New Lamy Dialog 3

[Penworks]

New Lamy Dialog 3 retractable fountain pen. I just received my new Lamy Dialog 3 pens in, late as usual. A couple were to be Christmas gifts and as luck would have it, they arrived the Monday after Christmas. As I inspected the pen while I was wrapping it for my son, I was so taken with it, that I snagged a Broad for myself!

I am a sucker for retractable nib fountain pens, they are just too cool. So here is a little review of this new retractable from Lamy.

Facts…. 5 ½” closed - 6 1/8 open, 0.531 width, Palladium finish, large 14K gold nib, twist action to deploy the nib, uses regular Lamy T10 cartridges or a Lamy Z 26 converter, supplied. Packaged in magnetic black wooden box similar to other Dialog pens.

This has the feel of a large pen, probably because of the width of the pen. Well balanced and not very heavy. To me it has the feel I am holding a tactical instrument, like a 50 caliber bullet. When I deploy the nib and give it the twist to open, it feels like I am whipping out my switchblade. Exhilarating! Something I do not get when I click my VP.

To open the pen to deploy the nib, all it takes is a rotation of 180 degrees to a positive stop. That is what I like, a positive stop, no nib wiggle when writing, held very firmly in place by the engineering on this pen. If you look inside, there is a trap ball that encloses the nib when retracted. So far every time I have pulled the pen to write, the nib is always wet and ready to go to work, something my Stipula DaVinci’s do not do most of the time.
The 14K gold nib on this pen is slightly larger than on other Lamy gold nib pens, there is a photo comparing it to the Accent & Studio 14K nibs. A nice feature to increase the nib size. Available in Fine, Medium or Broad. I took a grind stone to my pen already, to square it up and give me more of an italic look to the writing point. My son’s pen was a medium that wrote extremely smooth and very good.

Overall I give this pen an 8 out of 10, I am withholding a point as I have only had this pen for 2 days, so I want to check the reliability of this pens operation. But defiantly a very belated Merry Christmas to ME!!

About the only drawback to this pen, is I would have liked to see it more aggressively priced. The list is $300.00 and street price is typical 20% off so, $240.00 which is clearly 80.00 more than the Pilot Vanishing Point. I think had they priced this pen at $195.00 it would have given the Vanishing Point a run for its money. But given the weak dollar against the Euro and the cost of gold nibs, it still is a good value compared to other retractable pens.

[WhosYerBob]

Slick! Didn't know they made one like that...