Last weekend I went to the Triangle Pen Show in Cary, N.C. Generally known as the “Raleigh Pen Show” it’s physically the closest one to me here in Southwest Virginia. I decided to spend the Saturday at the show and arrived a little over two hours of driving later.
It’s not a huge show but that works in its favor since I could cover all the vendors in my single day there. One couldn’t say there were not a lot of pens to see and try. Yes, the candy store metaphor can be used here. Like most shows it runs the whole weekend and has seminars, an auction, and other events scattered throughout. I also got to meet names I’ve only read about like Dr. David Isaacson and Howard Levy which was a pen geek thrill.
My temptations were many but in the end there were a few things on my short list. Dr. Isaacson had several peacock blue Snorkels for sale. That’s the only Snork color I don’t have yet. Steve Braun showed his very reasonably priced Indian made hard rubber eyedropper pens there. I loved the matte and textured finishes in the ripple patterns. I had a nice conversation with Rob Morrison and looked closely at a Sheaffer vacuum filler with a stub nib and a clear barrel at his table. Which one did I get? I’ll blog about it some day.
Lastly, but certainly not leastly, I got to meet someone in person who I had only been a friend with on Facebook. She was as nice and interesting in person as online. No “B” movie plot played out and she wasn’t a homicidal maniac who killed fountain pen collectors met on the internet. Her husband was a great sport and followed her around the show actually taking an interest in the event.
Next show I plan to go to is the one in the Washington, D.C. Supershow. That one will surely tire me out.
Apologies to those who already saw these photos. This post is for the 2 people who might not have.
It’s odd how the internet can extend your reach. I can buy goods from places I never heard about as a child. I read people’s thoughts from lands I didn’t expect to glean insights from. I see images taken minutes, even seconds, after events extremely remote to me. Beyond all that what still strikes me as the most unbelievable is I have friends on the other side of this planet whom I’ve never actually met.
How that happened is a long and rather boring story. Logic dictates that the underlying reason is that my likability is directly proportional to the distance you are away from me (Overfield’s law). If I lived on the moon the entire world would love me. What all of the people I know overseas have in common is using and collecting that odd throwback I love: fountain pens. Forming a small (but rapidly growing) group centered in metro Manila they meet for food, friendship, and fountain pens (is that the “3 Fs”?) How do I know this? After corresponding with one of the members I started following these gatherings online via Jenny Ortuoste’s blog or photos sent directly to me by people such as Leigh Reyes (blog plug). Now I can supplement that with quite a few picture galleries put up by attendees on Facebook. This happy band calls themselves the Fountain Pen Network-Philippines or FPN-P for short.
The reason I like this group so much (besides the fact that some members will actually put up with me) is their enthusiasm and camaraderie. It always looks fun when they meet at someone’s home, get a room in a tasty looking restaurant, or even take over a whole coffee shop to see pens, talk pens, use pens, and eat (not pens). Often they go out for sightseeing and pen paraphernalia hunts afterward. I’ve been at pen meets that were barely alive by comparison. The people are all ages and from all walks of life including a broadcaster, an award winning novelist/playwright, an advertising executive, professors, business people, creative professionals, writers, students, etc. etc. Certainly it’s a diverse and interesting group of folks. Seeing young people interested in what some think stodgy like fountain pens is rare, but there are some here. I never thought I’d use the term “young people” in a sentence…I am getting old.
This is leading up to my mention of another ritual they have at the meets: raffles. Members bring in items and all are raffled off to attendees for free. Last time they met there were so many items a second round of drawings had to be made. Everyone (or nearly so) seems to come away with a nifty doodad given out of the goodness of another person’s heart. Pens, notebooks, inks, and even panda shaped pens are put into the great redistribution pool. Next month is the meeting that will mark their one year anniversary and the raffle is sure to be bigger and better than ever. Also, odd as it might seem, I’ll be sending a couple things 8,000 miles for it as kind of a thank you for enjoying a bit of the fun remotely and being able to meet so many good people at the same time.
So….all gaze upon RAFFLESTEIN and his trusty helper PENCIGOR!!! (um…at the top of the page.) A more monstrous pair has never been seen in the pen world. I found just enough leftover parts for what may be my last Frankensnork class pen. It’s green, brown, and blue which I think is a nice color combination. The barrel comes from a desk pen since Sheaffer never made a brown pocket pen. Finishing it off is a Palladium-Silver triumph nib (fine) which has the script identification on it I find so charming. Pencigor has a top from a tuckaway pencil contrasting with a generic bottom assembly.
Pd-Ag nib.
So congratulations to my friends in the other hemisphere on their 1 year anniversary. I hope there are many more. Oh, and whoever wins this owes me some adobo if I ever visit. 🙂
Brown & Bigelow of St. Paul, MN knows promotional products. In 1896 they came out with some of the first advertising calendars and eventually created many iconic ones like the Norman Rockwell Boy Scouts of America series. They did more than just that, though. The “Redipoint” pencil was a B&B product usually sporting the name or logo of a business on the barrel. You’ll be happy to know they still are in the same line of business today.
In 1922 William H. Ingersoll, the marketing maven for the Ingersoll Watch Company (“The Watch That Made the Dollar Famous”) left that industry after a takeover of the eponymous company. He went to the Redipoint Company which reorganized as Ingersoll Redipoint. Still distributed by B&B the products of this company continued to rely heavily on promotional writing instruments. Besides pencils they also had a line of plastic and metal fountain pens one of which is the topic of this post.
Redipoint pen and paraphernalia. (click for larger image)
The fountain pen shown here is a very nice insurance promotional item. The top has an enameled company name and you can find identical pens with variety of companies and cities in this spot. The Redipoint pen itself has a gold-filled metal barrel and cap covered with a fleurs-de-lis design. It’s similar to a Wahl metal pen of the same era in looks and the lever filling system. The nib is a semi-flex medium which really can put down a good amount of ink. Overall it’s quite nice for a piece of insurance advertising.
Pictured here is a near mint example with all the original paperwork. Sometime in 1924 Mrs. G. E. Sanford got this pen at Christmas but didn’t use it very much. I have no idea where it lived for the many intervening years until the pen found itself on the other side of the world with my friend in Metro Manila. It did come back to this hemisphere and stayed a little while with me before I gave it this past weekend as a graduation present to a good friend. So the legacy of Mrs. Sanford of Bunker Hill, IL lives on in an odd way.
I never liked the term “cheap and cheerful” since it always conjured up an image of someone who relished penny-pinching to me. But if any pen really deserved that moniker the Sheaffer Touchdown Cadet Tip-dip model does. Why? Let’s pop the pen out of its packaging and see.
The Cadet has a bit in common with an Esterbrook pen. First off, the nib is stainless steel and part of a threaded unit that screws into the section for easy replacement. Both those traits it has in common with the renowned low-priced Esterbrook line. But when you look for a lever to fill the pen and can’t find one the similarities end. Unscrewing and pulling up on the blind caps exposes the trademark metal tube of Sheaffer’s pneumatic touchdown filling system. The other feature, the “Tip-dip”, turns out to be a small recess in the feed under the nib where the ink channel is exposed. This was intended to allow the pen to fill with minimal dunking depth in ink.
My example of this fountain pen was a NOS blister packed version that had and extra nib thrown in which was, glory be, a stub. Nowhere on it does it say “cadet” but that’s what it has been called in the old catalogs. Like the more expensive Sheaffer pens a whole range of nibs were available for the tippys including flexible styles. As mentioned it is made of stainless steel but there is a nice amount of tipping material at the end.
Sheaffer stainless steel tip-dip nib.
How does this early 60’s low cost pen feel to write with? Great, I must say. The pen is substantial but light weight and the point is smooth with some line variation. Construction is exemplary with high quality plastics and metals. I’ve been inside the pen too and can report it is made just as well as the expensive touchdown models.
I would certainly recommend a vintage tip-dip pen to anyone looking for a practical and economical writer. It turned out that this inexpensive vintage pen is an attractive, solid writing instrument which is far more “cheerful” than “cheap”.
I promised to proffer my guess on the mystery nib affixed to the Tuckaway I talked about in the posts Mystery Point/Counterpoint and Mystery Point/Counterpoint II. I had an unfair advantage, though, in this since I have a few more Sheaffer catalogs than just the one I showed the page from already. Take a look at the page from few years later below. It’s still an illustration without too much detail but I think it shows the shapes a bit better. Considering that the point has quite rounded shoulders and the nib does not exhibit too much curving inwards at the top leads me to my guess that the nib in question is a flexible coarse. Of course we’ll probably never know the truth.
I’m done with this batch of frankenpens. It could be the last since I am getting rather short on old parts that will fit together into a pen shaped form. For the first time here’s a portrait of them all together. There are two Sheaffer Thin Models, a Sheaffer Tuckaway, and a Parker 51 Demi. I hope this very dysfunctional family has entertained you.
I’m back at the pens from parts thing with two frankenpens under construction right now. One is a Sheaffer similar to what I’ve done before but the other is a Parker 51. This is the first non-Sheaffer I’ve created and it’s been interesting so far. There are three plastic parts visible and offer a choice of color: The blind cap, barrel, and hood or shell. The one thing about this kind of pen I don’t like is that they all had a metal cap which means no color choice for that part.
The parts of the Parker 51 frankenpen. (click image for labeled parts)
If you’ve noticed how short the barrel looks in the photograph that’s because it’s actually a Parker 51 Demi model. This model was intended for women and has a foreshortened barrel. I’ve always liked them since 51s seem cuter in this diminutive size. The Demi was introduced right on the tail end of the Vacumatic filler’s life and lasted for only a year in this form.
I got the idea to make this pen from a comment someone had made about one of my previous frankys. Since this person inspired me the pen will be traveling out to them when completed. It’s a surprise so I’m not going to give away who the recipient is.
The post before last I described a Sheaffer nib that I couldn’t quite classify. It was a triumph nib with a wide point and some flexibility which wasn’t like anything I had seen before (not that I’ve seen very much). Well, I’ve come across some information that may help to figure this nib out a little.
Old manufacturer’s catalogs are an invaluable resource for vintage pen information. In the past you usually had to be lucky enough to find one at a flea market, buy a reproduction, or get it lent out to you. None of these options is acceptable for someone like me who needs instant gratification and has no patience. Luckily I stopped by Bill Acker’s site and saw that he is now selling PDF downloads of catalogs! I purchased four from Sheaffer right off the bat and one was for the year of the Tuckaway with mystery nib (1949). Take a look at the image below of the nib styles for that year.
1949 Sheaffer nibs courtesy Bill Acker. (click for larger image)
Surprising how many points types there were for triumph nibs in 1949, isn’t it? The one problem with this illustration is just that. A photograph would give more detail to go on when trying to match my nib with the ones on this page. I think we can narrow it down a bit now at least. Which one do you think it is?
It’s great when you have an indicator of what type of nib is on a vintage pen. Some Wahl examples had “flexible” stamped on them so it’s pretty clear what you’ve got. Sheaffer Snorkels had codes lightly etched on the base of their nibs corresponding to a certain point type. A feed may have numbers on it which could be decoded to give the same kind of information like on a Parker 75. If you’re really lucky you might have your hands on a pen that’s new old stock (never was sold) with a factory identification sticker or chalk mark relating the vitals about the type of line it will create.
Realistically the vast majority of vintage pens one can buy are bereft of any readable information. To know what kind of line that shiny gold thing at the end is going to put down you need to do a close inspection as well as use the pen. There’s no real standard about what makes a fine, medium, or bold point what they are. If you draw a very thin line with a fountain pen you say “fine point” and if it’s pretty thick you say “bold point.” Stub, italic, and music nibs can be seen to be what they are by usually by eye. Knowing when you come across a flexible nib is a combination of subjective considerations and experience. Many people mistakenly think a semi-flexible nib is full flex because they’ve just never used the latter.
Now that we know the confusion that can be had on the topic of nib grading and identification let us look at a prime example of “huh?” I have a Sheaffer Touchdown filling Tuckaway model which has a nib I can’t quite categorize. It was sold as a bold nib, but bold nibs usually have a pretty good spherical blob of tipping material on them. This one has a thin edge to it almost like a stub nib. So, is it a stub? Well, it has pretty rounded shoulders that make me question that. And to make matters a little more interesting it has some flex to it when used.
Closely inspecting the construction of the upper part of the nib in question (nib A) we see some more oddness. I’ve included a few images of both this nib and a contemporary medium-ish Sheaffer nib for comparison (nib B). As nib A approaches its point you can see that it becomes flattened which is shown well in the back and side view images below. Nib B maintains a lateral curvature in this same area before getting a little flatter closer to the tip. It’s this flatness that allows nib A to flex more than nib B which has stiffer tines due to that arch shape being carried through. Another difference is that the feed ends a bit lower on nib A so it won’t bump on the paper when the tines spread. Lastly, you can observe how wider tines give nib A the shovel like appearance at its end reminiscent of a stub nib.
Writing sample.
So, I don’t know what this nib is really. I’ll call it a bold with some stub like qualities. Look at the images and writing sample and see if you can come up with the answer.
The new pen I’ve been building is finished. Last post you saw the parts and now you can see it all together. By agreement with its owner the pen will be called “Tuckenstein” to represent it being both a frankenpen and a Sheaffer Tuckaway model. The only change I made from when I laid out the parts earlier was to switch the blind cap from blue to green. The blue one was too tight and so I replaced it with a better fitting one. I don’t think it changes the overall look of the pen a great deal.
It wasn’t too hard to do final assembly on this pen except for finding the correct screw to attach the blind cap. I stole a synthetic rubber o-ring from a Sheaffer Imperial which fit well enough to allow the touchdown tube to achieve a good seal when moving up and down inside the barrel. It’s important to have this good seal since in this system of filling a sudden compression of air is achieved by pushing that tube downwards which deflates the sac. That sac will then inflate and in that way draw ink up. Lastly the old spare nib used needed a good amount of smoothing to make it write well.
It may not be something a mere mortal should attempt but another pen has been brought to life!
