Ebonite or hard rubber fountain pens can be modified to take dip pen nibs like this tachikawa g pen nib. The hard rubber can be carefully heated and formed into the necessary shape to accept the nib and provide capillary flow of ink to the tines. This allows one to do do dip pen illustration without the limitations imposed by traditional dip pens and ink wells. Fountain pen ink however comes with it's own drawbacks compared to the ease and reliability of India ink. Old fountain pen nibs also offer a good amount of line variety and can be very flexible and expressive. All of these pens are eyedroppers and can be completely filled with ink. From left to right they are; an eclipse with a gold flex nib about #3 in size, a large no name pen with a very flexible # 6 gold nib, a thin hintz pen modified to take large dip nibs. Before the development of modern stainless steel and plating technology gold was used for pen nibs because it was the only available metal that did not corrode and could be accurately tempered to a springy hardness.