Kaweco Dia2 Nib Swap

In May last year I reviewed the Kaweco Dia2 and whilst I love the retro styling there was just something about the pen I was not happy with, so I cleaned it and put it into storage.

Then a few weeks ago I was browsing the Cult Pens website looking to see if there was anything new from Kaweco that piqued my interest, there wasn’t. However, what did get my interest was the replacement nibs; reasonably priced for a complete screw in unit, in particular the 1.1mm stub nib.

So off to Google I went to do some research and I discovered the 1.1mm nib received very good reviews; I decided to take the plunge and also decided that this was an ideal opportunity to get my Dia2 out of storage and upgrade the nib. 

This is where my plan hit the rocks, I soon discovered that not only was this nib popular it was also out of stock everywhere; one supplier also told me that Peter Bock who make the nib was also out of stock and restock dates were probably but not definitely sometime in October.

Undaunted, I decided the next challenge was to find someone who sells Bock nib units, the Dia2 takes a Bock 180 nib unit and after some searching I discovered Beaufort Ink who are a licenced seller of Bock nib units with an excellent reputation for customer service. So, after spending some time on their site I decided to seek their advice.

My reason for needing advice stemmed from me having an idea.

The Dia2 comes with the same small No.5 nib you find in the Kaweco pocket pens and whilst this writes beautifully it is not exactly aesthetically pleasing, to me it just looks disproportionately small. It is one of those things where it would be easy to think that when designing the Dia2 someone at Kaweco just screwed in the first nib that fitted and thought “that will do”. 

With so many nib units on their site, I thought there must be a better alternative than the No.5 stock nib. So I called them and spoke to Phil who was amazingly helpful and happy to spend some time talking to me and advised me that the 076 wide shouldered No.5 nib unit also fits the Dia2 and that he had sold some of these to other Dia2 owners to upgrade their pens.

Phil very kindly said that if I installed the nibs and dry tested but was not happy with them there would be no problem returning them. Best of all Phil had the elusive 1.1mm stub in stock so I ordered 076 nib units in both Medium and Stub and good to his word the nibs arrived the following day. 

Kaweco have made it very easy to remove and fit nib units in their pens and the Dia2 is no exception. 

The first thing to do is to strip the pen down to its primary pieces, barrel, cap and section.

Then you literally unscrew the existing unit from the section, put it to one side and insert the new unit and screw it into the section and that’s all there is to it.

After this load your favourite ink and you are ready to go.

As you can see from the before and after comparison image the new nib, whilst still being a No.5, has wider shoulders than the stock nib and this helps to balance the pen and in my opinion is the nib Kaweco should have installed to start with.

The cap fits without any problems and screws down just as it did with the smaller nib.

I ordered the polished stainless nibs and whilst they don’t really have any flexibility, they are very smooth writers, a little on the wet side perhaps. I’m currently testing them with Mont Blanc Ultramarine in the Medium nib and KWZ Sheen Machine in the Stub.

For anyone, like me, who is not happy with the stock nib this is an essential upgrade; for less that £10.00GBP per nib unit you can literally transform your Dia2.

I am very happy to recommend this upgrade and to recommend Beaufort Ink, the customer service was exceptional, and Phil is very knowledgeable and happy to answer as many questions as you want to ask.

 

Disclaimer: The nibs and inks were purchased with my own funds at retail price. The opinions expressed in this review are my own; and I am not connected with either the retailers or manufacturers in any way.

 

“Just one last thing.”

It turns out that whilst I am a big fan of KWZ I really don’t like Sheen Machine so it’s free to a good home, only about 1ml used for testing purposes. It will be sealed and carefully packed, however, as it is currently with my colleague in the UK it can only be shipped to a UK address. 

Please leave a comment or drop me an email and once I have a few I’ll pick one person at random.

Look out for future giveaways as I have a big pile of notebooks that all need new homes, happily these can be posted anywhere.