Surprisingly, I haven’t written about the 3361 before though goodness knows I’ve handled plenty of them. The pen dates to the late forties. Mabie Todd reverted to black hard rubber for these pens and the similar lever fillers. This one has a little fading but it’s not too bad. The nib is a nice semiflexible.

As someone reminded me today, Mabie Todd was trying a couple of new things with these pens, one successful, the other less so. The shorter, square-ended lever will not go over-centre. The brass barrel threads are less of an improvement. Because the brass bites into the BHR quite hard, the section can remain in the cap while you unscrew the barrel. It doesn’t happen often but it can be a nuisance when it does. I wax the threads and that helps – one of my very few uses for wax in pen repair.

I bought the pen – via eBay – from drakeeenterprisesltd who note that they “protect the pens with Renaissance Wax”. I wish they wouldn’t. If I wished to polish off more of the fading on the cap, I would need to remove that stuff first and it’s very hard to do. It has long been recognised that Renaissance Wax – and cornuba – contain chemicals potentially injurious to the fragile materials vintage pens are made from. I do wish people would stop applying it. In other respects drakeeenterprisesltd is a good seller.