Finally a fountain pen you can use as a tactical baton
this time, Mario Spettrale has hit a home run
Do rising political tensions cause you to worry about civil unrest? Do you feel like you need to be prepared to protect your home? Are you pretty sure you’d end up shooting yourself in the foot if you bought a gun?
Then good news: German penmaker Diplomat has you covered with this huge pen that doubles as a tactical baton.
That’s right: You no longer need to choose between a pleasant writing experience and cracking skulls because the Diplomat Nexus lets you do BOTH AT THE SAME TIME (hence the name “Nexus”).
Technically, the Nexus is considered an “eyedropper” filler pen, meaning you unscrew the front part and pour ink in the barrel. Because it holds the equivalent of seven cartridges of ink, however, you might consider ditching the eyedropper for that auto-siphon you bought a few years ago when you thought you were going to make your own mead as this will save you some time. Either way, the Nexus’ ink capacity lets you write for a million years without the need for a refill AND adds critical weight that increases the pen’s ballistic strength.
The Nexus comes with a shutoff valve that, like the ink capacity, does double duty for both writing and property-defense purposes.
When the cap of the Nexus is on, the pen’s spring-loaded section gets pushed into the metal rod that runs through the pen, reinforcing the pen’s strength for when you need to use it to defend your farm from, I don’t know, a dinosaur or something.
This also prevents the ink from flowing from the barrel to the nib so it won’t leak all over your briefcase or whatever.
Conversely, when the cap is off, the section pops back out and ink flows freely, so you don’t have to remember to disengage the valve when writing. This is great for writing but less useful for home defense, which is why the cap doesn’t post—so you remember you need to put it back on before using the pen for battle.
Despite the pen looking like it would be obviously very back-weighted, it hasn’t felt like that to me after several months of heavy use and is actually pretty comfortable.
The nib is available in steel and gold. This version has the steel nib; while steel is stronger than gold for tactical poking, the nib still provides very limited tactical purpose and you should really put the cap on before using it as a baton.
For writing purposes, my experience with Diplomat nibs is that they have little-to-no flex but some nice tooth to them, kind of like a Platinum steel or Sailor 14k nib. Not scratchy, just some pleasant feedback. This one was the same.
In sum, Diplomat is a German company with an Italian spirit, meaning their factory is haunted by an Italian ghost that gives them design ideas. And this time, Mario Spettrale has hit a home run with a pen that you can also use as a baseball bat. Available at most pen retailers now!