In case you didn’t know it, one of the best features of Lamy fountain pens (aside from the Lamy 2000) is that they use a modular nib system. That’s right — you can pull the nib off your Lamy Al-Star and put it on your Safari. Or you can take the gold nib from your Scala and put it on your Vista.
Swapping your Lamy nib is an incredibly easy process once you get the hang of it. Here are a few ways to change those nibs…
The Basics of Changing a Lamy Nib
First of all, you should know that you can change the nib on a pen that is fully inked. Removing the nib from an ink-filled pen is a bit of a gamble since it could drip if you touch the feed, but simply removing the nib won’t cause any sort of ink explosion or flood.
All you really need to know is this Lamy nibs slide off the pen. If you pull the nib forward, it will come off. In this case forward means down, away from the pen body. In other words, towards the paper if you were writing.
The Best Way to Safely Remove the Nib
Your impulse might be to just grab the nib and yank it off your pen. Sure what would probably work, but it would make a mess. That little slit on the top of the nib can let out a lot of ink, so you want to keep your hands away from it, unless if the pen is recently cleaned or has never been used.
You could also try to pull from the nib’s sides but you are going to have to really pinch the nib, possibly bending it. Keep in mind that the nib is relatively tough when moved up-and-down but not pinched inwards.
Some people like to use their nails to pinch the ball at the end of the nib and pull that. This is hard to do, relatively messy, and it requires grabbing the most sensitive part of the pen. Does it work? Yes. Is it recommended? Definitely not.
The best two to remove a Lamy fountain pen nib is to get a piece of low-to-medium adhesion tape (like scotch tape) and put it over the top of the nib. Use this to as a clean surface to pull while you hold the body of the pen steady, or even pull it way from the nib. Later just discard the tape, clean the nib, and you are good to go.
Another way to do this is by using a small patch of grippy shelf liner to hold the nib and pull it off. This stuff is incredibly useful and super cheap so even if you get a little ink on it, it’s no big deal to throw it out.
How To Put a Nib on a Lamy
This is the easy part. Simply hold the clean nib by its sides and push the nib on the plastic feed. Any pressure should be on applied on the vertical pieces and the flat horizontal folds, not on the angled piece at the top and never on the writing tip.
Which Lamy Nibs are Interchangeable?
The nibs from the following fountain pens will work on the rest of the pens on the list.
- Safari
- Vista
- ST
- CP1
- Linea
- Aion
- Persona
- Imporium
- Lx
- Al-Star
- Dialog 3
- Accent
- Studio
- Scala
- Logo
- Joy
- Nexx
- ABC
- Unic
Pro tip: These are the same pens that use the Lamy T10 cartridge!
It doesn’t matter whether the nib is gold or steel, black or silver, or old (completely unmarked) or new (it will say “Lamy” and the size on it). You’ll just want to be more careful with any gold nibs as they are more flexible, more expensive, more prone to bending, and less likely to spring back into shape after being pushed too far or too hard.
What that you should be all set. Best of luck, and proceed slowly.