Shaking my head with resignation masquerading as wisdom
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.
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.
Oh, the pen has been named “Demistein”.
Last Tuesday my friend Chris Gryder had an art opening at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. I attended it and took a few pictures, some of which I’ve stuck here for perusal. Chris showed older work as well as part of a larger installation for Florida State University he had just completed. He does some amazing work but don’t tell him I said that.
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.
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?
Despite the fact that nothing ever grows for me but weeds I do like some green things. Odd and unusual plants that aren’t part of my everyday experience really get my interest. In California I’ve been to the Los Angeles Country Arboretum and the Huntington Library Botanical Gardens and both have an awe inspiring variety of plant life to see. Because of the climate they have an incredible array of flowers, trees, succulents, grasses, etc. from all around the world. Going from a Japanese garden to giant cacti in a short walk is really fun. Oh, and the LA County Arboretum has peafowl running around loose.
It’s really hard to top those places and because of that I was a bit let down by the National Arboretum in Washington D.C. It’s still a wonderful place but it’s populated by plant species far more familiar to someone who lives in the Eastern United States. Nonetheless it is pleasant and park like with people picnicking and laying about enjoying the green space.
We went there on “azalea weekend” which is when they come into bloom. It was impressive to see color blanket areas during the walk around the azalea gardens. I didn’t know how great the variety of sizes and hues were for those flowers till that point.
I was very pleasantly surprised to see that the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum was there as well. Bonsai trees are fascinating and their miniature intricacies kept me enthralled. These perfectly proportioned dwarf trees are amazing pieces of living art. Penjing is the Chinese art of miniature landscape. It involves trees like Bonsai but often creates the impression of a small natural area. It can also emphasize parts of the tree like the trunk or branches through manipulations.
I hope you enjoy the gallery of photos below which show some bits of the trip. Click the thumbnails for a bigger image and description.
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.
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.
(Click on images below for full size)
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!
If you’ve been collecting, fixing, and futzing with pens for as long as I have you wind up with a lot of pen parts. Often these bits are leftovers from a broken pen you may have bought to salvage parts from to fix another. You hope that someday you’ll need some of the leftover pieces but unless you do pen repair as a business (which I do not) they’ll just gather dust.
A while ago I was rummaging through my cabinet of pen curiosities and realized I had a lot of Sheaffer Snorkel parts. There were more than enough to make quite a few pens out of. The down side was that there were not enough parts of the same color to make a monotone pen except for black. Black, although suitable for all formal occasions, is quite a boring pen color so I didn’t bother.
Sometime after noticing my parts surplus I was talking to a friend and realized she never had owned a Snorkel. Since I think everyone should have one (or two) of this remarkable pen I had an idea: Take the colorful mish-mash of parts and form a single pen from them. This would match my friend’s eclectic nature (and my own whimsy) as well! So with that a pen made of parts from many other pens (generically known as a “frankenpen”) was born. After the woman in question, Leigh Reyes, received the monstrosity she christened it “Frankensnork.”
I thought Franky (for short) was going to be a one off since I couldn’t imagine many people would find such a conglomeration of parts attractive. Surprisingly, I was proven wrong when the pen was shown around to other pen fanciers and they expressed a desire for one of similarly bizarre construction. A few months later I had fulfilled such slightly askew wishes with three more pens. Two were Snorkels, Bride of Frankensnork & Son of Frankensnork, and one was a Sheaffer Thin Model I named Thinenstein. Those pens have since found their way into the hands of some good friends, both here and abroad, who I hope are happy with them.
Never knowing when to stop I’ve taken up the mad scientist mantle again to build another horror pen. Sadly, there were not enough parts to make a multi-hued Snorkel again but I did discover enough to create a Sheaffer Tuckaway. This pen model was quite short with an abbreviated clip and intended for vest pockets or ladies’ purses. It’s filled via the Touchdown method so in my bizarre naming scheme it has become Spawn of Thinenstein! Well, it was Baby of Thinenstein prior to that but I didn’t think it theatrical enough a name.
I’ve just assembled all the parts I will need and below is an image of them arranged somewhat in the order they are put together. When I’m done and before I ship it off to its waiting owner I’ll take a picture of the finished product.
Last Tuesday we went out on the town (not the town I live in since there isn’t much town to out upon) and saw Neko Case in concert. It took place at the lovely Meymandhi Concert Hall in Raleigh, NC. If you don’t know who Ms. Case is you might recognize her as part of the Canadian band The New Pornographers. In her solo work she veers away from the harder rock sound of that band and instead ranges from honky tonk and country-rock to haunting ballads. In general she’s hard to categorize as a solo artist but is well known for her powerful and lovely voice. When it was announced she was touring in support of her new album Middle Cyclone and a show was to be relatively nearby we made sure to grab some tickets.
Getting there is not half the fun when you have to drive two hours. Still we had additional motivation for the trek in the form of dinner at the Raleigh Mellow Mushroom location. After overeating and visiting a high end chocolate shop across the street (yay for dark chocolate with chili cream filling) we headed over to the concert. The last time we were there we saw The Swell Season fresh off of winning the Oscar for best song in the movie Once. What was great about both times was ease of parking. You have to love a place where you don’t have to pay too much to literally park across the street.
It’s a classy venue (probably too classy for me!) and the lobby had several bars set up with top-shelf liquors and beers plus big honkin’ cookies for purchase. We beelined over to the T-shirt area so I could pick up the mandatory concert garb.
When seated we found the opening act was not really to our liking so we twiddled our thumbs until the main event. Neko made up for that disappointment with a great voice and fantastic set of old and new songs. I was happy to hear cuts from her previous album, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, which is a favorite of mine. On the down side we had a drunken hooting woman behind us with the amazing gift of projecting her voice with the force of an air horn. After professing her love for Neko several times she went into request mode loudly wishing the song “Prison Girls” be sung immediately since it “kicked ass”. The backup singer on stage had the job of being snarkstress to people like this who yelled by throwing out quips like: “Oh! Let me make a note of that (mimes pen and pad); Raleigh, 4/7/09, ‘You’re awesome’. Got it.”
Overall, a great concert.
Even newer pens can quickly need some tender loving care. Recently some simple repair work came up on a pen that shouldn’t have needed it. It was purchased used but promised to be in working condition which, as you can guess, was not an accurate description. Still, I’m happy I did get to do this work since it’s an interesting pen with a bit of a story.
Several years ago Richard Binder, well known for his specialty nib work, and Filcao, a little known Italian pen manufacturer, collaborated on a design. Called “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean” it is styled in the mold of a vintage writing instrument. CTGOTO (I love acronyms) has solid, square shouldered good looks and a moderately large size which makes it comfortable to use. The luxury of a sterling silver cap band is a contrast to the humble steel Schmidt nib. But it is not a simple nib since Mr. Binder has in this case tweaked it to be a cursive italic. Orange flecked blue acrylic used for the barrel and cap is the finishing touch to this attractive ensemble.
Worth noting here is something not seen too often on modern pens: a button filler. With the original Duofold Parker put this filling method on the map as a way around patents like Sheaffer’s for the lever filler. It is novel, quaint, and best of all works easily in the following manner: A button under the blind cap at the end of the barrel is pushed down to start the process. This button rests on one end of a spring steel pressure bar and the other side is anchored in the niche between the sac nipple and the inside wall of the barrel. This unit will flex with the downward pressure compressing the sac that it sits next to. When the button is release the sac inflates which draws the ink into it.
When this pen came to me I was surprised to find that the rubber sac had hardened and broke. Usually you wouldn’t think that could happen on a pen this new, but it did. My guess is that the sac may have been old stock and had aged even before it was used. Either way, it was an inky mess inside when disassembled. To fix it all that was needed was a scrubbing and a new sac. A silicone sac was used since I like the fact they don’t degrade like rubber ones over time. Below are a few pictures of the process.
This is the pen taken apart for the repair. Not really very many parts for this filling system.
The pressure bar sits next to the sac like shown here. The button at the end forces it to flex.
After section with sac screws into the barrel you insert the pressure bar from the other end until I seats near the section.
You can see the end of the bar peeking out. Next the button and retaining washer is screwed onto the end.
Here is the barrel all done.
