While hard rubber is by far my favourite material from which pens have been, and are, made I recognise its failings, the worst being oxidation.  The market has come up with several methods of restoration (of a kind) of faded hard rubber pens but I steer away from them.  They rarely work well and many pens returned to their original colour by these method tend to stand out and look bogus.

Long-lasting old black hard rubber, the sort that doesn’t fade, frequently appears in cheap pens.  I’ve often seen 20s and 30s advertising and giveaway pens that shine with all their original lustre and depth of colour while Swans and Onotos fade if you give them a sidelong look.  Purely subjectively, the rubber in those pens seems especially light to me and they don’t wear as readily as “better” pens.

Be that as it may, hard rubber is always light, one of its great benefits.  I suspect that those who appreciate heft and regard heaviness as a sign of quality don’t actually write very much.  The ideal pen would weigh nothing.  A Swan 1060 with a fill of ink weighs 17g.  The Crocodile, average for those far eastern pens with lots of metal, weighs 35g empty.  I actually like the Croc for other reasons but I know which pen I prefer to settle down with for a long writing session.

Of course celluloid wins by several lengths in the colour stakes but hard rubber has shown a range of possibilities.  Waterman and strangely enough Platignum turned out splendidly colourful hard rubber pens but they were beaten into a cocked hat by the rainbow myriad of colours Pilot achieved in their – sadly all too rare – 1930s hard rubber pens.  For myself, I’m satisfied with black or mottled.

Hard rubber is hard to repair if it cracks or breaks.  I have yet to be convinced that a durable repair is actually possible and yes, I know about the Loctite solution.  Didn’t last for me.  Of course all pens with exceptionally thin cap lips crack, regardless of material.  I can’t repair the celluloid ones because the materials involved are lethal to someone with respiratory complaints so I can’t have them in the house.  Sadly, damage is part of the ageing process for delicate instruments like pens.  It isn’t always the end.  My Swan 1060 was not sold because of a cap lip crack and I’m rather glad about that!  And, on the other hand, hard rubber has a “memory” and a blast of heat is usually enough to get rid of those pesky bite marks.

I keep coming back to my 1060, of which I am especially fond.  When I found it, it was not faded.  It was dulled with much use, a mass of micro-scratches.  Once I spotted the cap lip crack and decided I would keep it, I gave it a cursory polish with a cloth and that was all I did to it aesthetically.  However, the more I use it, the shinier it gets!  It’s beautiful to look at and very pleasing to the touch.  I have a slightly faded SF230/61 that is going through the same process.  Gets shinier every day I use it!  It makes those pens especially precious and personal. Do any of the other materials pens are made from do that?  Perhaps silver, though I’m not fond of metal pens.

Black hard rubber takes beautiful chasing, sharp enough to cut you when unworn.  Celluloid does too, to be fair, but I always think of that as a backward glance to the glory days of hard rubber.  Also, I would have to say that both are upstaged by chased metal pens but I just love black chased hard rubber.  Whoever came up with the relatively simple chasing machine was a genius in the true sense of the word.

I’m lucky in that the pens I appreciate most, the Swan Self-Fillers and Leverlesses, were made in the heyday of vulcanised rubber production.  Mabie Todd had an especial loyalty to that material, making pens from it in the forties and fifties when it had otherwise disappeared from fountain pen production.

This 1935 Blackbird had quite a bit of work done on it before it came to me.  The broad gold-plated cap band was probably fitted to cover a cap lip crack.  It won’t crack now, that’s for sure!

It also had a Swan clip.  It was fine so long as you didn’t look too closely but I couldn’t leave it like that.  A search through the spares revealed a cracked cap with the required clip, correct if shabby.  With the help of the heat gun the clips were swapped easily.  The replacement clip has lost some plating but at least it’s a Blackbird clip.

These flat-top Blackbirds are very attractive.  This one is in the /41 pattern, Almond Green.  Like this one, many of the 1930s celluloid patterns are superb.  On the end of the barrel is inscribed BB2B/G2.  I really can’t parse that.  The final “G2” is a complete mystery to me.  I see similar, possibly larger pens in Stephen Hull’s book.  They are designated “G3” so perhaps size comes into it. Much has been learned about Mabie Todd mysteries in recent years but I’m glad there are some puzzles left for us to gnaw upon.

I enjoy re-saccing the Swan Leverless.  Though it can happen it is rare to find the old sac stuck to the sides of the barrel and I cannot think of an instance where it had adhered to the paddle.  The ossified sac almost always slides out whole with the assistance of a hooked dental pick.  Often the imprint of the paddle runs the length of the sac and you know that the pen was put away with a soft sac and never used again.  By contrast, lever and button fillers often require internal scraping and the sac can form a bond with the pressure bar that outdoes many glues.

Some models of Leverless have large pegs to which the sac is attached.  With those, the repair is straightforward.  It becomes more complicated with the Leverlesses that have small pegs.  Those are intended to be re-sacced with a necked sac but I find it impossible to get ones of the right length, so I use straight sacs, No 20 for the smaller ones and No 22 for the big Leverlesses.  I apply shellac in the usual way then bind the sac tightly with thread.  The thread can be removed after the shellac has cured.  Alternatively, if the thread doesn’t interfere with the insertion of the section into the barrel, I shellac it and leave it in place.  I have come across old repairs where the sac has been bound with thin wire.  That’s a bit excessive, I think.

The process is strangely relaxing.  You know before you begin that this is not a job that can be rushed so you might as well take your time and enjoy it.  To be sure that the sac has securely bonded to the peg it’s best to leave it for several hours.  When all is ready, I push the sac into the barrel with a slim dowel and reset the nib and feed in the section.  I get more of a sense of “a job well done” from the Leverless than any other pen.

There are some changes from earlier models in this 1951 Blackbird.  Most obviously the way of fitting the clip has changed from the inserted type to something like the Waterman of the time.

The barrel imprint has moved to near the section and reads Mabie Todd and Co Ltd.  Made in England with no mention of Blackbird.  The pen is identified as a Blackbird on the section and nib.

This present example is probably unused and bears the price tag 14/8d.  Not a cheap pen, then, but a pen of good quality.  It’s rather difficult to establish a true present-day price equivalent but a pen as good as this wouldn’t leave much change out of £200 now.

The pattern is attractive and the material (celluloid?) is thick and robust.  The nib gives slight line variation but it is splendidly springy rather than flexible.  At this point Mabie Todd had five years to go but this Blackbird was built to last and surely reflects confidence in the company.

Among other sources I get many pens from eBay.  Occasionally one will arrive with undisclosed damage, like a cracked nib or cap lip.  An otherwise rather nice Swan 3260 arrived yesterday but it had a crack in the cap.  Those repairs are too time-consuming to be worth the effort so I requested a return.  The seller, 1968mandy2011, refused the return, saying that the pen was good when it left her so I must have over-tightened the cap.  Never mind the fact that that’s not how cap lip cracks happen, the crack was ingrained with dirt and clearly old.

I told her that I would wait eBay’s statutory eight days and refer the matter to them for judgement.  It was only at that point, fool that I am, that I looked at her feedback.  With less than 500 sales she has six negatives and three neutrals.  Judging by the buyers’ comments she makes a habit of concealing flaws in the goods she sells and adding insult to injury by blaming those she has wronged.

She couldn’t leave well enough alone and kept messaging me with increasingly vituperative insults.  I brushed them off calmly.  I’ve been there before!  Eventually her comments descended into obscenity and I reported it to eBay.  This morning I received a return-paid label from eBay.

I don’t usually write about eBay disputes and I don’t usually name and shame but while this one was amusing it was also unpleasant.  I suspect that others less persistent than me may have lost their money for useless goods.  Best to avoid 1968mandy2011, I would say.  She will have seven negatives shortly.

We all have our preferences in fountain pens; some can be backed with a logical explanation, others may be inexplicable but nonetheless important and strongly held for all that.  To begin with, I like pens with a proper filling system which rather disqualifies eyedropper fillers and cartridge/converter pens.  That isn’t to say that I won’t use them.  I just don’t admire them.  For me, the lever filler is a good, well thought out method.  The button filler is very similar in its workings but better, because the barrel is unbroken and your hand is kept away from the ink when filling.  For the same reason, I especially love the Swan Leverless and it wins because it is almost always allied with an admirable nib.

Talking of nibs, I used to write with a medium flexible, perhaps oblique and stubbish.  Such a setup flattered my writing; the breadth of the line concealed the imprecision of the creation of the letters and the flexibility provided a bit of distracting flash.  A few years ago I became dissatisfied with that.  I decided to try to write well with a firm nib.  Making the nib a fine or an extra fine provided even more of a challenge.

Many people write with fines because their writing is small.  Mine isn’t huge, to be sure, but it isn’t minuscule either.  Within my own eccentric style of writing I aim to create the letters well and I pride myself (perhaps I delude myself) that my writing is clear and easily read.  That’s the intention.  I don’t aim for beauty in writing, just legibility.

So I am happy with my Swan Leverless 1060 with its very fine No. 4 nib.  A No. 3 nib might be better and if I ever come across one that is extra fine I will swap.

A month ago, my PC began to intimate to me in unarguable fashion that it was bound for the computer graveyard.  In a sense that was okay; it doesn’t owe me anything.  It has been a worthy servant for years.  On the other hand, the thought of the work involved in setting up a new one would be enough to turn my hair grey if that process wasn’t already well underway.

The computer is the heart of my pen world, both business and hobby.  The amount of information to be transferred as almost beyond belief.  It accumulates unnoticed and takes hours to copy over.  Peripherals need persuasion to talk to each other nicely.  Programs have to be installed, some from DVD, others by download.

The worst was Adobe Photoshop Essentials.  I’ve bought and paid for the program and have it on DVD.  To install, however, one must log in to Adobe’s site.  Then they refuse to recognise my correct password.  I have to go through the interminable process of creating a new login.  You will not be surprised to hear that my new password includes a word rarely used in polite society.

At last everything is almost as it should be.  The printer is being cooperative.  Music comes from the speakers when requested.  Useful things like my memory card reader and microphone behave as they should.  27 (twenty-seven!) essential programs and utilities have been installed.

I can now get back to fixing pens and forget about the PC for a few more years.

I don’t often post recommendations to other businesses in my blog, mainly because I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing so if I hadn’t personally dealt with them. Today is different, though. This morning’s post brought with it a beautifully hand-bound notebook/journal crafted by my friend Robin Smith at Bookworm Bindings, and I couldn’t be happier with it.

Full disclosure: Robin, a US ex-pat living in Scotland like me, is a customer of Goodwriters Pens as well as a friend. She has tucked my business card in to the books she has sent out to her customers, giving me some nice advertising; once I have her business cards, I will be returning the favour. But this blog entry is not for the sole purpose of giving Bookworm Bindings free advertising – I’m writing about Robin’s new venture because I am a very satisfied customer. Since I know that many fountain pen users are interested in notebooks and journals as well, it made sense to bring her to your attention.

On to the book, then. I was given a choice of book size, cover design, colour of end pages, a nice variety of metal corner-pieces, and lined or unlined paper. Robin chose the bright head and tail band colours which went nicely with my choices. The creamy paper – I opted for unlined – is of good quality. I tested it with a fountain pen and a gel pen; both, of course, smeared a bit if touched immediately after writing, but the fountain pen ink dried quickly, with the gel pen ink taking slightly longer. For both pens there was no feathering of the ink, and very little show-through to the other side of the page.

For pricing and shipping as well as more photos of available options, follow the link in the first paragraph. If you have any other questions about Bookworm Bindings you can contact Robin through that link as well.

Note: the book I ordered is the grey-and-white 3D ‘illusion’ cover, pictured. My thanks to Robin for permission to use the photos of some of the other books she has made, taken from the Bookworm Bindings Facebook page.

Packages sent to America have been delivered at about their usual speed: ten days or so. Things are generally much improved. Talking to the respiratory consultant in the main hospital here, he seemed to regard Covid-19 as almost over in the Northern Highlands. I was on the point of re-opening the sales website in the coming week.

And then the stupid government threw tourism wide open, despite a quite high rate of infections elsewhere in the UK. There will be a train of RVs and camper vans heading north even now, sizzling with coronavirus. As we have had few infections here we are vulnerable to a real outbreak. I certainly won’t open the sales site and I may have to batten down the hatches again. I hope not.

For the time being, if there’s anything on the sales site that you want to buy, let me know. I can certainly send it out just now and if matters get worse and I don’t want to go to the post office I can reserve it for you and take it off the site so no one else can ask for it. I don’t charge for reserved pens until I am ready to send them.

This subject arises from a discussion in the ever-entertaining Fountain Pen Geeks. I dislike a buttery-smooth nib. It feels slippery and imprecise to me. The problem is easily resolved with a moment on fine micromesh. The aim is a nib that grips the paper ever so slightly rather than skating over it. No roughness or scratchiness, just that absence of slipperiness is what is required. Most Pilot pens I’ve had are like that straight out of the box.

Others, of course, will go the other way, polishing their nibs to make them even smoother. The question – really an unanswerable question – that arises from this is, “were people so particular about their pens in the heyday of the fountain pen – say the 1940s?”

Unless some centenarian with a wide knowledge of how people used their pens back then appears, we will never know. We can speculate though. Most people would only have one pen, used for social and work purposes. Would they tolerate it being uncomfortable or unpleasant to write with? Would they have made an adjustment themselves as many of us do? There was a large fountain pen repair industry, everything from the local guy (or guyess) to the fountain pen manufacturing companies. I’m sure most of those technicians carried out all the repair work we do now. Would they have been surprised to be asked to unsmooth a pen? Is it just us modern snowflakes who are so sensitive about our pens?

What do you think?