Month: February 2011

Firm-Nibbed Pens

I don’t write well with a rigid-nibbed pen, so for that reason there are many pens that I admire for their quality that I don’t use myself. Many nibs are firm because they’re made from thicker material. Those nibs contain more gold, in other words, so they’re invariably among the higher-priced pens.

For years I kept a Swan Leverless L642 E/60, the early thirties straight-sided Eternal. It’s a beautifully-crafted pen but I couldn’t write well with it. Similarly, Conway Stewart’s Duro-nibbed 55, though not quite of the same quality as the Eternal, is a superb pen that didn’t work for me.

I also have great admiration for the quality of almost all pre-1965 button-filler Parkers, whether made in Janesville or Newhaven, but it’s very rare to find one that has any appreciable flexibility. If I were to find, say, a mid-twenties Duofold with some flexibility I would pretty much have my ideal pen. I know they exist but none has ever come my way. Though it’s a little small for complete comfort, I have a Televisor that has some line variation. It may be one of Parker’s more economical models but the build quality is superb.

Walter Sheaffer was a jeweller before he began manufacturing pens and it shows in the precision and attention to detail of the company’s pens right up until they were taken over and ceased to be real Sheaffers. Unfortunately they, too, are generally rigid-nibbed. I also have my doubts about the unnecessarily complex filling systems Sheaffer adopted at times, but never about the manufacturing quality which remained superb. I persisted with a fine-nibbed Vac-fil as a note-taker for a while because I could cram a lot of writing in a page and not have to fill the pen very often, but it was never my choice for any other form of writing.

None of those pens, then, are included in my collection of everyday writers but they are all pens I enjoy working on and feel I can recommend without reserve to those who like and can use a pen that produces a consistent line.

The De La Rue Onoto

If the self-filling pen hadn’t been invented yet and you were considering ways this might be done, it’s likely that you would think about the syringe. It’s a method that has been used from the earliest times right up to the present. It has its failings and it’s hardly an elegant solution, but it does work. What you would be extremely unlikely to come up with, I would suggest, is a syringe-in-reverse, a filling system where the pen fills on the down-stroke of a plunger, but that’s exactly the method that De La Rue developed for their Onoto pen in 1905. It’s a stroke of counter-intuitive genius. Not only does it arrange to have the handle of the syringe in the tidy “down” position, thus eradicating the main objection to syringe fillers, it’s done in such a way that little barrel space is wasted and the pen holds a large charge of ink. In addition, a secure cut-off valve is built in, which also allows for regulation of the ink flow. It’s a complete solution to the problem of getting ink into a pen, which leapt fully-formed from the mind of the ingenious engineer George Sweetser and was perfectly implemented by De La Rue.

De La Rue were well aware that they had an exceptional design and they went on to make the Onoto the most prestigious and esteemed pen in the British market. Huge world-wide sales followed and the Onoto plunger-filler remained in production in the UK until 1955 and for a few years longer in Australia. It was succeeded for a few years by the K-Series open and covered nib piston-filling Onotos, nice pens but hardly to be compared with the plunger-filler. There were also some handsome lever-filler Onotos, much sought-after now but not accorded the same respect by the purists. De La Rue also made non-Onoto lever-fillers. Perhaps I’ve been unlucky in the ones that have come my way but the quality of these pens seems much poorer to me.

Whereas Sheaffer’s later implementation of the plunger-filler, the Vacuum-Fil, was never intended to be serviced and requires fairly major surgery to be restored, the Onoto was designed to be easily disassembled for replacement of the seals. Actually, provided the seals aren’t allowed to dry out for long periods, and filling system isn’t abused, there is a very long interval between seal replacements. I have an Onoto that I bought in working condition twenty years ago that’s still filling perfectly with the same seals. I’ve restored a few, mostly for my own use, but I don’t do Onoto restoration commercially. There’s a surprising variety of models, which makes for a very large spares holding, and spares are extremely hard to source and very expensive. Too much of an overhead for me, but there are several excellent restorers out there and I’ll be happy to recommend one if you need some work done.

The Onoto plunger filling system remains one of the cleanest and most efficient to this day. Onoto nibs are a delight. The pen was made in many styles and patterns over the years, so there’s something for everyone. The manufacturing quality is always impeccable. The Onoto is one of the best pens ever made and if you will forgive my own personal bias, THE best!

Mabie Todd’s Swan Leverless

Mabie Todd’s Swan Leverless pens have a poor reputation in some quarters, due not to any intrinsic fault of the pens, but because they have been incompetently re-sacced. The bar in a Leverless does not flatten the sac as does the pressure bar in a lever or button filler. It entangles the sac and compresses it with a “wringing out” action. For this to work well – or indeed at all – the sac has to pretty well fill the barrel. As many Leverlesses have a comparatively small nipple, a necked sac is often needed. Re-sacced properly, a Leverless will hold a good quantity of ink. It is true that it holds less than a similar-sized lever-filler, but it will still hold a lot more than, for instance, a modern international cartridge. You’ll get quite a few pages from it.

The unskilled repairer fits a comparatively slender sac, as he would in a conventional lever or button filler, and the entangling bar compresses the sac poorly, or just rotates around it without compressing it at all. As you might imagine, fitting a sac that fills the barrel is nowhere near as straightforward, and a different method has to be used.

The Leverless has the advantage that it is one of the easiest pens to fill. Simply place the pen in the ink, rotate the turn-button anti-clockwise, then clockwise, give it a few seconds to complete filling and you’re done, and it’s all carried out at the end of the pen away from that messy ink-bottle. In addition, though there were economy Leverlesses, most were designed to be prestige pens, with two or three cap rings and the No 4 or larger nibs. They were the most successful Swan range for decades, and as long as there were skilled repairers to fit new sacs they gave no trouble as the design is strong and durable.

Conway Stewart Conundrums

Like many another pen topic, Conway Stewart is too large a subject to be covered in one post, but it’s always a pleasure to write about this company which produced perhaps a more varied range of colourful pens than any other.

Despite being among the most written about of British pen manufacturers, many mysteries remain, none more impenetrable than their numbering system. I have heard several speculative explanations but none seems to hold up. Except my one, which is as follows: In the immediately post-war period, one of the company’s most prestigious pens was the Duro-nibbed 55, with its narrow-medium-narrow cap bands. The 388 is a smaller version of the 55, following the same pattern. What connection could there be between these numbers? Well, you see, you must subtract 55 from 388, which gives you 333. The 333 is a simple 1930s Scribe, so we’ll ignore that but if you multiply the numbers together, ie 3x3x3, you get 27, which is another prestigious pen of a slightly later period…

Are we onto something here? Is this the solution to Conway Stewart numbering?

No. It’s not. But it makes as much sense as some of the others.

Their business model – which worked well most of the time – is another mystery. Most pen manufacturers limited their range to a few models at any one time, but Conway Stewart, both before and after World War II, had a tremendous array of different models. That must have been a costly business. Though some nibs, clips, levers and sections would have been interchangeable between a few models, there must have been a huge number of different parts to be made in total. Each model had its colour range. Some patterns were used by several models, some were unique to one. That’s a lot of celluloid rod stock!

For most of their history, Conway Stewart was a successful company. It was a well-respected brand, the pricing was right and their pens were well-presented in cards of the various models in all those patterns we search for now – cracked ice, herringbone, tiger’s eye, autumn leaves, blue rock face – in the best stationers and newsagents. Though the gold plating may have worn a little now, these pens survive in their thousands, a testimony to their popularity and good quality.