No writing sample with this one – it’s New Old Stock and I won’t be putting any ink in it. It still has its original factory chalk marks. It’s an Eversharp Viscount and it’s quite an interesting pen in its way.

Wahl-Eversharp had a presence in the British market from the nineteen twenties onward. For some reason the Wahl part was never mentioned and the pens were called Eversharps. From around 1940 they produced the popular Kingswood which was their main seller until the mid-fifties, when they withdrew from the fountain pen market. In 1961 they advertised, “Eversharp are making fountain pens again,” and one of the new pens was the Viscount.

It’s an average sized pen at 13.5 cm. The cap is of the press-on type and it closes against a raised ridge on the barrel. It works well. The gold plated clip which contrasts with the stainless steel cap is a nice touch. The long, slender section and the quite narrow nib are very much in the fashion of the time. To fill the pen, one unscrews the barrel to expose a black plastic squeeze filler – a unique component in my experience.

These pens, along with the Viking and Vanguard, remained in production until 1964 but they were not a success. That, I suppose, partly accounts for their rarity today but I suspect that the plastic filler didn’t help either as it doesn’t appear to me to be particularly robust.

This is one of those pens that is interesting – and to a degree valuable – because it doesn’t appear very often and is a milestone in pen development, or rather, in this case, the end of development because there were no Eversharp fountain pens after this one. That’s not to say that the quality isn’t good – it seems to me to be at least adequate though as I’ve said I have my doubts about the filler.

For anyone who has an interest in Eversharp’s involvement in the British pen market this one is a must.

 

With thanks to Stephen Hull: The English Fountain Pen Industry 1875 – 1975

No pen, to my mind, is as beautiful as the large nineteen twenties Swan. That’s the shape a pen should be, that’s the size it should be and this is how the clip should look. Black cap rings surrounding the gold ones are just a huge bonus. The pen is 13.6 cm capped and posted it’s 16.7 cm which sounds very long but it balances nicely like that.

As you can see this one was once jade but it has discoloured as these pens often do. I think it’s still a very beautiful and elegant pen. For those who like the detail this is a 142/50. I’m not sure how you work that one out. Normally, for pens of this date, the first digit is the nib size but this pen has a number two size nib which it was clearly meant to have. The four refers to a complication of banding on the cap. The two might be a transferred nib size. Maybe. Perhaps. We are on more certain ground with the 50 which is simply the code for jade.

The nib is splendid: broad and semiflexible and the ink delivery has no trouble keeping up. As you would expect with that amount of ink being laid on the paper it’s as smooth as smooth can be. It’s a perfect pleasure to use.

There is a discreet personalisation, “J Hornsey”. A Google search threw up several by that name, mostly in Yorkshire. Perhaps Hornsey is a Yorkshire name but the pen came from away down in Hastings, just to confuse things. None of the ones I found really fitted the profile for someone buying a quite expensive fountain pen back in the nineteen twenties.

All in all, it’s an exceptionally nice pen and if it had been a fine it would have been a keeper for me but with my writing a line written with a broad would take up half a page, so this one will turn up on the sales site in due course.

I bought a lot of pens for spares just after Christmas and they arrived yesterday. There were some Platignums and other disposable pens among them and that was what I wanted. I pull the pressure bars out of those pens and throw the rest away. Cruel, I know – spare parts surgery, but necessary. Things have come to a strange pass when it is cheaper to buy whole pens than new pressure bars!

There were several Chinese pens in the lot as well. I’ll be trying some of them. Today it’s a Hero 329. Someone had filled it with black ink of incredible density. I flushed it and flushed it and flushed it until my thumb dropped off and I had to go over to the surgery to have them stitch it back on but that ink was still there. After some more flushing I managed to get it down to a pale grey. I had to settle for that because the muscles in my arm were bulging like Popeye’s. I filled the pen with some less brutal ink and write-tested. I was delighted to find that it was a European fine and it wrote superbly – no skipping or inconsistency. It’s light, which I like and nicely balanced when it’s posted.

It has an arrow on the hood – can you say Parker 61? Actually, in size and behaviour it’s more like a Parker 21. The arrow is of course shocking plagiarism but at least the clip is plain and not in the least Parker-arrow-like. As you will see, the barrel is a pleasant green and the cap makes no attempt to disguise the fact that it is stainless steel. It’s not a huge pen at 13.7 cm long capped. The cap slips on and clicks against the barrel ring. It works well and closes the pen properly. The nib, I’m sure, is steel. It has a squeeze-type filler. Some people refer to these as aerometric fillers but take it from me that they are not and the very suggestion is a dreadful insult to Parker. These are squeeze-fillers that manage at best a half fill. Proper aerometrics have a breather tube and fill the sac completely.

Though the pen is in very good condition it seems to me likely that it was bought some time ago. I haven’t seen these 329s with the arrow on the hood for quite some time. Interesting, because now it’s quite hard to buy a Chinese pen with a fine nib. If you look for them in eBay you’ll find nothing but mediums. It’s like the sellers have come to the conclusion that all Westerners dislike fine and extra fine nibs. But no, Chinese friends! Take note that there is at least one here who likes her pens fine or even finer than fine.

I’ll continue to use this pen over the next few days to see if there are drying-out problems. Of course it will take a little longer to find out about durability. I’ve had Chinese pens (and some other rather more expensive ones) that fell apart in a few months.

Isn’t this a beautiful thing? It’s a Sheaffer Triumph Sovereign II from the nineteen forties, and there’s a matching pencil. I love the Triumph nib – it’s splendidly elegant. I’ve had quite a few over the years but somehow I’ve never kept one. This one is medium but if I should come across one that’s a fine I’ll hang onto it. The honey and black striated celluloid is very beautiful too.

Sadly the box is not quite so smart, despite my best efforts at cleaning it up. It’s strange to find a box that has had a harder life than the pens it contains! Perhaps it was kicking around in a drawer while the pen and pencil were safe on the desk.

Walter Sheaffer was a jeweller before he got into pens and it shows in the quality of the Sheaffer output. This Sovereign II is rather an oddity in one sense: it has the Sheaffer name on the clip and the white dot above it, something that doesn’t occur in any of the other pens, I believe.

Given that I regard the lever filler as a simpler and hence better filling system than either the vacuum fill or the Touchdown, when combined with the Triumph nib it makes for the best pre-1950 Sheaffer, in my none-too-humble opinion, anyway.

This Wyvern No 60C came in a bunch of pens that I bought for spares. It was in a very dirty condition and the engraving on the nib was impossible to read because it was deeply coated in black ink that didn’t want to come off – iron gall black or some calligraphy ink perhaps. In other respects the pen showed that it had been heavily used: the imprint on the barrel is worn to the point where it is just legible and no more. The pen has been dropped at some time and the nib has been “straightened”. As the tines are quite well aligned and the pen writes well I’ve left well alone. Though the clip isn’t too bad the plating has worn entirely off the lever which, being steel, has rusted.

I’ve tried to date this pen and I suspect that it’s from the 1930s. The 60C was introduced in 1921 but I think that this is a later model. I would think that the spatulate end to the lever and the short, narrow section would help in dating. If Wardok were to read this, I’m sure he could pin it down.

A pen like this that is in very shabby condition but writes very well goes into my “bargains” section on the sales site. It’s not the kind of pen that you can wave around to make your colleagues admire your taste. It’s more of an everyday user that you can leave lying around the desk in the certain knowledge that no one will steal it. I like pens like this and often have one in use.

A guid New Year to yin and a’, as Scots are supposed to say. They don’t speak like that up here but I think they probably do a few hundred miles further south. I hope 2016 will be a good and interesting pen year and I also hope that you will all get the pens that you want and enjoy them.

For myself, I hope I will be more consistent both with the blog and the sales site than I was last year when there were unavoidably a couple of lengthy gaps. Anyway, here we are with a whole new year to play with and make the most of!

Whenever I’ve been scouting around for cheap but good Chinese pens recently, it has been Jinhao that has come most readily to mind. Recently, though, someone suggested the Hero 616 Jumbo. I picked one up for a very reasonable price and here it is: yet another Parker 51 clone – or so it seems. Actually it’s more of a pen than it appears, at 13.9 cm capped. I don’t have a Parker 51 at the moment to compare it with but I suspect that both cap and barrel are longer.  It has the usual “Parker Arrow” and the cap has a faint lined pattern. The green barrel and section are made of what seems to be a reasonably durable plastic. Two rings protrude sufficiently to grip the cap giving firm closure but I wonder how long this will last.

It has a squeeze type converter which draws a decent supply of ink. This pen has one problem that recurs: on pulling off the cap there is often ink on the section. This is the old problem of a tight, unventilated cap drawing ink from the reservoir when opened. It’s a problem that was solved by the early nineteen hundreds but it seems that Hero need to reinvent the wheel.

I don’t suppose it would matter with such an inexpensive pen. I could just chalk it up to experience and consign the pen to the bucket. Problem is, it’s an absolutely splendid writer – a real delight to use! I certainly don’t want to throw it away but nor do I want to have ink on my fingers everytime I use it.

I think the answer will be to drill a small hole in the cap to release the vacuum.

This Blackbird 5261 is in splendid condition, almost as if it came out of the shop today. Actually, it has been used but perhaps very little. I flushed blue ink out of it. The sac that I removed appeared to have been the original. The chasing is nice and sharp, as are the barrel and cap imprints. The chrome plating on both clip and lever is excellent. It is an adequately sized pen at 12.5 cm. The nib is medium and semiflexible.

Looking at this pen, I wonder what is the difference between Blackbird and Swan. I know that gold has been saved on the nib of the Blackbird: it’s both shorter and thinner, but otherwise I struggle to see any difference in quality. This pen is very similar to smaller black chased Swan lever fillers of the same period. Set them side-by-side where you can’t see the imprints and you would have difficulty in telling them apart.

Considering the splendid condition of this pen I suspect that it has been in a box until very recently. You just don’t see 1930s pens as bright and shiny as this if they’ve been kicking around in a drawer.

Here’s an interesting tale and I’ll be glad to hear your comments about what I have to say. I sold a pen recently to a customer who subsequently complained that there was an accumulation of old ink in the section and in the cap.

As most of you will be aware (goodness knows I’ve written about it often enough) I restore conservatively. That means I do no more than is necessary to bring the pen back to working condition and a good appearance. I don’t do reblacking, for instance. I want the pens that I restore to be around for as long as is possible, so I don’t use materials or practices that are deleterious to the pen’s longevity. I don’t soak pens as that can damage all materials. I keep water out of the barrel and cap. Strange as it may seem you can have decades of accumulations of water-based ink in the cap or barrel without any apparent damage but the moment you put water in there the rusting begins. I’ve had enough pens passed to me that have been “restored” by someone else, with rusting internal metal parts. That’s especially bad in the cap because the tiny parts holding a clip can rapidly rust through, which requires a difficult and time-consuming repair and is best avoided. If you get water in there you may imagine that you’ve got it out but you haven’t. The only way to ensure that your customer’s pen is not going to suffer severe problems from rusting is to keep the water out of there.

Now, to the specifics: the pen had good ink flow before it left me and the customer does not complain that the ink flow is inadequate. Nonetheless he has said that the section/feed assembly had an accumulation of old ink. Further, he said that it took use of an ultrasonic cleaner to remove the ink. In answer to that, I don’t routinely drift out the feed and nib. I only do so if there is a blockage and I believe it to be the case that most good restorers follow the same practice. Resetting a nib properly is not a trivial exercise and it should not be done unless there is a reason for it. Secondly, why use such a blunt instrument as an ultrasonic cleaner? If the interior of a section needs cleaned of ink, that’s what cotton buds were made for. They have the benefit of doing a very good job while not exposing black hard rubber to the likelihood of fading from exposure to water. It seems to me that it matters not, in any case, if there is old ink in the section provided the ink flow is good.

Then there’s the cap. As I said above it is my practice to keep water out of the cap, for what I believe to be excellent reasons. If it is essential to remove accumulated ink, such as in the case of the disassembly of a post-war Conway Stewart cap, I would use naphtha which will evaporate completely and leave no wet residue. Normally, I would see no reason to go digging around in the cap. Removing an accumulation of old ink has no benefit, either practical or aesthetic. You’re not aware of its presence unless you shine a light in there, and why would you do that? My customer says his concern is that it can become a problem when new ink condenses inside the cap. I’ve never known that. If the new ink is going to condense inside the cap, surely it will do so whether there’s old ink in there or not? Also, in years of pen restoration, this is the first time that anyone has raised the issue of old ink in the cap with me.

Given how long I’ve been doing this, and with such a high rate of success, it would take a tremendously good argument to make me change my tried and tested practices. However, I would be most interested to hear what you think.

I’m not sure of the date of the Swan 400 but I would guess that it is one of the later eyedropper-filler pens as it has the wonderful ladder feed. Around 100 years old, then. This one is as black and shiny as the day it was made but there are some surface scratches which are hard to explain. At first I thought it might be that an accommodation clip had been fitted, as these often scratch the surface but as the scratches go round the cap that doesn’t work. Perhaps it was stored in a drawer with something sharp.

Anyway, this is the pen as it came to me. I haven’t even cleaned the nib. The only thing I did was to put some ink in it and write-test it. It’s a fine with quite a bit of flex. This is quite a long pen at 14.2 cm capped. It has a professional personalisation, “JM Wilson”. Who could that be? Current JM Wilsons include a lawyer, an author, a racehorse trainer, an artist and a tattooist but it’s unlikely to be any of them. The JM Wilson who owned this pen must be pushing up the daisies. I found one candidate, Canon James Maurice Wilson, 1836 to 1931, librarian of Worcester Cathedral, who was also a mathematician, astronomer, historian, theologian, educational reformer, and philanthropist. Now that’s the kind of guy I hope owned this pen!

The Swan 400 has just about everything going for it. Okay, it’s not a self filler but on the other hand it holds much more ink than any self filler does. It has the ladder feed and a great nib. Being made of black hard rubber it weighs practically nothing and will have just enough heft to be noticeable when it’s full of ink. The grip is excellent and the balance is perfect – what more could any pen give?

I’ve had one or two of these pens before but they are not common. Perhaps this is because they were introduced towards the end of the life of the eyedropper pen, as sac fillers came in. Anyway, it’s a wonderful pen. Grab one if you see one.