill's worth the trouble, except purely as a flex. Everything a quill can give you in terms of writing experience, a gold-nibbed fountain pen can just as well, but fountain pens are a lot less fiddly and annoying to use - hence why, upon introduction, they so quickly displaced old-style dip pens. Having loose ink floating around in a bottle for all the time you're writing isn't just a recipe for disaster, but a guarantee of one - better not to take the risk, in my view..)

At the beginning of the pandemic, my family would go to Stowe Lake in Golden Gate Park pretty frequently to get out of the house and look at the geese. I picked up some feathers and made a quill pen based on this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EIgYQZZIes

I also made my own ink from beets, which looked pretty cool but faded quickly. Here's a photo: https://imgur.com/a/5zpj92t

One of the fun things about quill pens, if you're 40+ anyway, is you get to practice your cursive.

That does not have the cuts right. The first cut you make is opposite the side that will form the top of the nib. The second cut finishes at the back of the first cut...

Here: https://youtu.be/k3aPOXkzNPk?t=542

The beginning has a lot of the history of quill feather pens.