Cross Bailey Medalist Fountain Pen Review
Cross Bailey Medalist: Is this beautiful, reasonably priced pen worth the price? Let’s see how it performs.
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Description – Cross Bailey Medalist Fountain Pen Review
The Medalist is sophisticated and professional in chrome with distinctive gold accents at the cap band, derby, clip, blind cap and top and bottom of the section before you get to the barrel. It comes standard with a stainless steel medium nib and the section near the nib where your fingers rest as you write is black wrapped by gold rings on top and bottom.
The cap band is engraved with closely-spaced, diagonal marks that allow for a better grip when removing the pen. It is beautiful and elegant and anyone would be proud to use it. What’s interesting to me is even with the heft of this pen, it doesn’t strike me as overtly masculine, it’s design appeals to men and women.
Branding – Cross Bailey Medalist Fountain Pen Review
The gold clip descends from a gold cap ring and is engraved with “CROSS” near the top of the clip. The nib is classic Cross, engraved with CROSS across the top of the nib near the section.
Cap Fit – Cross Bailey Medalist Fountain Pen Review
The cap closes with a satisfying snap when you cap it. It fits so well though, that it can be hard to get the cap back off. I ended up putting my thumb on the clip when I was pushing so hard to get it off and accidentally bending the clip a bit. With a quick adjustment it was good as new. There is an inner cap made of plastic to keep the pen from scratching the barrel when posted, it’s a nice snug fit when you cap the pen.
The cap does not stay posted well if you like writing with the cap posted on the barrel. It tends to wriggle off as you write, no matter how hard you shove it down. It doesn’t wriggle off as quickly as the Cross Aventura does, but it doesn’t stay put.
Performance Review
This Fountain Pen lays down a smooth and wet line. I LOVE the brown Cross cartridges I used, it was like watching chocolate dry as I wrote. The pen has no scratchiness after finding the sweet spot that all fountain pens have. I wrote with it in my journal first and it skipped on the first letter of new sentences until I found its sweet spot then it began to glide across the paper effortlessly.
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| Cross Bailey Medalist weighs in at 1.15 ounces | Cross Bailey Medalist cap weighs .4 ounces |
It’s a bit heavier than most fountain pens, weighing in at 1.15 ounces with a new cartridge inserted. The cap is just under a half ounce at .4 and most of the weight in the cap is at the bottom where the cap band is, so when it’s posted the heft is in the center of the pen, which lends it a well-balanced feel. Even with the heft, I didn’t experience any hand fatigue when using the Medalist.
There was some minimal bleed-through on the back of notebook paper, isolated to the down-strokes where I traced back over the beginning of a letter when writing in cursive.
I was pleasantly surprised with the Cross 8926S ink cartridges, the ink dries quickly.
In the test, I immediately rubbed my thumb hard across the zero trying to smudge it and although it wasn’t IMMEDIATELY dry, it barely smudged at all even right after the ink left the pen.
You can’t really see much of a smudge in the picture, and I rubbed it as soon as I made the zero.
This pen is a fantastic writer, laying down consistent lines on any sort of paper (except, of course, glossy which is not a fair test for a fountain pen so I don’t try that.)
Maintenance – Cross Bailey Medalist Fountain Pen Review
It is easy to refill with cartridges, but the cap can be a bit stubborn and challenging to get off at times. This could be because it’s a glossy chrome finish on metal so the grip factor isn’t there like in other designs. The deeply engraved cap band is helpful in getting the cap off because it gives your thumb and forefinger some traction.
Overall Value – Cross Bailey Medalist Fountain Pen Review
The Medalist is a great pen for someone looking for a metal fountain pen with an elegant design. It would be an impressive gift as well because it’s beautiful. At less than $50, it’s a great buy and great overall value because of its quality writing combined with a sophisticated and elegant design. It looks like it would cost much more than it does and lays down a smooth and wet line, a great overall value!
Price: Get a price on the Cross Bailey Medalist at Amazon.
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SOURCE:https://www.bestfountainpen.com/cross-bailey-medalist/