Tag Archives: vintage pen

How Do I Restore a Sheaffer TouchDown

By on April 9, 2024
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Fixing a Sheaffer TouchDown filler can be easy with a little practice. Personally, I love the functionality and simplicity of the design that uses pneumatics to collapse an ink sac and allow its natural vacuum to draw ink back into the pen.

Most of what you need to fix a Sheaffer TouchDown filler is right here in this photo.

In the first photo, you will see almost all that you need to restore a Sheaffer TouchDown filler. We forgot to include a bottle of “Super Lube: O-Ring Silicon Lubricant.” In case you have trouble seeing the photo, you will need: a Sheaffer TouchDown-filling pen, a long-shaft flathead screwdriver, dental pick, scissors, razor blade, a size 15 latex rubber ink sac, an O-ring, sac shellac, rubber cement and jar of room-tempeture water. A couple of Q-tips, paper towels, corn starch and a wooden dowel might also be useful.

To get started, unscrew the cap from the fountain pen, and stick the pen nib first in water. You do not want to soak the entire pen in water, just up to the division between the section (finger-grip part) and the blue barrel of this pen. Let it soak for anywhere from an hour to overnight. This leaches out most of the old ink and softens any possible glue a past repairer might have used to secure the threaded section to the barrel.

Once the pen is finished soaking, dry it off with a tissue or paper towel. Frequently these pens can unscrew without any assistance from section pliers. Grip the section (finger grip) between your thumb and forefinger on one hand and the barrel with your other hand. Unscrew the section with a steady, gentle pressure counterclockwise (lefty loosey.)

When the section unscrews, you will see the “sac protector” and inner remains of the ink sac come out with the section. The sac protector is friction fit, and you can remove it simply by pulling straight back. Some times the old ink sac has petrified and stays on the section nipple. Sometimes it is in pieces inside the sac protector. Sometimes the old sac has melted to the inside of the sac protector. The first two scenarios are very easy to manage. The melted sac takes a long time to remove. Q-tips, wooden dowels or anything else you can use to safely scrape the inside of the sac protector clean will help. It is very important to remove all the debris from inside the sac protector to allow the new sac to slide in and operate properly.

This photo shows a complete disassembled Sheaffer TouchDown pen.

After you have finished with the sac protector, unscrew the blindcap on the tail of the pen barrel and, if possible, pull the blind cap back as far as it will go. (Don’t force it if it is frozen inside the pen.) Now take the long-shaft flathead screwdriver and ease it up the barrel until you can feel the screw at the end of the barrel and metal tube. Turn the screwdriver slowly until you feel it find the slot of the screw. Hold the blind cap tightly with one hand and gently unscrew the screw to the left. You will feel the screw come free. It seems easiest to let gravity help it fall out on to your work bench. With some gentle pressure, the plastic blind cap will pop off the metal tube. Next, you push the tube back down and out the section-end of the barrel.

Until you get used to it, the trickiest part of the restoration is replacing the latex-rubber O-ring in the blindcap-end of the barrel. You can see the black O-ring imbedded in a groove of the barrel in this photo. If you are lucky, the O-ring will still have a little pliability and it will come right out with the help of the dental pick. If you are unlucky, the O-ring will have petrified, and you’ll have to carefully dig it out little piece by little piece.

Once the old O-ring is out, you might want to use a Q-tip to clean out any dirt in that end of the barrel. The barrel on TouchDowns are often still quite clean, and cleaning it with a Q-tip might not be necessary.

You can see the old O-ring inside this Sheaffer TouchDown barrel. Use a dental pick to carefully remove the old O-ring.

Sheaffer TouchDown fountain pens used one of two different size O-rings. Most pen-part suppliers list them as either a “small O-ring” or a “large O-ring.” Large O-rings were only used in first-year Sheaffer TouchDowns (1948), which have noticeably thicker barrels than the remaining “Thin Model” TouchDowns (1949-1952), which use small O-rings. If you ever feel like dabbling in Sheaffer Snorkels, the large O-rings are also used on PFMs and Snorkel Desk Pens.

I find it is easiest to place the new O-ring into its groove with the dental pick. I fold the O-ring a little and insert it into the blind-cap opening. Then I use the dental pick to carefully get one side of the O-ring into the groove. If all goes well, I use the dental pick to drag the opposite end of the O-ring into the groove. With two-points in the groove, I go the next high point of the sack and work it into the groove. Once that is accomplished, I try to get the last high point of the O-ring into the groove. It sounds easy, but it takes some practice to do it quickly. NEVER lube the O-ring before trying to install it. A slippery O-ring will make your life miserable.

Now it is time to start reassembling the barrel apparatus. Clean off the metal tube you had to unscrew from the blind cap with a paper towel to get any old shmutz off. Then drop the screw threads-first down the tube. Use the screwdriver to help find the tube’s hole for the screw. Leave the screwdriver in the tube slotted into the screw. Put a thin layer of silicon O-ring lube around the shoulder of the tube on the screw-end of the tube. Then insert the screw and tube, screw first, into the section hole of the barrel and gently glide it with the screwdriver all the way through the blind-cap side’s hole in the barrel until the tube won’t go any farther. Rest the barrel and tube on its side with the screwdriver still slotted into the screw.

Take the plastic blind cap and fill its cup with rubber cement. (There should be a rubber washer in there, but often it is blown and the rubber cement acts as a sealant that can replace it.) You might find a way that works better for you, but I hold the blind cap with the rubber cement in my left hand and pick up the barrel assembly by the screwdriver with my right hand. It gets a little messy, but I then screw the screw into the blindcap. You know you have found the screw hole in the blind cap when you see the tube going into the blind cap’s cup and rubber cement starts smooshing out. It is important to make sure the screw is in tightly, but you have to be very careful not to overtighten the screw because it can split the blind cap in half and make it useless for the necessary air seal to make the filler work. It is important for the tube to be extended all the way to prevent the rubber cement from getting into the O-ring. Wipe the excess rubber cement off with a paper towel. Now you can work the tube back and forth to spread the silicon lube around the O-ring and get smooth operation from the barrel assembly.

Here you can see where the hardened ink sac has been scraped off to reveal the nipple underneath.

Getting back to the section assembly part of the pen, take the razor and clean the usually hardened old ink sac off the nipple of the section. Be very careful not to accidentally chip off a piece of the nipple. That will ruin your pen. Some people will insist you need to give the nib assembly a sonic cleaning at this point, but if you soaked it long enough, you likely already removed most of the old ink.

To move forward, you need to trim your ink sac to fit perfectly into the sac protector. I don’t have a definitive way to do this. I usually stick the sac (closed end first) in the sac protector, pinch it at large opening of the sac protector, pull out the sac from the protector while maintaining the pinch and then trim it with scissors. Make sure the nipple on the section is dry. Put the sac on the nipple and then put the ink sac protector over the sac to see how well it fits. If the sac is a shade too long, trim it just a bit more. If the sac is a millimeter or so short, that is perfectly fine. Remove the sac protector and then ink sac. Paint a thin layer of sac shellac on the nipple of the section and then replace the properly trimmed ink sac. Wipe off the excess shellac and let the assemble dry for a few minutes. Next rub down the ink sac with pure talcum powder (old skool and potentially cancerous, as talc is mined with naturally occurring asbestos) or corn starch. The corn starch (or death talc) helps preserve the rubber. Snap the sac protector into place over the sac.

Final assembly is easy. Screw the section back into the barrel in a clockwise (righty tighty) fashion. Some old manuals say that you should put rubber cement on the threads (you can see the remains of old rubber cement on the starting photos) to help seal the barrel, but it isn’t necessary and only gives future restorers a bigger headache. The threads seal the section and barrel nicely on their own.

At this point, you have a pen that is ready to write. I, generally, give the pen 24 hours to let the shellac set completely. Then I test it with water, flushing out any remaining old ink while making sure it fills properly.

If you want it to looks its best, you can do a wet sanding that will remove a thin layer of the plastic, removing most surface scratches and stains. It also can enhance the color a bit. Unfortunately, it also makes the remaining imprint shallower or removes it entirely, which is a reason to be judicious in deciding which pens to wet sand. Yet, how to wet sand a pen is worthy of an article on to itself.

Apologies to a Parker 51

By on October 26, 2022
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Time and again, I’ve mentioned the fountain pen that got me hooked into this crazy lifestyle. It was my mother’s father’s Sheaffer Balance Lifetime. Yet, I have another grandparental pen that never gets much publicity. It is a Parker 51 from my father’s side of the family.

This Parker 51 once belonged to either my father’s mother or father. I suspect it was Granddad’s, but either way it is a treasured keepsake.

The Parker 51 showed up in my life about 15 years after the Sheaffer. It was right around the year 2000. My father’s mother was getting sick and had to live with my parents. As they packed up her house, they discovered a Parker 51 in a desk drawer. They knew I liked old pens and sent it to me in Montana. At the time my collection was meager. My only other pens were a Sheaffer Imperial, a Rotring, a Waterman Phileas, Lamy Safari and Cross Townsend.

I recently pulled out the aforementioned 51 to write a letter and was struck by how little I knew about pens in 2000, when it showed up in my life. It would be several more years before I learned how to restore pens. I had never heard of a Parker 51. I had heard of Parker Duofolds because I had seen a modern Parker Duofold MacArthur Special Edition at Marshall Fields in Chicago. It was well out of my price range, and although its literature mentioned the original Duofolds, I assumed that none were left in existence! Honestly, I assumed that my Sheaffer was such a rare treasure that no other old-fashioned fountain pens could possibly exist. Good Lord, when I saw that modern Duofold in 1994, I was 18, and my 60-year-old pen might well have been what the dinosaurs wrote with.

That’s how little I knew. The internet only barely existed. I didn’t know a single soul who liked fountain pens. My parents thought they were archaic and messy. My friends parents thought the same. My relatives thought the same. I had not stumbled into any of the early pen catalogs and mailing lists. Only bank presidents wrote with Montblanc 149s to show off. In my tiny world, I was the last hold out.

Enter the 51, and my ignorance was on full display. It still worked and had an Aerometric filler with a silicon (sorry, pli-glass) ink sac. I assumed it was some deranged promotional pen my grandmother must have gotten in the 1980s for one of her many charitable donations. It didn’t look like a vintage pen to me. I didn’t know how to look for and understand a date code then. I didn’t know that the 51 was originally released in 1941 with the advertising stating that it was 10 years ahead of its time! The design certainly fooled me, as I thought it was from the 1980s. The date code that I now understand said it was made in 1950.

My paternal grandparents were both very formal people. The black barrel and lustraloy cap could have belonged to either of them, but as my grandmother was far more into flowery and feminine design, this pen, I now understand, was likely my grandfather’s.

My granddad, as he was called, died when I was only 8 or 9 years old. I never got to know him very well. He was always nice, but he was of a generation and upbringing that children were meant to be seen and not heard. He wasn’t the type of guy to romp around on the floor with me, but I don’t have any bad memories. As I grew up, I learned he had a business in professional sales in New York City. He was into electronics, fast cars, Broadway, a little bit of baseball and cocktail parties with witty conversation. As an adult, I’m surprised at how much we have in common, and I wish I could have known him as an adult. Our similarities baffle my own father, who wonder’s how his father’s tastes could have so completely skipped a generation.

My own father and I share the love of writing. My dad prefers ballpoints and typewriters to fountain pens and computers, but, hey, nobody’s perfect. All the same, I don’t think my grandfather likely wrote much besides orders, quite possibly on carbon copy paper. This might explain why the Parker 51 has such a firm extra-fine nib. The pen barely looked used when I got it. I suspect Granddad put it away as soon as he could get his hands on reliable ballpoint pens. I wonder if in the things left behind were a first or second-year Parker Jotter. I can see him zipping down the road in his much-beloved candy-apple red 1955 Ford Thunderbird and a Parker Jotter in his shirt pocket.

Of course, it would be nice to have that Thunderbird or any one of the myriad Lincoln Continentals that he drove over the years. I am very happy with his pen, but he sure had great taste in cars, too.

How Do I Re-Sac a Vintage Pen

By on February 5, 2020
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You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, the old saying goes, and it is true for learning how to fix vintage pens. Today, we are going to learn how to restore a lever-filling fountain pen…or re-sac it, as they say. But first, you are going to have to get used to the concept that you’re going to destroy a few pens along the way—even if you’re careful.

Find a few good, cheap vintage pens to practice restoring before experimenting with more expensive models. This deformed Sheaffer Balance 350 is a great starter pen.

When you are starting out, don’t begin with an unrestored version of your grail pen. Find some broken-down cheap pens such as Wearevers, Esterbrooks or even this banana’d Sheaffer 350 Balance. The longer you are on the hunt, the more you will find vintage pens that turn into the shape of bananas. The deformation happens when the pen is left in the sun or near a heater for too long, which warps the plastic/celluloid.

In addition to a good practice pen, you will need some ink sacs, a pair of spark-plug/section pliers, a long dental pick, sac shellac or rubber cement, scissors that can cut through rubber ink sacs, a jar or cup, clean water, polish, a cloth rag, paper towels, a hairdryer, a razor blade and, if at all possible, an ultra-sonic cleaner. You can get most of these items pretty cheaply. One trick of the professionals is to buy a pair of rubber coated spark-plug pliers, instead of formal “section pliers” that you can find on many pen restoration sites. Why? Spark-plug pliers can be had for less than $10 at most auto parts stores. Section pliers are almost always the same, exact pliers but marked up to $20 or $30. In the early days of pen restoration as a hobby in the 1970s and ’80s, a lot of guys used regular pliers and cut off two one-inch sections of hose to cover the teeth of their normal pliers. That’s how I was first taught.

Attempting to keep this simple, I’m going to break this down into what I hope are very simple steps to make this as fun and easy an experience as possible.

  1. I like small mustard or baby food jars to use for filling with just enough water to get the pen wet from the tip of the nib to just over the threads of the barrel.

    Fill a cup with just enough room-temperature water that you can stick your pen in and go just a little bit over the section and past the cap threads. (Sections are the writing grip into which the nib and feed are inserted in one end.) Let it soak for at least an hour. (Never use hot water.) This leaches out a lot of the dried old ink in the nib and inkfeed, while also potentially softening any glue or shellac used to hold the section tightly into the barrel. Many of the old factory repair manuals encouraged repairmen to use a dab of sac shellac to hold the sometimes loose pressure-fit sections into the barrel. WARNING: Water is necessary, but it also isn’t your friend. Black hard rubbers turn chocolatey brown in water fairly quickly. (An hour might be too long for some rubbers.) Some celluloids get more brittle or discolored when in water too long. Be sure to dry off the pen as soon as you remove it from the water.

2. Use the hairdryer to warm up the space where the section and barrel meet. DO NOT melt the plastic or set the celluloid on fire. All you need is a little warm to the touch. Until you get comfortable, keep the heat to barely noticeable to the touch. Grip the section, and only the section, with your rubber coated pliers. Very gently and slowly begin to twist counter clockwise as you hold the barrel in your other hand. It is common to hear some very scary cracking sounds. Usually, that sound is the petrified rubber ink sac in the pen breaking apart as you open. Sometimes it is the pen barrel breaking. Experience will teach you the difference. If you feel the section coming loose,

Grip only the section with rubber coated pliers, such as these spark-plug pliers. Don’t grip too tightly, just enough not to let go.

keep twisting slowly and gently. If you do not feel it turning or you feel it actively resisting, stop twisting. Some sections—especially Parker Duofolds and Vacumatics—were threaded into the pen barrels, which is why we usually start with a twist. Most pens of all brands were straight pressure-fit sections. HOWEVER, some brands—especially Wahl-Eversharp, although they were extremely inconsistent—used little pins in the barrel or section to hold the section firmly in place. You CANNOT twist those sections without destroying the barrel or section. If a section resists twisting, hit it with a little more heat and very gently start trying to wiggle it in teeny, tiny side-to-side motions while pulling straight out.

This is the most dangerous part of the entire restoration job. This is where probably 80% of all pens break, if they are going to break. ALSO, celluloid is insanely flammable. DO NOT get it hot. If it catches fire, it burns like a magnesium flare. It is an extremely hot burning flame that burns extremely quickly. Early on, I accidentally set a Vacumatic on fire. It scared the hell out of me, and it was a miracle I didn’t burn down my house. Even after getting it under running water it didn’t go out right away. I had to drop it in the steel sink and flood it to put the fire out. In about 10 seconds, it burned away the majority of the barrel. Be careful with the heat.

Use a razor to scrape the old sac pieces off the section nipple.

3. Once the section is free, scoop out the old sac guts from inside the barrel with the dental pick. Sometimes those guts stick pretty good to the inside of the barrel. A flashlight or gun light can help you see in to make sure you got it all. Do not put water in the barrel to clean out the sac or old ink. This will likely ruin and rust-out the pressure-bar assembly.

4. Use the razor to scrape the remnants of the old ink sac from the nipple of the section. Be careful not to cut yourself or split open the nipple.

5. Fill your ultra-sonic cleaner with clean, room-temperature water. Sometimes a drop or two of ammonia will help badly clogged pens. Put enough water in to completely submerge the cap and section assembly. Before you turn it on, let the cap soak for a minute or so. This allows the water to penetrate the inner cap, where a lot of old ink is usually trapped. After the cap and section have had a minute to soak, turn on the ultra-sonic cleaner for no more than 2 minutes.

If feasible, an ultra-sonic cleaner is the easiest way to remove old ink.

You might not see a lot of “action” with your eyes, but the vibrations are practically violent to the parts that are submerged. It can shake free most of the old ink in two minutes or less. If a cap lip is cracked, I’ve seen some caps crumble in the ultra sonic cleaner. That’s how powerful it is.

NEVER stick your fingers in the ultra-sonic cleaner when it is turned on. It can damage your fingers and their joints. Also, don’t leave your parts in for much longer than two minutes because the cleaner will get hot and potentially damage or discolor your parts.

Turn off the ultra-sonic cleaner, collect your parts and drain the old dirty water. Then rinse the parts under the faucet with room temperature water for a few seconds. Shake the parts dry, and then dry them with a paper towel on the outside. Q-tips are perfect for drying and removing the remaining ink from inside the cap.

6. I like to polish the pen next, especially the nib. It allows me to see any major flaws I might need to work on, such as replacing the nib while the section is exposed. I use a pin-head dollop of MAAS metal polish on a Q-tip to get the nib shining like new. I use the clean side of the Q-tip to wipe off the remaining polish. Then I dip the nib in water and dry it with a clean rag to get off the remaining, invisible polish remnants. I repeat the process with a pea-size drop of MAAS metal polish on the rag and polish up the rest of the pen, rubbing it down several times with the clean parts of the rag…avoiding water.

Every repairman I know seems to have a different process for polishing a pen. The method above is adequate for most pens. Yet, if you’re a detail-oriented person, there are myriad methods of multiple polishes or wet sanding that do a much more factory-fresh looking job. Yet, those methods take up to an hour and are worthy of their own article.

This photo illustrates how to eyeball the spot you need to trim the ink sac.

7. Sizing an ink sac. How detail oriented are you? You can easily research what size sacs went into what pens. You can measure the nipple with a fine ruler using increments of 1/64th of an inch, the way old pen repair manuals did to find the right aperture width of the ink sac. Or, you can eyeball it.

The real trick to eyeballing it isn’t fitting the sac to the nipple but finding the right sac to fit inside the barrel. You do not want the edges of the sac to snug against the inside of the barrel. It is best if the sac can easily slide in and out of the barrel, preferably with a little space all around the sac. If one is to carry a pen in their shirt pocket, the goal is not to transfer body heat through the barrel to the sac and ink, which might effect the interior pressure of the ink in the pen and have it leak a bit on you with a full pen.

Regardless of how you choose the sac size, you will likely need to trim the ink sac before installing it. Most ink sacs are longer than the pen barrels. My rule of thumb is quite literally a rule of thumb. I stick the sac in the barrel as far as it will go. I then pinch the end of the barrel at the threads, with my thumb having just enough reach to go past the threads. Pinching awkwardly down on the sac, right where it exits the barrel, I remove the sac. Gaging where my thumb tip is, I trim the sac at the tip of my thumb. Usually, this allows just enough room for the section and nipple inside the pen so that the sac can be as long as it needs to be. You can double check the length by putting the section and sac next to the empty barrel, as they would fit inside it.

Use Talc to powder and preserve your new ink sac before final re-assembly.

8. Most modern pen restorers use orange shellac to affix the sac to the nipple. Before most of us learned how to make or knew where to find orange shellac for sale, rubber cement was the go-to adhesive. Orange shellac is nearly perfect, as it can harden and still be water soluble. Rubber cement forms a good seal at first but can be more easily effected by heat and aging. Yet, it better fills-in tiny hairline cracks in the nipple, hopefully extending the functional life of the pen. (NEVER use super glues of any kind. The rubber ink sacs will give out long before the super glue ever does and you can ruin the pen by forever getting the section stuck in the barrel…or sticking other wrong parts together.)

On this pen, we painted only the nipple with a thin layer of shellac. Then we slipped the sac over it. After that, we dusted the sac with pure talcum powder, which helps to extend the life of the sac.

9. Fitting the section back into the barrel is the second most dangerous part of the restoration process. Sometimes the barrel opening shrinks while the section is out and cracks open if you put the section back in too quickly or roughly. If the section feels like it is having difficulty going back in, maybe warm up the barrel end a little and gently wiggle the section back into place. Although it doesn’t really matter, I like twist the section into place where the top of the nib is even with the lever on the pen.

Congrats! Your pen is fully restored, looking beautiful and ready to write.

If the section is too loose, you can tighten it up with a tiny cut out of a piece of onion-skin paper. Or, like the old repair manuals, you can use a small drop or two of shellac on the section. Just wipe off the excess shellac and keep it out of the threads.

10. Let the shellac dry. As the shellac is water soluble, I wait about 24 hours before I test the pen with water or ink. Once the shellac is dry and the pen tests well, you’re all done. Congrats!

It took longer to read this article than it likely will take you to restore a pen—at least once you get used to the process. Fixing and writing with vintage pens is my favorite part of the hobby. If you like seeing how things work and getting your hands dirty, you’ll love pen repair. The only thing that improves it for me might be repairing pens while listening to a Cubs game on the radio and nursing a cold beer.

Always feel free to write in with questions. And always remember to go slowly and take your time. It isn’t a race. Enjoy the zen of pen repair, and best of luck to your future projects!

Vintage Pen Straight from 1905

By on May 27, 2019
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Susie Thomas was given this Conklin M31 in 1905 for her high school graduation. She looks way more sophisticated than most high school kids today.

It is the romantic in me that makes up the story behind an individual pen when I pick it up and look it over. Who owned it? What did it write about? What transpired in the years it chronicled?

We don’t have to wonder about that with our Conklin M31. We know it was given as a gift in 1905 to Susan Thomas. She had just graduated high school and was going to attend business college! We know this because her granddaughter Jane asked us to sell it.

These long-taper capped Conklin pens are extremely difficult to find today, as they usually lose their caps over time…or they break. The black hard rubber can be brittle. This pen is nearly mint…except for the chocolate hazing and #2 14k gold Conklin replacement nib. However, it is a FLEXI nib, which ought to make up for the few flaws.

Susie’s past is a little hazy. She went to business college, which was all but unheard of for a woman in 1905. She got married and had kids at some point, and Jane thinks she died in the 1940s.

Conklin M31 pens with their tapered caps are very rare and a real treasure with a flexi nib. It is even rarer to know its personal history.

Preliminary research shows (so far) that this pen was first issued in 1903. We restored it with a new ink sac. The gold-filled ring is monogramed with a script “T.” A great pen for a museum collection and use.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Elementary Gift

By on June 17, 2018
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Most pen fanatics are familiar with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the famed author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, having once been an advertising spokesman for the Parker Duofold. However, that was at the end of his life.

This Swan eyedropper was once a gift from mystery writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his wife to James Holmes during the Christmas of 1910.

Before there was such a thing as a Parker Duofold, one can speculate about what pens he would have used. Well, if what he gave as decadent gifts are any clue, it might have been Swan pens!

As I have said many times before, one of my favorite parts about owning this business is meeting tons of awesome people from around the world. This past week I was contacted by Sharon in the UK, and she had a spectacular pen to share.

Here is the tail imprint on this Swan pen from 1910.

It was a Christmas gift her great grandfather, a coincidentally named James Holmes, received from “Sir Arthur and Lady Conan Doyle” in 1910. It appears to be a rolled gold Swan eyedropper with a hammered finish!

She is having it appraised by a famous auction house in London, but she also was hoping we might be able to come up with a reasonable figure. While I could come up with a reasonable number for such a pen without a famous inscription, I felt pretty confident a pen from the creator of Sherlock Holmes took it to the next level.

Any thoughts, Loyal Readers?

This shows the heavily worn section and nib of this Swan eyedropper given by the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

Was Norman Rockwell a Pen Addict?

By on December 23, 2015
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With their passion for Parker overriding their desire to kiss under the mistletoe, clearly painter Norman Rockwell understood the obsession of pen collectors around the world. Happy Holidays!

With their passion for Parker overriding their desire to kiss under the mistletoe, clearly painter Norman Rockwell understood the obsession of pen collectors around the world. Happy Holidays!

Just one look at this vintage Parker ad, and you know that its painter Norman Rockwell understood pen collectors very well. Sure, it might look a little schmaltzy with two attractive young lovers ignoring one another’s lips under the mistletoe, but they just got new Parker 61s! Of course, they are geeked about their new treasures!

We, here at ThePenMarket.com, hope you get exactly what you want this holiday season!

With respect to all faiths and those without faith, have a Merry Christmas, Happy (belated) Hanukkah, a Joyous Kwanzaa, a Fun Festivus, a Super Solstice and a generally warm winter filled with peace and love.

May you get your heart’s desire.

Best wishes from all of us at ThePenMarket.com

Goodies from the Ohio Pen Show

By on November 30, 2015
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November has been a crazy-busy month. First, I turned 40 near the start of the month. Friends flew in from Montana, and others locally joined in for much mirth and madness.

Here are three trays of new fountain pens for this website. Most of them are already fully restored!

Here are three trays of new fountain pens for this website. Most of them are already fully restored!

The following weekend saw me in Columbus, Ohio, enjoying their glorious pen show.

This weekend was Thanksgiving weekend.

I haven’t forgotten you, loyal readers. I’ve just been recovering and gearing up for a killer Cyber Monday and a spectacular holiday shopping season.

Ohio was wildly successful for all of the new connections, old friends and amazing pens. I finally got to meet the incredible nib specialist Richard Binder. I also met the legendary pen repairman Ron Zorn. Jonathan Veley gave me my first lesson in vintage pencil repair. A Mont Blanc specialist was able to assist in several specific repairs.

I picked up this mandarin orange Sheaffer Snorkel Statesman and Fiesta Red Clipper for my own collection, I love them

I picked up this mandarin orange Sheaffer Snorkel Statesman and Fiesta Red Clipper for my own collection, I love them




I scored more than 30 new pens for your perusal, and I picked up two rare color Sheaffer Snorkels. A mandarin orange Statesman and a fiesta red Clipper made my entire trip. Sorry, folks, I’m keeping those two for myself.

Yet of the 30+ new pens, there are ample rare colored 51 pencils to match up with any solitary pens in your collection. Pelikans, Parkers and Sheaffers make up the bulk of the collection. Yet, my favorite is a sky blue Conklin! It is difficult for me to resist it’s pull.

When Nipples Go Bad…Section Nipples, That Is

By on July 30, 2015
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Once in a rare while, I find that the section of a pen has lost its nipple to attach an ink sac. Sometimes, an old nipple is just too heavily damaged to patch together or seat a bladder. On the vintage Wahl fountain pen below from the 1920s, the nipple actually was still attached to the remnants of the old ink sac but cleanly detached from the section.

A piece of copper tubing has been fit into a vintage fountain pen section to serve as a nipple, to which you can attach a fresh ink sac.

A piece of copper tubing has been fit into a vintage fountain pen section to serve as a nipple, to which you can attach a fresh ink sac.

As Wahl sections from the 1920s aren’t easy replacement parts to find, I find it is best to jury rig a solution. This means it is time for a trip to McDonald’s or the local hardware store.

I have used a variety of objects such as straws (from McDonald’s) to metal pipes over the years. All it needs to be is strong enough to hold a shellacked ink sac.

In this case, the hardware store had a small copper pipe that fit perfectly. Luckily for the pen, the section hole was deep enough to accommodate the inkfeed at proper depth while allowing enough room for the  pipe to hold tight. If the feed rested above the hole, then I would have been out of luck.

To get started, use a rotary tool or hacksaw to cut the pipe to the proper length. Use said rotary tool or some heavy sand paper to smooth the newly cut piece. This keeps it from not fitting or from leaving sharp pieces to hurt the ink sac. Remember to keep the replacement nipple fairly short to avoid it coming into contact with the inner pressure bar or spring. If it is too long, it might trap the filling mechanism and not allow you to fill the pen.

Coat the outside of the tube with some rubber cement, before setting it down in the section. This will seal the microscopic gap between the section and tube if you have a good fit. Plus, rubber cement won’t harm the plastic or hard rubber. Nor will it stick so tightly that you cannot remove the new nipple for any reason.

Make sure no rubber cement is clogging the inkfeed channel, preventing you from using the pen you have worked so hard to restore.

After everything is clear, use a little more rubber cement to affix the new ink sac. As long as you keep the pen away from heat, which you should always do anyway, the rubber cement makes for a good seal for the bladder. Until orange shellac became more available to pen collectors in recent years, rubber cement had been the go-to sealant for putting on new ink sacs. As I wasn’t sure how much I could trust the shellac between metal and rubber surfaces, I went with the old standby that I knew I could trust.

Upon completing this. let everything set and dry for 24-hours. Test it with water or ink to make sure the seals are good. If the pen goes for another 24-hours on its side without any leaks in the nipple, section or sac, you are good to go.

If the sac will fill but cannot retain any fluid, then there is an air leak you will need to find and seal. It might be a well hidden hairline crack elsewhere in the section. It also could be a hole in the ink sac, which is unlikely. Mostly it will be a gap somewhere between the section and the new nipple.

Once everything is tested and holding, put the rest of the pen together as you would any other repair job.

SPECIAL REMINDER: DO NOT force a piece of metal tubing into the remaining hole. Metal tubes are stronger than old hard rubber or plastic. It will crack your remaining part if forced into place.. If that happens, it is time to find a new pen to work on. Be careful.

The Skyline’s the Limit for Walt Disney

By on May 12, 2015
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It only seems fitting that a pen company get the nation’s leading animator to sell it’s pens and pencils. Who wouldn’t trust Walt Disney when it comes to picking a new writing instrument?!

Walt Disney famously became a spokesperson for Wahl-Eversharp and its line of Skyline pens. The way Disney discusses the responsiveness of the nib, we figure he must have been given one of the famous and rare flex nibs Eversharp made.

Walt Disney famously became a spokesperson for Wahl-Eversharp and its line of Skyline pens. The way Disney discusses the responsiveness of the nib, we figure he must have been given one of the famous and rare flex nibs Eversharp made.

Walt Disney famously pitched the futuristic looking Eversharp Skylines in the 1940s. This great ad comes from 1942 or early 1943, hot on the heels of the hit movie “Bambi.” It is difficult to think that anybody today doesn’t know this film about a young orphaned deer growing up in the woods with his friends Thumper and Flower.

Likewise, it is difficult to believe many pen collectors aren’t familiar with the iconic art deco designed Eversharp Skylines. Made right here in Chicago, the Skyline also was supposed to be one of the first pens engineered to handle the altitude pressure changes of flight. It had a nifty breather tube leading from the section into the sac, unlike most lever fillers of the 1930s and ’40s. However, the Parker Vacumatic already added that feature in the early 1930s, and the 51 kept it. So the Skyline wasn’t the only pen equipped to handle something as exotic and romantic as commercial aviation. Even then, many frequent fliers would have been dubious of the consistency of mess-free flight claims.

 

 

 

This is the first resurrection of the Eversharp Skyline made in a limited edition dedicated to Walt Disney.

This is the first resurrection of the Eversharp Skyline made in a limited edition dedicated to Walt Disney.

Disney and Eversharp are so well linked in the public imagination that when the Eversharp brand was first resurrected in the late 1990s or early 2000s, a new Skyline was introduced in a limited edition collectors’ run. These pens switched from the original lever-filling design to a cartridge/converter system that was accessed by unscrewing a seemless blind cap in the tail of the pen. The Disney pens were numbered, and featured his autograph engraved on the golden cap.

ThePenMarket.com is excited offer one of these limited edition Disney Skylines on its preowned pens page. We also have a great collection of Eversharp Skylines in our vintage pens collection.

Esterbrook has those ‘Biloxi Blues’

By on January 5, 2015
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Neil Simon is one of my favorite playwrights, and I wasn’t 3 minutes into the film adaptation of his autobiographical “Biloxi Blues” (1988) when I spotted an Esterbrook LJ in the hands of Matthew Broderick, the star of the film playing Eugene Jerome (a.k.a. Neil Simon) as a young, wise-cracking soldier from New York experiencing bootcamp in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Not quite as funny or famous as Simon’s bigger hits, “The Odd Couple” or “Barefoot in the Park,” “Biloxi Blues” is the quasi sequel to Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” which follows the early adolescence of Eugene.

In both films, Eugene is constantly dreaming of becoming a writer and scribbling down all of his observations in his diary.

“Biloxi Blues” starts on the overcrowded troop train heading south to Mississippi, where Eugene is desperately trying to collect his thoughts while surrounded by young recruits from all over the country with whom he has nothing in common. It is mid-1945, and Eugene and his fellow recruits are training to be part of the invasion of Japan before the nuclear bombs are dropped.

The movie is a fun coming-of-age comedy, and Christopher Walken practically steals the whole show as Eugene’s strict authoritarian (and slightly insane) drill sergeant. Toss in a light romance with Penelope Ann Miller, and you’ve got a solid 90-minute movie experience.

Of course, true pen fanatics will see the vintage pen discrepancy immediately. The film takes place in 1945. The Esterbrook J/LJ series didn’t launch until 1948. Don’t let that spoil your fun with the film, and if you want some colorful Esterbrooks of your own to play with, click here to see our rainbow of Esterbrook options.