About our overfeeds

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Our overfeeds are designed to let you draw wider lines for a longer time using our five most popular flexible pointed nibs: Zebra Manga G, Nikko Manga G, Tachikawa Manga G, Brause Rose, and our Sketch nibs. 

The overfeed rests on top of the nib and does two things: it holds more ink on top of the nib, and it feeds the ink to the flexible nib when the nib bends back and lifts off the underfeed.

Overfeed in pen

Every pen has an underfeed, usually just called "feed", which does a good job under normal circumstances. When you start working with flexible nibs, problems arise. First problem is that the nib, when flexing, bends back and lifts off the underfeed. This interupts the standard flow of ink to the nib, and that's when your drawn line soon runs out of ink. If you are using an overfeed, the extra ink stored on top keeps flowing to the tip, which enables you to draw continue drawing while the nib is full flexed.

Second problem is that the sides of the flexing nib can spread too wide to maintain a flow to the tips. At some point the sides of the nib spread too widely to sustain a solid line of ink, and you get what's called "laddering" or two separate lines of ink, each running off the two points of the separated nib. 

If you are using an overfeed, and it is in the correct position, the tip slides into the widening gap between the two sides of the nib, which sustains the flow of ink to both tips as well as across both sides so your drawn line doesn't break into two trails. 

As a result, an overfeed can increase your thick lines by a factor of ten, which means your thickest line will be ten times as thick as your thinnest line. 

Our pens that contain overfeeds are specifically configured for the overfeed. You cannot use our overfeeds in pens that have not been configured for them. If you do not want to use the overfeed, you can remove the overfeed and replace it with a spacer until you want to switch back to the overfeed.  

See all our pens with overfeeds.