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Upgrading a Baoer 388 fountain pen nib

Phil - 4 Jul 2016 10:00:00Other articles...

Our latest extravagant indulgence has arrived at last, a Baoer 388 for which we had to splash out a massive £1.97 – delivered. Rediculous!!

And what a great little pen it is – we can’t fault its appearance, balance, feel in the hand and so on, but the nib is truly horrible. Nothing wrong with its looks – well, we could live with it anyway, considering what we paid for it. Nothing wrong with the ink flow either, but scratchy? Scratchy is not the word. Abrasive would be more like it.

Maybe we’ve just got a particularly bad example.

That doesn’t matter in the slightest though because the main purpose of buying the pen was to find out if a Baoer 388 can be upgraded with a Bock nib. Not a week goes by when we don’t get asked if a Baoer will take a Bock nib, so we decided it was time to find out for ourselves.

It can. A size 5 Bock nib to be precise. We had to remove the Bock from its housing and fit it in the Baoer housing, but the geometry of the two nibs is identical and the new one is a perfect fit, and so is our own Beaufort size 5 nib.

Bock size 5 fountain pen nibs
Beaufort size 5 fountain pen nibs

It’s easy to upgrade a Baoer 388 nib. A Bock size 5 and a Beaufort size 5 are both perfect fits

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Our market leading Mistral pen kits are the only pen kits avialable worldwide with truly matching fountain pen, rollerball, ballpoint and pencil. Each type of kit is available to buy individually, so that you can create a matched set of pens (or pen and pencil) in any combination you choose.

Why is that a thing? Well, if you offer a rollerball to someone who normally uses a fountain pen, they're likely to turn up their nose. Fountain pen people simply don't write with rollerballs, and rollerball people don't write with fountain pens. And yet, if you look around at pen kits, that all you can usually get - a fountain pen matched with a rollerball. What pen owners want is a matching fountain pen and a pencil, or maybe a rollerball and a pencil, or perhaps a fountain pen and a ballpoint. You get the picture. They'll use them both, but they're extremely unlikely to use them both if the pens are a fountain pen and a rollerball.

Mistral pen kits were designed by us, from the bottom up, to offer matching pens and pencils in any combination. They're not just modified as an afterthought, they were designed right from the start to look the same.

You can mix and match with Mistral pen kits. They're high quality kits, not just cheap offerings with cheap plating and cheap mechanisms. And they do match. And that's the point.

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Upgrading a Baoer 388 fountain pen nib

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About the Authors

Pen turning

Fountain pen nibs

Fountain pen ink

Pen blanks

Our market leading Mistral pen kits are the only pen kits avialable worldwide with truly matching fountain pen, rollerball, ballpoint and pencil. Each type of kit is available to buy individually, so that you can create a matched set of pens (or pen and pencil) in any combination you choose.