It has been a little while, but I have a new story in Pen World Magazine! In it I uncover not one but TWO pen heists that targeted the Parker Pen Co. in the late 1940s. This story is reproduced here with permission from Pen World. Please click on the individual images to see the story close-up. Please also use the QR code at the end to subscribe to Pen World Magazine.
For your writing pleasure, we have tested 10 more Noodler’s-brand inks. In Part I we delved into the various controversies, merits and problems with Noodler’s Ink. To read about that, please click on the Part I link.
10 Noodler’s inks are on display here as a color-fast testing measure. The sheet on the left has the test proof that was stored in darkoom. The page on the right shows how some of the inks faded after 9 months in the sunlight.
Today’s ink spent 9 months in our sunniest window for a light-fast test. We also tested them for a pH reading, to verify or deny Noodler’s claim that all of its inks are pH neutral.
Let’s start with the color-fast (or light-fast) testing. It is always interesting to see what colors fade. “Black Swan in Australian Roses” is a red-black color that held up really well under prolonged UV exposure–hardly any fading or change in color. “Asian Ship” is a stunning deep pink. Unfortunately, it faded to nearly invisible. “Ottoman Rose” is a lovely purple with dark undertones. However, it fades rather badly in sunlight to a red-brick color, though shaded lines fade almost completely.
Another American Civil War-themed ink is called “House Divided.” It s a gray ink with some blue-ish undertones. On our Rhodia test pad it seemed to be surprisingly feathery. When it set in the sun for 9 months, it faded to a pale reddish pink…a fitting change for an ink based on the bloodshed of the war.
The blue inks we tested are surprisingly strong. “Bad Belted Kingfisher” is a nice dark blue that some might say borders on blue-black. It definitely doesn’t seem to lose an ounce of color. “Midway Blue” is one of the many World War II-themed inks. It is a bright, medium blue, which also doesn’t seem to fade in the sun.
“Army” green has a certain camouflage flair as an earthy yellow-green that is more green than yellow. UV light tends to fade out the yellow parts, leaving behind a darker green.
“Green” is close to an emerald green color at the start. UV light fades out its yellow properties and leaves behind a darker, bluer green.
Ben Bernanke was the chairman of the Federal Reserve for 8 years, overseeing the worst of the Great Recession. The owner of Noodler’s Ink seems rather obsessed with the guy and has, I think, created several Bernanke-themed inks. We tested “Bernanke Black.” It is a nice black when fresh. UV light fades it a bit to brown.
Whereas yellow is what faded out of the green inks above, the red is what fades out of “Overlord Orange,” another WWII ink. After prolonged exposure to the sun, the pumpkin orange fades to a paler yellow.
For those, like me, who haven’t taken high school chemistry in more than 30 years, the pH scale runs from 0 for the most acidic to 14 for the most base/alkali. A 7 is pH neutral, like distilled water. Aside from “Asian Ship,” most of the inks don’t stray especially far from pH neutrality. Here are our results, after we calibrated our testing equipment.
Noodler’s Ink pH Result:
Black Swan in Australian Roses 8.5
Asian Ship 3.1
Ottoman Rose 8.6
House Divided 8.5
Bad Belted Kingfisher 7.3
Midway Blue 8.5
Army 8.4
Green 7.7
Bernanke Black 8.7
Overlord Orange 7.3
Please remember that the pH doesn’t necessarily mean anything with regard to how it will behave in your pen. It is a raw data point. How it will blend with the chemistry of your ink sac, converter plastic and seals is an entirely different matter.
Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, owned this house with his wife Livy in Hartford, Conn.
Way back in 2013 I wrote a post called “Was Mark Twain the First Pen Pitchman?“. It was the oft repeated story about how author Samuel Clemens, who wrote under the pen name Mark Twain, advertised his support for the Conklin Crescent back in 1903. Clemens is best remembered for his novels “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” Plus there is the more relevant-than-it-has-been-in 100 years “The Gilded Age.”
I wouldn’t normally revisit an old post, but I just went to the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Conn. It is a beautiful house that he had custom built with his wife Livy (Olivia). Although Clemens was a noted writer and wit when they married in 1870, Olivia was the source of their wealth–the daughter of a prominent timber and coal baron. Their house in Hartford was built soon after their marriage. Remarkably, the young man who painted their foyer was none other than Louis Comfort Tiffany!
Clemens would write both Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer in that house.
At the bottom of the photo you can see the Conklin Crescent fountain pen that Mark Twain called his “profanity saver.” Above it to the right is his inkwell.
Among the many artifacts on display was the great author’s actual Conklin Crescent fountain pen. I am not sure what model it is. Yet, I was a bit appalled by its condition. Chunks of black hard rubber were missing from the barrel threads. It definitely isn’t in a condition to be restored to working order and safely used. Nevertheless, it was great to see the actual pen that is so frequently written about and rarely photographed.
If you find yourself in Connecticut, it is worth the visit to this museum. The house is very well preserved, and I certainly learned a ton about the author and his family.
Plus, his next door neighbor was Harriet Beecher Stowe who famously wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” a critical look at American slavery that helped to promote the abolition movement. Her house is now a museum you can explore, too!
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.
Sending a thank you note after a job interview is an excellent way to help yourself get ahead in this world.
It can be difficult to stand out in the job market, but one great way to get a little extra attention is to send a hand-written thank you note after you have an interview.
People so rarely get a hand-written card or letter these days that it is often a welcomed surprise. It also shows a prospective employer that you are thoughtful, considerate and genuinely interested in the job.
Selecting a card is usually pretty easy. You can find thank you notes available at dollar-type stores, grocery stores and Hallmark stores. Be sure to find ones that are glitter-free and not waxy, so you can use your favorite fountain pen. Not only is glitter deadly to your favorite nib, people–especially in a business environment–really hate getting it all over their hands, clothes and desk. Glitter just never lets go and can seemingly hang around for eternity. For the design of the card, keep it simple and business-like…not too frilly.
Writing the message is the easy part. Take your time and use your best penmanship. Address it to the person you interviewed with who will most likely be making the decision to hire you and be your boss. In the first sentence, thank them for the interview, while reminding them what position you applied for. Then personalize it by saying something nice about your discussion, referencing a specific moment during their interview that you hope they remember. Start wrapping up the note by stating your desired outcome for the interview. Close with “Sincerely,” and by signing your name under it.
Below is an example for a rather amusing job. You might want to write a slightly more serious thank you for a more serious job.
Dear Ms. Fowler,
Thank you for letting me interview for the position of whoopee cushion injection-mold supervisor at The Wacky Factory. I had a gas demonstrating my expertise at whoopee cushion inflation and activation. I look forward to your decision and hope to be working with you soon.
Sincerely,
F. Artemis
A field of wild blue camas in Montana springtime has nothing to do with postal shipping speeds. However, it is pretty.
Time is running out for holiday shoppers to get their orders in and arriving before their respective holidays. We likely have already missed the deadline to make sure a Hanukkah package arrives by the first night of the holiday, but there are 8 great nights to celebrate with a new pen.
Christmas shoppers have until December 15 to order pens and use the United States Postal Service’s Ground Advantage (cheapest) shipping service. Orders must be placed by December 19 and using Priority Mail to arrive in time for the big day.
International buyers, we can get you cheaper rates than our system generates for you. The system we have undercharges for FedEx…but if you prefer USPS International Priority Mail, it is much cheaper than the system generates for you. HOWEVER, International Priority Mail has been inconsistent in its delivery times. Your best bet is to order as soon as possible. USPS says it will deliver in 7 to 10 business days, but they do not promise this, as packages sometimes get trapped in your country’s customs office.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is the first chapter to a book I have not completed. Quite frankly, I’m not sure anyone would want to read the whole book. As such, let me know what you think. Should I push ahead?
Stave I
This photo has nothing to do with the story, but didn’t a certain Transylvanian count arrive in London on a ship like this?
Cheers erupted in the operating room when Dr. Tepes removed his bloody hands from the chest of a morbidly obese man. The man’s heart had just restarted after one of the most masterful quadruple bypasses ever performed.
“That was inspiring,” said a young surgical resident. “How on earth did you know you’d find a suitable vein in his calf? His arteries were as congealed as the grease trap at an abandoned McDonald’s”
Dr. Tepes gave a wan smile and tried not to belie his boredom when he explained, “When you have has much experience as I’ve had, sometimes a body just talks to you. Besides, I’ve known this gentleman for several years in town and knew he was an athlete in younger years and suspected there might be additional clear veins in his lower extremities.”
The resident looked on in awe. “Yes, but he came in unexpectedly off an ambulance in cardiac arrest. To think that quickly and remember that well on your feet….”
Even the attending surgeon with 15 years of cardiac surgical experience was impressed. “Sir, that was the most incredible surgery I’ve ever watched.”
“Thank you, Joel,” Dr. Tepes said with warm friendly familiarity. “You really are one of the best cardiac surgeons I’ve ever worked with. That means a lot.”
The nurses agreed and complimented.
“Dr. Brown, do you mind closing him back up and putting the finishing touches on our patient?” Dr. Tepes asked.
“It would be an honor, Sir,” replied the resident.
“Great. It’s 2 a.m., and I’m more than a little hungry for a much delayed lunch break.”
“I’ll keep a close eye on young Brown,” Dr. Joel Irving replied. “I’ll catch up with you to go over the surgery for our notes when we’re done.”
Dr. Tepes thanked Dr. Irving wearily with a pat on the upper arm, as he passed him to head to the hall for his lunch.
Out of his scrubs and into his shirt, tie and white coat, Dr. Tepes listened to the echo of his comfortable gleaming black wingtips, as he walked down the tiles to what he darkly and privately referred to as his lunchroom. His office on the top floor was locked, and everyone assumed he was deep inside enjoying his private meal in solitude, as was his wont. He owned Lucy Westenra Memorial Hospital and only practiced surgery for fun, to keep his hand in the proverbial game. While he likely was the most talented cardiac surgeon on earth, he kept a low profile. He was a quiet soul who didn’t seek out fame or attention. He ran the hospital as a nonprofit to benefit the town of Sleepy Hollow, New York. Some insanely rich executives and movie stars knew of his talents, and they paid a fortune to improve their own lives and essentially fund the hospital for the community.
Uncas Falls in Norwich, Conn.
What bothered Dr. Vladislav Tepes wasn’t money or debt, it was shear boredom. A person’s heart and blood spoke to him in ways no one alive could understand, and it was no challenge at all to save a person’s life from cardiovascular problems or gunshots. He set out long ago to try to make amends for his past by saving lives, but he wasn’t even sure it was worth it any more. So few people changed their own lives afterward. So few dedicated their new lives to others or making the most of their own lives. Text books might one day be written about the surgery he just performed, but to him it was so rote that he almost fell asleep about three quarters of the way through it.
In his lifetime, he had seduced every size, color and shape of woman and man. For the past couple decades it was so beyond tedious, messy and boring that he didn’t even bother…or miss it.
He raced cars, flew airplanes, sailed around the world, partied with celebrities, mastered several languages, played several instruments and explored many hobbies from horology to horticulture.
Dr. Tepes looked like he was in his late 40s, but his family had long since passed away. He was stoutly built, and his pale skin and raven-black hair combed from right to left gave him a more youthful look, while his dark eyes and thin lips seemed to age him a little.
Outside of work, he had few friends. People were so predictable. By the time people got interesting to him, they died of old age.
Arriving at a glass-windowed door that said “Hospital Lab,” Dr. Tepes sighed with relief and entered. It was vacant at this hour, so he left out the lights and grabbed a large Pyrex measuring cup—filling it with all of the day’s leftover test tubes of already tested blood. He put the empties in the autoclave and put the cold, congealing mess in the microwave for 40 seconds to get it up to 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
***
Uncas Falls in Winter. Norwich, Conn.
Dancing down the hallway with his mop and wheeled bucked, few people loved their job as much as José Monterrey. José was the head janitor at Westenra Memorial. A happily married father of three, at 45, José felt like he was on top of the world. He had grown up poor in the rough border town of Juarez, Mexico. Through hard work and good fortune he came to the United States and became a naturalized citizen.
He looked past the petty racism of so many non-Hispanic Americans, focusing on the goodness of many other Americans and the opportunities available to his children that he barely dreamed possible at their age.
Unlike the jobs his parents had to do to get by, keeping a hospital sterilized and safe for patients and co-workers felt simple. Keeping his staff motivated and happy was likewise easy. Westenra Memorial paid top dollar for every employee and offered as strong a benefits package as he’d ever seen for what would normally be low-wage manual laborers.
“Lose a finger, get two free,” he’d joke to his prospective employees.
Only his wife protested.
“José, why don’t you go to day shifts and spend more time with us at home?”
He’d explain, “Rosie, it is so much quieter at night, and I can get so much more done. Plus, they need me there. The nurses and doctors are so stressed out saving lives, I clown around with them and ease their burdens. Same for some of the patients, who are scared and still awake. It isn’t in my job description, but this place is going to put our kids through college. Maybe they’ll be doctors here one day. It is important to give them everything I can.”
He smiled as he thought about his Rose. He twirled around his bucket and mop, pretending to dance with her as he made his way to the last room he needed to clean.
José had strict orders to stay out of the hospital lab when the lights were on or from midnight to 2 a.m., so he saved it for last.
It surprised him a little that the door had been left unlocked at a quarter to 3 in the morning, but the lights were out and people forgot to lock up all of the time.
The tall, athletic janitor flicked on the lights and gasped in horror when he saw the owner of the hospital drinking human blood from a glass bowl.
Dr. Tepes hissed in anger, bearing sharp, elongated fangs at the intruder.
José fell to his knees crying and begging. “Oh, please don’t kill me. I didn’t know! Nobody knows. I won’t tell anyone. I have a wife and children. Please, I’ll do anything you want. Just let me live.”
Dr. Tepes rushed to him with supernatural speed.
The one ink brand everyone is always talking about is Noodler’s Inks. People either love it or hate it. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of middle ground. As such, we want to add our two cents to this conversation, and we surprised ourselves with our tests and findings.
Controversy seems to follow in Noodler’s wake, and, yet, it doesn’t seem to disrupt people’s passion for the ink. From the stains-everything-it-comes-into-contact-with Baystate Blue to clever (and occasionally offensive to some) ink names and label designs, Noodler’s is always a top-selling ink.
I first got hooked on their ink with “Antietam” ink. As an armchair Civil War historian, I knew Antietam was this single bloodiest day of fighting in all of America’s wars. There were nearly 23,000 casualties at that battle. I got a macabre kick out of the Antietam ink looking like fresh blood when wet and dried blood when dry. It remains my red ink of choice. The ink has never clogged my pens or created any problems.
However, my favorite of their ink names is “54th Massachusetts.” As a regiment, it is the most famous African-American regiment of the Civil War. If you’ve seen the movie “Glory,” with Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington and Matthew Broderick, it is that regiment. The American uniforms in the Civil War were blue. The men of this regiment were black. The ink color is blue-black. A clever ink pun. Unfortunately, as beautiful as the ink is, it clogs the hell out of my pens.
As a matter of fact, virtually every other Noodler’s Ink I have ever written with clogs my pens. As such, the only ink I use is Antietam, and I don’t recommend any other Noodler’s to anyone, unless they are only writing or drawing with dip pens.
Here are 11 swatches of Noodler’s Ink. The samples on the left were the control samples. The inks on the right were in the sun for 9 months.
Nevertheless, when I bought a large collection of ink several years ago, it came with a large selection of Noodler’s. As such, Dawn and I thought we’d put it to the test. Today’s selection remained in my sunniest window for 9 months. We also pH tested the ink to see how potentially corrosive it might be. As a quick refresher the scale between acid and base runs from 0 through 14, with 7 being neutral, such as pure distilled water. As always, we calibrated our testing equipment before testing the inks.
We were absolutely stunned by how light-fast these colors were. At worst, they lost a little of their luster and vibrancy after 9 months of sunlight. Most didn’t lose anything! Very impressive.
Noodler’s Ink also claims its is pH Neutral. We did not find that to be the case in these 11 inks sampled. However, they were much better regarding pH neutrality than many other brands. The important thing to keep in mind is that just because an ink is pH neutral doesn’t mean it doesn’t have ingredients that will still corrode your rubber ink sacs, diaphragms and seals. We did not test these inks in rubber ink sacs. The pH results below are simply raw data points.
Noodler’s Ink Name pH
41 Brown 8.4
Kiowa Brown 8.5
Golden Brown 8.1
Cayenne 7.8
Apache Sunset 7.5
Polar Green ’09 8.7
Dark Matter 8.6
Nightshade 8.4
Purple Heart 8.5
Gruene Cactus 8.3
Zhivago 8.7
In conclusion, these 11 Noodler’s Ink were amazing for their color-fast testing. The pH is a little on the base or alkali side but no where near as far off the mark as many other ink brands.
When I first saw the Montblanc Rouge et Noir Metamorphosis pens, I was confused by the fact they featured a spider. I was thinking of Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” in which is main character Gregor Samsa wakes one morning to discover he is a cockroach. It took my good friend Tobias to remind me of Ovid’s tale by the same name in Greek Mythology, in which a woman named Arachnae does not give Athena–the goddess of wisdom, war and crafts–enough credit for being as talented a weaver as herself.
This is one of the three authentic versions we know of the Montblanc Rouge et Noir Metamorphosis limited edition pens.
Athena challenges Arachnae to a weaving duel. Arachnae wins with a tapestry showcasing the offensive behavior of the gods, which sends Athena into a rage. Athena shreds the offending tapestry and turns Arachnae into a spider and eternal weaver. Hence our modern scientific term for spiders being arachnids.
The modern, limited Montblanc pens are truly stunning pens that pay tribute to that story as well as some early designs of Montblanc pens in the 1920s. Unsurprisingly, fakers jumped on that design just as quickly as a spider jumps on a fly in its web.
This is a very convincing replica of Montblanc Rouge et Noir Metamorphosis pen on the surface, but a closer look reveals its flaws.
From a cursory look, both the genuine article and the fake look very similar. We do not have the sterling silver spider web version of the original to show, but we do have the fake. Montblanc made a plain black version like the one we have, a plain orange version and a black with silver spider web version. To the best of our knowledge, Montblanc DID NOT make an orange spider web version. Furthermore, the original silver web is more like a filigree. You can tell on the fake that the orange is painted on to the steel pen with a raised webbing.
The fake version of the MB pen has the same spider logo, but it is a little less defined, as it is a copy from a casting.
The actual spider logo on the fake is very convincing, but when you look closely at it, you can see by its slight lack of detail that it is made from a casting of the original.
Our authentic fountain pen has two other features that the fake version in fountain pen often do not have. The authentic pens have a spider etched into the nib, while the fakes with a steel nib often have a more traditional “4810” nib design. Also, the real FP has a piston filler, not a converter, as many of the fakes do.
Many of the real Montblanc editions, but not all, also have ruby eyes in the spider.
With any luck, these pointers will help keep you out of some fraudster’s web of overpriced fake Montblanc pens.
Authentic Montblanc Metamorphosis pens have a spider on their nib.
This is what the new home page looked like on Day 1 of our refresh. Please note the “On Sale!,” “New Arrivals” and search bar.
In our on-going efforts to make ThePenMarket.com to best place to buy writing instruments online, we just made some major changes to our home page. You can now search for bargains and discounts with our On Sale! pages. You can save time by only searching for our New Arrivals to find the latest writing instruments on the site in one easy-to-find spot. You can now search the site with a custom search bar. Annnnd, we’ve cleaned up our ZZ Top beard of daily updates and latest news on the home page.
To help speed your searches by brand in “Vintage Pens” or “Pre-Owned Pens,” we added comprehensive list of brands in alphabetical order to a drop-down menu when you click either category of pens. Inside that drop-down menu a number by each brand will let you know how many pens we have in that brand, hopefully saving you time, especially when we are out of stock in a particular brand. However, if you love what record collectors might call “crate digging,” and you prefer our old lay out for cruising through all of the vintage or pre-owned pens in one shot, all you have to do is click the top center of the drop-down menu that reads “View All Vintage Pens (82).” Or “View All Pre-Owned Pens (128).” The 82 and 128 represent all of the pens we have in those categories today. Those numbers will change daily. You can also now use that same menu to search for all of the nibs in either section. If you only want to see the modern pre-owned pens with a stub nib…bam! There it is.
In the new Vintage Pens or Pre-Owned Pens drop menus, you can search all the pens, a single brand or all the pens in either section by their nib style.
We used to have at least 20 or more fonts on the website. Now we have updated, minimized and streamlined our fonts to make the site look more uniform and modern.
That ZZ Top beard of daily news was cleaned, shampooed and trimmed to be put in a more modular text box that you can read more easily with a simple scroll, while still navigating the home page more easily.
Best of all, this is only the completion of Phase 1 of our updates to help make ThePenMarket.com more user friendly. We won’t be done with this round of updates until we complete a 4th and final phase.
In the meantime, please let us know what you think. Also please feel free to let us know what you would do to make the site more convenient for you. Thanks!
