How to make an 005 Pigma Micron pen out of a larger nib size (aka pen geekery)

It's probably an understatement that I'm a bit obsessed with pens, and I am constantly frustrated with the lack of pigment ink colors available in the tiny nib sizes in the various brands.  I've figured out a few tips and tricks for anyone else who might be similarly obsessed.

Pigma Micron makes really nice pigment ink pens, although only about half of their colors are available in the 005 size.  Some of my favorites like the spring green and yellow, as well as some of the darker colors like burgundy, dark teal, and navy are only available with larger nibs.  It is actually pretty easy to convert those colors into 005 nibs though if you have a small pliers and a bit of patience.

Use an 005 pen that is almost out of ink for this, any color will work, but if you are switching a light color like yellow, you might want to start with a used up orange or something else light (not necessary though if you don't have one).  In these pictures I actually did use an old 005 black, and turned it into a spring green.  Use a small pliers to take the end cap off of both pens, and take out the ink cartridges.

Take the 005 pen without the cartridge inside and scribble to your hearts content to get as much ink out of the nib as possible (this is where the patience comes in).  It will take awhile, the nib is actually a fairly long piece that extends almost an inch into the ink cartridge, but eventually it will run mostly dry for you.

Then, once most of the ink is out of the 005, you can put your new color cartridge into the pen, and put the corresponding end cap onto it so you can identify your pen color.  Then you will need to start scribbling again, because the new ink will push out any remaining ink from the original color, so you will have a color transition for a bit (more patience needed).

Once you have gotten the rest of the original color out, you are done!  Put the new color cap on the pen, you can use a sharpie or label of some sort to identify the new nib size if you want, and get to drawing.  Thereafter when your spring green 005 runs dry, just buy whatever size they have in stock and put the new cartridge into the 005 and you are good to go.



Copic Multiliners come in both refillable and non-refillable pens, the smallest size for the non-refillable color pens is 0.05, but in actual use the line you get from them is very similar in size to the 005 Pigma Micron.  It only comes in about 5 colors though, the colors they do have are different enough from the Pigmas that it is worth having both.  They also have a very nice light grey which Pigma doesn't have.

The refillable Copic Multiliners have more colors, including a light blue and a very light teal which none of the other brands have, although the smallest nib size they go down to is 0.3, which is way too thick for my purposes.  They sell replacement nibs for the refillable Multiliners, although the website says that the smaller nib sizes only work on the pens they are intended for (which only come in black), but in reality, you can buy replacement nibs for the smaller black pens and use them in the larger color pen sizes and they work just fine.  I found that again, Copic's 0.05 replacement nib gave the same size line as the 005 Pigma Micron.  So again, more colors to use.

And lastly, Prismacolor makes fine line pigment pens, I don't think the quality is quite as nice as the others, but again, there is some variation in the basic colors (the red is a little lighter and more orangey than the Pigma red, and the blue is a bit darker than the Pigma blue, etc), so they come in handy sometimes when you really need a subtly different color.

So there you have it, my weird obsession with pigment pens, out in the open for everyone to see.  Hopefully someone will find this information helpful, and if anyone knows of any other good pigment pens I should know about, please give me a heads up about it, thanks!


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