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This is our brand new size 5 fountain pen nib, which is supplied as standard with all Beaufort Mistral fountain pen kits, and will also be available to buy on line within the next few days. We promised elsewhere that we’d publish a bit of information about it, so here it is.

Nearly all pen kits are supplied with a so called IPG nib, so called because they are engraved “Iridium Point Germany”. Nothing is further from the truth as they don’t have an iridium point, nor have they ever been any closer to Germany than Shanghai. They might as well claim they are made on the moon.

Iridium point is a different issue – once upon a time, European nibs were all tipped with iridium, which is an extremely hard metal in the same group as platinum, that neither corrodes or tarnishes with the effect of ink. These days, tips are not pure iridium but are an alloy of precious metals, specially formulated by each manufacturer and kept a closely guarded secret, but the further east you go, the less precious the alloy gets, to the point that some of them are nothing more than a bit of stainless steel with drop of cobalt added.

The new Beaufort nib has been a long time in development. It really is made in Germany, to our own specification, and with our own precious metal tips. They are as smooth as butter to write with, with an excellent ink flow, and make the difference between a nice pen kit and an excellent writing instrument.

If you are interested in making excellent writing instruments, then you have the Mistral, which is one of only a tiny handful of pen kits worldwide that is supplied with a nib that isn’t out of the Far East. You also have the ability to upgrade the nib in most pen kits with our popular and established range of Bock nibs, and now you also have a slightly cheaper option to upgrade with our new Beaufort nib, which will go on sale at about the £8 mark.

It is a two tone gold plated nib with a medium writing point, and is currently available in size 5 only. Other writing points will follow in time, as will a size 6 version, and we are also currently working on a full-flex nib, which we think will be of interest to many fountain pen owners.

Here it is – we hope you like it.

Beaufort Ink size 5 fountain pen nibs