Sharpened Untipped Italic Nibs Gone Wild. With Lamy Vista.
I’ve been using Lamys of the Safari/AL-Star stripe since the early 2000s. My first Lamy was a charcoal Safari, and my next was a grey AL-Star. I used them a lot at the time but haven’t pulled em out much since my quiver started to get a lot crazier. Sometime at some show I nabbed a Lamy Vista, because I didn’t have one and I felt like I oughtta. It’s a sharp looking pen.
Now we’ve heard over and over from everybody about this pen. The section shape works for me and I like a slip cap, so there you go. Pen review portion complete.
![](https://i0.wp.com/timhofmann.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/lamy003.jpg?resize=1000%2C563&ssl=1)
This one time at an east coast pen show in the early 2010s I asked a Nibneister to sharpen up the untipped steel italic nib on my Delta Fusion 88. Stay with me.
He or she declined to do it, telling me it wouldn’t stay sharp. I was skeptical but didn’t press the issue. It’s not like I was going to write for miles and miles with it anyway (I’ve barely touched that pen since!)
![](https://i0.wp.com/timhofmann.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/lamy005.jpg?resize=1000%2C563&ssl=1)
Fast Forward to whenever.
Hanging out with Henry every week, we tend to get impatient with boring nibs. After he put a fiercely sharp CI on an untipped TWSBI Go, we decided steel italic nibs were fair game for grinding. I brought my Vista in for the treatment. It was wearing a 1.5mm stock italic and had sat uninked pretty much the whole time.
![](https://i0.wp.com/timhofmann.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/lamy013.jpg?resize=1000%2C563&ssl=1)
Henry put some serious edge on that effer, then smoothed it a touch for me on the upstrokes. We juiced it with a slurp of Apache Sunset and I wrote it dry in a week.
![](https://i0.wp.com/timhofmann.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/lamy008.jpg?resize=1000%2C563&ssl=1)
This pen is fun to write with, and is capable of some seriously edgy performance. If you’re ever in the mood for something really crispy, arm wrestle a nibmeister until they agree to sharp up one of these suckers for you.
![](https://i0.wp.com/timhofmann.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/lamy009-e1554417015928.jpg?resize=1000%2C563&ssl=1)
I like:
- The looks: Vista is one of the sharpest looking demos IMO
- The new sharp-as-eff and pretty wide writing experience
- It’s a slip cap
I don’t care for:
- The Safari form factor is a little overly familiar by now
Bang for the buck: not bad
Special out of the box: naah
Looks: like a vape
Writes: like a slice!