So, how did I spend my morning?
Restoring fountain pens whilst listening to Beatles music and drinking coffee.
Restoration because they needed fixing, Beatles music because watching over 11 hours of a documentary about the band seems like a waste if you don't memorise all their songs and play them on guitar afterwards, and coffee because performing vintage pen surgery tired doesn't sound like a good idea.
Now I've justified this unusual combination of events, get prepared for a rather long blog post.
I knew that 4 of the pens needed surgery when I got them. But when my pretty Parker Ladies Duofold, button-fill, conked out on me due to a perished ink sac, I was sad. It looks so good on a silver chain (ring in the top so you can wear the pen) and I like my jewellery.
So I decided to fix it.
Having never fixed a vintage pen. This is fine, just fine. I have to start somewhere? Right? I didn't have a cheap, common vintage pen to practice on, so I had to wing it.
I had educated myself via Google, so I tried it. Not on the Duofold, not at first. The section in another pen, a Sheaffer, looked to be more cooperative, so I tried my luck with that first.
Friction fit or screw fit? Search me, but I decided to treat it as a screw fit, as if you twist it the right way (anticlockwise), it will come out whether it is friction fit or otherwise, but pulling it straight out will destroy the threads and barrel if it is a screw fit.
As it happens, it was held by friction. It came out very easily! If it was held by shellac, it must have degraded to the point of disintegration.
The Sheaffer is a lever-fill. The lever wouldn't click into place as it should. It couldn't be moved to a 90⁰ position, and when pushed down, it popped back up and flopped about loosely.
"How to fix loose fountain pen lever".
Google would not grant me the answer, so I had to figure it out myself. I tipped the pen, section hole downwards. A cascade of black dust and bits of perished rubbery rubble fell on to my desk.
Clearly, then, the shoes... no, not the shoes. Pens don't have shoes. This is what happens when I listen to music and blog.
We'll try it again. Clearly then, the ink sac wasn't in the best of conditions. I grabbed a cotton bud and poked about inside the barrel for 10 minutes, and a miniature mountain of ink sac showered the desk as I prodded the mummified sac out. It turns out that I didn't need to fix the lever, as all the stuff inside had been jamming it. Now the inside was squeaky clean, the lever worked perfectly!
I FIXED IT! I DIDN'T WRECK THE PEN!
While I have sourced the ink sacs and shellac I need, I haven't yet obtained the funds to buy them. In the next few weeks I hope to order them, to complete my restorations. So I can't show you the pens working, but I would like to clarify that I have cleaned the pens, given them a thorough polish, de-gunked the nibs, and got the mechanisms working. I only have to install sacs now for them to work, so they're nearly as good as restored at the moment!
After a good polish with a microfibre cloth and some vegetable oil (LIFE HACK: vegetable oil doesn't stink, doesn't leave residue when properly rubbed with the cloth, and doesn't damage the pen, as there are no chemicals!) I had completed my first fountain pen restoration.
Some people insist that you need fancy tools. I only used cotton buds, tweezers, some pliers for taking out a button (not rubber-nosed, but only gentle pressure was needed), warm water, kitchen roll, and my parents. I don't have enough hand strength! Parents are meant to be useful! My mother managed to get the section out of the Duofold using a rubber glove, and Dad got the section out of the Parkette I cleaned up afterwards. I'm not saying tools don't help, undoubtedly they do and make your chances of a successful restoration much higer, but I want you to know that if you do not have them and don't want to buy them, it is still possible to use everyday household items. There is a higher probability that something will go wrong, but it is by no means impossible to restore pens without them.
Of course, you will still need ink sacs and shellac if the original sac is in small granules!
Having tackled the Sheaffer, onwards, onwards to tackle the fearsome button filler!
To be continued...
(All header image credit goes to the person who posted it online. I don't know your name, I saved the image to my device, but if it is yours, thank you!)
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