Jowo 6 Nib Unit | Waterman's | #5 Ideal | 14kt Gold | Broad Super Flex Stub

🥇 Grade: B
🏠 Housing: Nikko Black Ebonite, JOWO #6
🔱 Nib: Waterman's Ideal 14 Kt 5
🖋️ Line Spec: B/EF – 4B | 0.75mm V / 0.25mm H – 1.43mm (5.72x)
🌡️ Flexibility Pressure: 320g Super Flex
📐 Dimensions: 21.07mm nib length past housing
⚖️ Weight: 1.713g

The stub here is crisp, and it's wide before you add any pressure.

Unflexed you're laying a 0.75mm downstroke against a 0.25mm cross stroke, so ordinary handwriting comes out with three times the contrast standing still. Push downward with moderate pressure, a Super Flex on my scale, and the tines open to a 4B at 1.43mm, about 5.7x measured off the cross stroke. The corners stay sharp the whole way out so the swell keeps its stub edge at full flex, the return snaps clean.

"Ideal" was the trademark, not a model. Waterman's Ideal-in-globe logo turns up in the trade press by March 1902, the trademark filing claims first use in September 1904, and barrel imprints start carrying it in March 1905, after which it went on nearly everything Waterman sold for the next forty years. For the nibs, they only got the simple Ideal trademark stamp instead of a globe, which was only adopted when Waterman's was sold to the french and became Waterman.

I've rated this B. Light wear from use, the imprint reads clearly, and the tines are original and even with the stub corners unaltered and factory. If the tipping looks short when you look down at it, that's correct for the period: the old method set the tipping alloy under the tip inside molten gold and ground it back so only the contact face shows, and Waterman stubs of these years are built that way. Custom tuned and fit as a unit here, nib heat-set to its black Nikko ebonite feed, seated in the JOWO #6 housing, and written in as a finished assembly.

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