Sheaffer – Page 2

June 6, 2009

Insert Lithp Here

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.

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. 🙂

untitled-5-1-june-10-2009-1 — Rafflestein writing sample.

May 21, 2009

Tippy Dippy Touchdown

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.

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”.

may-20-2009-1-blog-p1020997 — Cadet writing sample.

May 15, 2009

Mystery Point/Counterpoint III

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.

May 15, 2009

Frankenfamily

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.

May 4, 2009

Mystery Point/Counterpoint II

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?

April 24, 2009

Mystery Point/Counterpoint

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)

April 21, 2009

It’s Alive!

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!

April 19, 2009

Franky and Fans

Frankys in order: Bride of, Thinenstein, Son of. — Frankies in order: Bride of, Thinenstein, Son of.

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.

Tucky — Spawn of Thinenstein bits. (click image for parts w/labels)

April 2, 2009

Snorktastic Nibs

I have a weakness for Sheaffer Snorkels and I’ve already talked a bit about one in an earlier post. They were from that writing era between fountain pens with expressive nibs and the evil empire of the ball point pen. The precise lines of nail like fine and medium point pens were the hallmark of this period. Even if most people were happy with this dull situation Sheaffer still offered a wide variety of Snorkel nibs with flair. Those special order nibs, as well as some made in Canada, England, and Australia which catered to those markets less uniform tastes, offer a real treat for the collector today.

Determining if you have found an oddball nib is by the numbers. Well, actually numbers and letters since Snorkel nibs were marked on the front or back with a code. I’m not going to discuss Sheaffer’s elaborate numbering system for their Snorkel fountain pen nibs since places like PenHero.com have great articles on the subject. What I’m going to do here is show my interesting nibs so you can see a few examples and in later posts some will get a more thorough review.

In this picture: Australian bold flex, FF3 fine flex, FS2 stub flex, Australian bold triumph, SR4 right oblique triumph, s4 stub. (click for larger image) — In this picture: Australian bold flex, FF3 fine flex, FS2 stub flex, Australian bold triumph, SR4 right oblique triumph, s4 stub. (click on for larger image)

If you want to find one of these great nibs keeping your eyes open is the first rule. Not all of them have retained their grade markings since wiping, polishing, and just normal wear can remove them over time. If those codes are gone look for tell-tale signs such as the flat edge of a stub point or the lack of an impressed grove between the silver and gold on a two tone flex nib. In general they are the proverbial needle in the haystack so obtaining one comes down to luck or enough loot for a purchase from a vintage pen seller.

Here are a few larger images where the nib grade codes can be clearly seen:

This flexible fine nib captures some of the essence of the “wet noodles” from the early part of the 20th century.

Able to put down a line as bold as a thick Sharpie this flexible stub is quite amazing. This single-tone nib was the least expensive one Sheaffer sold in solid gold but was still offered in all the usual variations.

“Right Oblique Stub Point Palladium-Silver Triumph Nib” is a long moniker. The obliques are hard to use since the pen really needs to be held at the right angle.

February 20, 2009

A Flexible Sheaffer Snorkel: Future Past

In the optimistic days of the 1950s a race developed to improve simple processes by throwing as much confusing gadgetry at them as possible. With flying cars and home based nuclear reactors around the corner consumers wanted a taste of that future now. Autos got “Hi-Way Hi-Fi” under dash record players, “Autronic Eye” headlight dimmers, and “Torsion-Aire” suspensions. Appliances self-cleaned, self-defrosted, and self-timed. It was only natural that fountain pen technology would embrace the space age as well.

Sheaffer’s Snorkel fountain pen is the premier example of fixing something that isn’t broken. The idea was that dunking the nib and section of a fountain pen into ink to fill it was messy (it was) and a terrible plague on humanity (which it wasn’t). The pen engineers at Sheaffer knew they could combat this terror and took their current stylishly svelte fountain pen called the TM (for “Thin Model”) added some length and a mess of internal parts until it became the famous Snorkel filler. That name was based not on recreational divers but the snorkel technology used by submarines to keep air flowing into diesel engines at shallow depths. In the case of the new pen, however, it didn’t keep liquid out but sucked some in. The procedure for filling it was a bit like using a Rube Goldberg contraption: You first twisted the blind cap at the back end to extend a long tube from under the nib. This tube went into the ink keeping the nib and section squeaky clean (and your fingers as well). The next step was to pull up the blind cap extending another larger tube backwards. Reversing this with a smart push down was the last step and caused high air pressure to collapse a rubber sac in the pen which was suddenly released when the tube traveled far enough to reach an air escape passage. With no more pressure in the barrel the sac expands and sucks up the ink, Q.E.D. It’s no surprise that with a filling system this blingy Snorkels became wildly popular and eventually were made at the Sheaffer plants in Canada, England, and Australia as well as domestically.

Despite the complexity Snorkels are well built pens that are usually problem free and enjoyable to use when restored. There was a myriad of colors and styles to select from and a large range of nib types. Overwhelmingly these pens show up with traditional open or conical Triumph nibs in fine and medium points even though more interesting alternatives were offered including flexibles and italics. That fact makes it all the more satisfying when you come across a unique Snorkel nib.

In order to hunt the rare and little seen nibs the following facts can be helpful: English and Australian built snorkels have a higher chance of having nibs with more flex. It is not true that a Triumph nib cannot be flexible, there were some flex versions made. Oblique italics and stub italic nibs came in all the nib styles and materials. Lastly, on some of the flexible nibs it looks like they were not finished on the normal production line due to some minor discrepancies. These nibs do not have a groove that usually marks the delineation point between the platinum plated front and the gold back possibly because that would be a weak point when flexed. Slightly sloppy masking at the edge of the platinum is also seen. Possibly handwork was needed to complete them due to the low number produced in comparison with the more popular nibs.

Sheaffer had a bewildering array of model names based on the style of nib, nib material, cap material, clip style, and guarantee so not every Snorkel is created equal. The example pen shown here is a Saratoga model with 14k Australian made flexible stub nib. Its shows a good amount of line variation in use due both to the flexibility and the shape of the tip. It always seems that the ink flow in pens from the era where flex was out of style is skimpy creating the “ink on,” “ink off” nightmare of skipping. In this pen I removed the thin hard rubber feed that runs the length of the snorkel tube and increased the depth of the channel in the center. Now the pen has a very good flow and writes quite wet.

So, hopefully this shows that Snorkels don’t have to be dull and stodgy. A good nib makes this a fun pen and the elaborate filling system will give you a different experience than found in one of those old timey fountain pens.