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Oct
31
Ever seen one of these before?
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Yesterday a pen crossed the bench. This is, per se, neither unusual nor of significant interest. But this pen was both. I’d never seen one. Jim, who drew the short straw and got to restore it, had never seen one, either. This is my photo of that particularly interesting — and, these days, quite possibly downright rare — pen:
I can hear the gears turning already, you’re thinking, “What is this, some kind of joke?” Well might you ask. The pen sure does look like a Wahl-Eversharp Doric, doesn’t it? It’s the right shape, the right size, faceted, and fitted with the right furniture. It even has a One-Shot plunger filler and a Nº 7 Personal Point adjustable nib with the (in)famous Safety Ink Shut Off that the FTC told Wahl-Eversharp to stop advertising. And, to answer the next obvious question, no. It is not a clone or a counterfeit. It was made in the great state of Illinois, in the heart of the good old U.S.A. Yet it is not a Doric…
Oct
30
Hi Pen Fans!
I’m very excited to introduce the Edison Pen Co. 18k Gold nib.
This nib is German made, and available in Fine, Medium, and Broad.
I will be discontinuing the 14k Bock nibs and Bexley nibs, as this nib is of equal quality. However, I still have some Bexleys and Bocks in inventory. If you are interested in these nibs, email me to inquire…
Oct
30
We don’t usually have this much time pass between newsletter updates, but the NY Pen Show intervened and we’ve been having a hard time keeping up with sales of the Dollar brand http://www.hisnibs.com/dollar.htm piston pens. So…sorry for its length!
We have several new models from Delta, including additions to the Capri line and the Dolcevita line…
Oct
26
Have you ever wondered why, when you disassemble a Vacumatic whose blind cap fit perfectly before, you have a devil of a time getting it to line up right when you install a new diaphragm and put the pen back together? The answer is Vacumatic lubricant…
Oct
23
More fun with making things work…
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…correctly.
Yesterday I restored the filler in this lovely Sheaffer Balance Vigilant:
It works perfectly now, but sometimes ya gotta wonder. Someone had taken the pen apart, someone who was not even a little familiar with the Vacuum-Fil mechanism, before it came to Nashua. There were some pretty ugly plier marks on the section, and there was other evidence, more subtle but even more telling. The gasket was entirely gone, but that’s not it. Can you see what I’m talking about?
Look carefully, now. Still don’t see it? Well, here’s the plunger with its new gasket, and a close comparison should give things away.
See it now? I thought so. The backing washer was backwards; even had the pen been assembled with all the right parts, it wouldn’t have worked. It would have gone together, but pushing the plunger down would have been no fun at all because the gasket would have jammed itself ever more tightly against the barrel wall as you pushed harder and harder. The message here? Don’t guess. If you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t do it — at least not to pens you care about…