Edited w/ link: hairtearing frustration - trying to use quills

[abendgules]

I'd really like to get proficient with quills for callig.
I've known how to cut a quill for years, and have a goodly supply laid in, from when I lived close to the Thames, and saw the swans and Canada geese through a moult.
Yesterday I sat down w/ 4 touched-up quills and made - a dog's breakfast. My frustration grew as I tried one after another after another, all with blotchy and uneven results.
And I'm reminded why I gave up last time I tried to use quills - I can't seem to control the ink flow the same way I can with a steel nib.
I get a huge blort of ink, and then the remaining ink doesn't last through a single letter.
In desperation I stuck a brass reservoir up a quill, and got slightly better results, but there was still far too much ink in each letter, rounding the sharp edges and generally looking pretty awful.

Some possible explainations, in retrospect:
 - my quills have dried out and become brittle since they were cut. I did notice they seemed to 'chip' rather than shave when I was trimming them.
 - I'm starting w/ too small a quill nib. When I learned callig, I learned with a fairly broad nib and worked my way down to something less than 1mm wide. Here I was aiming for a 1mm wide nib, but couldn't seem to trim them consistently.

SO: questions -
Has anyone else 'converted' to quills from steel nibs - or anyone gone back and forth?
What difficulties did you face?
What helped you get better (practice is a given, honest - anything else)?

Also - has anyone successfully made a reservoir for a quill, that works? How, and with what?

ETA: found a photo essay on an Atlantian site - photos aren't great, but does include instructions on making a reservoir from thin brass sheet, or from aluminium drinks can.

Am also hoping to look at the YouTube  clip, but not at work...

Suggestions welcome.

x-posted to Dragon's Scribes

Comments

[pogbody.livejournal.com]

No help I'm afraid, although I will be interested to see other people's replies. I am having similar problems, although mine are probably down to general ignorance about using and cutting quills.

Sudden thought - I did a class back in the day given by Etienne on cutting quills, only he did not pull out that spiralled feathering on the inside. Something about it acting as a regulater for the ink? My memory is hazy....

[bend-gules.livejournal.com]

I've *read* of a clever trick of using part of the inside bits as a reservoir - it's in one of my intro-to-callig books.

I was hoping to hear from someone who'd actually made this work.

[pogbody.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately he is the only one I have ever come across who has mentioned anything to do with that. If all else fails, you may want to corner him at an event.....

[kes-zone.livejournal.com]

I remember reading that cast quills do not have the same consistency as plucked quills. That might be contributing to the problem.

[merlyn-gabriel.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I have never had much luck with quills so I am afraid I can't be any help. :(

[ethnowoman.livejournal.com]

I have used quills many times but never had a globby experience: I score a small slit in the nib (maybe you have done that already?), not enough to cut through just to make a little like on the inside, and the ink will sit there a little bit. Other than that, I dip a LOT. I have found quill writing to be way more slow than any kind of other writing. I usually dip (if memory serves) about three times per word. I don't know if there's a better solution?

[jauncourt.livejournal.com]

Argh. I know there is a trick to the preparation of the quill, because my calligraphy teacher spent a month or so drilling traditional methods into us. However, it was over 20 years ago and I took brushwriting as my traditional method, so, of course, what the preparation entailed did not stick. I recall that it did work, mostly, and she also constantly admonished us to practice.

ETA: I found this on youtube, which may or may not be helpful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrK9BgojJt8 (It does look good.)

[basal-surge.livejournal.com]

I've been using both quills and metal pens since about the mid '80s. I prefer quills, and have also had a lot of success using reeds. I taught myself calligraphy as a ten-12 yearold with a mix of 1890's vintage william mitchell knibs from my great aunt, and quill pens and reed pens that I made myself.

both these links were recently posted on the Lochac List. As a long time quill user, I disagree almost completely with both of them :-)

http://bookn3rd.com/?p=390

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1wyYh97LDk

Procedure I use:

Collect quills as and wherever I find them, either plucked or cast. Doesn't seem to matter in my experience. I've used domestic goose, swan, peahen, canada goose, rock eagle, wedgetail eagle, bustard, woodpigeon, crow, etc. Main flight pinion, big bird is about all you need to remember.

Heat a vessel of dry fine sand in the fire, to several hundred degrees - oven will work for this if you turn it up as hot as it will go. Use the cleanest quartz sand you can, as plain old beach sand these days is full of all sorts of crap and will smell awful as you heat it....

Carefully remove the heated sand, and stab each quill into and out of it for a split second, to about two or three inches depth, so that the whole barrel of the quill is heated, but not so long in the sand that it starts to bubble and burn (Split Second! quickly in and out; You may have to shake the sand up a bit as it will pack down after several stabbings. Don't spill or pour superheated sand on yourself, there's a reason it was used for seige defence). Leave the quills to cool. If you're only working with one (I tend to prepare many at once) then you can do this step by carefully heating the barrel of the quill by holding it near a candle flame. This heating step denatures and hardens the keratin of the quill so it is stiffer and will take a better knib.

I cut and remove the plume of the feather (and use that to fletch my arrows), although I occasionally leave a small tuft of the plume at the top of my pen when I'm doing public displays, so the common moro^h^h^h^h^h^Man can see that it is indeed a real feather.

I cut my pen in a similar way to that shown in the youtube video, but without the long parallel sided topcut, and I leave the internal membrane in the feather, as it makes a functional, if delicate, ink reservoir, if carefully trimmed. I cut the pen with a strong diagonal stroke, split the knib up to the point where I've left the membrane for a reservoir, cut the end off flat, but with the penknife tilted back towards the rest of the quill so that my knib has a chisel tip, and then a couple of side cuts to get the width I desire.

I personally NEVER DIP MY PEN IN THE INKWELL. DIP A QUILL PEN AND IT WILL BLOT. I keep a brush in my inkwell and load my pen with two or three drops added carefully to the reservoir at a time. I do this with both quill, metal and reed knibs. It's much tidier, easier to control ink levels, etc. I use this method exclusively with modern inks, but I do find that medieval and pre modern ink recipes are thicker and may require dipping, or brush loading with about twice the amount of ink.

I also use my quills the other way around compared to the method shown in that youtube clip. I find that a penload of ink (three our four drops) with a three to four mm wide knib lasts about five words of blackletter before needing reloading.

[basal-surge.livejournal.com]

Reservoirs - pretty much as shown on the atlantean site. I tend to only use them with reed pens, as with quills I use the internal membrane, as described above. As well as thin metal membranes, with reeds I've used a strip of the reed itself, cut to shape and tucked up the core of the reed. For brief use, a sliver of stiff paper or cardboard for a single use pen.

[ermingard.livejournal.com]

Try soaking your quills in lukewarm water for a couple of hours before cutting them, especially if they are old. Soak them for half an hour before use as well it makes them perform better and seems to help with cloven nibs. I find that a scalpel is the tool for cutting quills if you don't have acsess to a very very sharp and thin bladed knife
I think you may be trying to hold too muck ink on your nib, thus the blotchiness. A quill without a reservoir will need frequent dipping. Try to scrape of the extra ink against the rim of your ink container. Also, a modern ink is much more "gluey" in consistency than for example oak gall ink and that may affect how the quill performs as well.

[idaho-smith.livejournal.com]

>Some possible explainations, in retrospect:
> - my quills have dried out and become brittle since they
> were cut. I did notice they seemed to 'chip' rather than
> shave when I was trimming them.

This is quite possible; Feathers are only a protein-matrix like hair & nails. Think how much harder a nail clipping is, when you miss it on initial clear-up, then tread on it after it's dried out for a few days.

I'm no caligrapher. My only experience of writing with a quill was when I was about 8 years-old and two things ran closely together: Shortly after my Dad gave me my first penknife, he explained why penknives are called *pen*knives. Then my kid brother ran, hollering, at some swans (maybe white geese, but the end result was the same), and they shed some good flight-feathers before circling around and pecking his bum.
Once his wails had subsided, I picked-up 2-3 feathers and insisted I have a go at writing with them.

Cutting a long story short, I chopped these feathers across at about 40-degrees from axis. I don't think I bothered with either a secondary square-cutting or a nib-slit.
Then I had a go at scratchy writing with a pot of "modern" ink that my folks had for an old, unloved fountain pen. I was just learning my first joined-up handwriting at school. I initially found that I was getting 4-5 "strokes" at a letter per dip.
There was some spongey-junk in the barrel of the feather. I dug it out from one of the quills with the dreaded tool-for-taking-stones-out-of-horses-hooves* on my Swiss penknife. For the _life_of_me_ I can't remember which way round worked better as a pen, but one had a slight advantage, perhaps 40-50% more strokes-per-dip. Sorry, but it's been 20 years.

*I've recently found out what the damn thing was designed for. I'll let you know if asked, but it's a bit gory.

good luck

[sismith42.livejournal.com]

maybe pick Cait's brain this weekend? (pack some of the ones you've struggled with so she can see where they've gone off...)