Banal Minutiae

Well, after 12 tries (really), I finally won a real Parker 51 on eBay. I’m a little nervous about the nib size and condition, but it’s hunter green, which was my first choice of color. I’m hoping all it needs is a little TLC and it’ll be ready to go. I got it for what I feel was a great price, knowing I could just turn around and re-sell it if things don’t work out. It’s got the later lustraloy cap without the split arrow design (no blue diamonds here!), but looks to be in good shape, with no engraving.

Let’s all hold our collective breath for the inevitable wait for the thing to arrive.

On an unrelated note, I’m thinking about unloading a few items on eBay. I’ve never sold anything on eBay, but this seems like a good a time as any to try. I’ll try to summarize the experience.

Speaking of eBay, here’s what baffles me: sniping. Sniping is the process of bidding in the last few seconds of an auction to snatch an item from someone before they can bid again. They even make software and have web sites devoted to this! Does sniping work? Supposedly. For me, I just enter the amount I’m willing to pay when it asks me for my maximum bid. Just be honest. If you’re willing to pay $10, say $10. Don’t underestimate though. If you’re really willing to pay $20, list that as your maximum bid. If you’re honest with yourself, sniping is irrelevant, and there’s the bonus of not being caught up in the frenzy of last minute bidding, where you might pay more for an item than you want. My feeling is it’s better to lose an item than pay too much, especially when an identical item will be coming along.

Of course, with this strategy, you’re going to lose. A lot. But that’s OK, since you’re not going to over pay. With something like a vintage pen, obviously there are condition issues that come into play with respect to value. On the other hand, certain pens are very common, and have a certain intrinsic value that’s fairly stable, due to the commonality of the item. That seems to be the case with 51s. Unless you’re looking for an early model, or a really rare combination, the cost for a run of the mill pen is stable, because there’s basically a near unlimited supply of very fine condition pens out there. What does all this mean? Back to my point about over paying. You’ve drawn a line in the sand about what you want to pay. Unless it’s a really rare example you just have to have, why not let it go and bid on the next one? You avoid really over paying for a common item.

I’ve used this strategy for a long time, winning a few auctions. Basically, it comes down to luck. You have to accept the fact you’re going to lose if someone really wants an item in exchange for paying the price you want. The problem is that eBay is huge, and there are a lot of people who probably want the item you’re bidding on. So, if you really want to win, you need to be honest about the real value of the item on eBay. To do this, you need to search recently ended auctions with that item. Obviously, this is much easier with common items like CDs or video games, and harder with collectible items like pens. With a rare collectible, you’ll probably need to do research, and go to other Internet auction houses, or retailers. You should of course expect to pay less on eBay than a retailer, but how much depends on the item. Research! I can’t stress this enough. A little work can really pay off.

So here ends my sermon on the evils of eBay. Go out and sin no more.

It’s been another long day here in the lab. I’m lucky enough to have robot time today, but I’ve wasted a bunch of it due to a stupid mistake I made. You see, the part I’m working on has two sides, and there are geometries for each side. Well, I’ve confused the sides, so I needed to go back and swap the forward side geometries with the aft side geometries and vice versa. Total elapsed time, 7 hours. Ouch.

We’ve all been there, though. The careless mistake. The big oops. It just hurts all the more when you realize what an idiot you are.

There’s actually a unit of time called the “ohno second”, which is the brief instant of time when you realize you’re about to do something incredibly stupid, and then you do it. The classic example is locking your keys in the car. You realize you’re about to lock them in there, think “Oh no!”, and then SLAM, you lock the door. This is quickly followed by much gnashing of teeth and swearing.

Speaking of gnashing teeth, I didn’t have a chance to get down to Woodcraft this weekend. I was hoping to pick up some miscellaneous hardware and some 12000 grit sandpaper. I’ve bought numerous pen and pencil kits from them in the past, where you supply the wood, celluloid, or whatever, and using a lathe, turn the pen body, then assemble it all into a nice custom pen. They’re fairly cheap, and using the lathe is fun. I’ve got a couple of plastic bodies I made once upon a time, but have had trouble finishing them due to the difficulty in sanding plastic. Now that they carry super high grit sandpaper, I’m going to give that a try. I’m also thinking it would be useful in smoothing my scratchy nibs.

We’ll see.

Another potential project is in making a custom body for a pen, and filling it with another pen’s guts.

OK, I just wanted to share one more nugget of goodness with you today. After lunch today, I decided to really put the polish to my Esterbrook. I did a light job of it last night, not wanting to risk potential damage. Well, at lunch, I threw some caution to the wind, and decided to give it a nice hand polish (no machine buffer).

I lathered the pen up with a nice coat of the shine restorer, and hit it with a few minuted on the microfiber cloth. After about five minutes of vigorous rubbing, I noticed that I had removed a yellowish (nicotine?) stain from the barrel, and that the clip was very clean. Not quite the high polish you’d expect on a new pen, but a very pleasant dulled metal finish with a deep shine. Very nice. The end caps are black, and are radiant.

If I work up the courage, I might it it on my buffer at home. Then again, maybe not. I love the way it looks right now, and with a buffer, you run the risk of melting the barrel, or maybe gouging it, and if you’re really unlucky, you can have it ripped from your hands and tossed across the room. Definitely not good.

I also decided to take a little micro mesh we have here to my troubled nibs. I only made a few passes on each, but man, does it smooth out the sharp edges. I’m thinking a few more careful passes over the Esterbrook nib, and it’ll be ready to go.

The Sheaffer nib has a flow issue. it looks like the tines need fine adjustment, as they’re pinched together at the extreme tip. The pen lays down too wet of a line. Oh well, more opportunities for learning.

I still need to fix the rim crack in the Esterbrook, after which I think I’m going to use it for my bill paying pen. It’s just not comfortable enough for everyday use, but it’s sure pretty enough for a bill paying pen. It also has a nice ritualistic feel, since you need to unscrew the cap, and I need to write with my hand in what’s probably a better position for writing. Fun stuff.

I’ve also decided that I need to rate the Hero 100 even higher. The nib is as smooth as the Esterbrook medium, which was pretty gosh darn smooth. The Parker 51 design is also growing on me, since not once has it failed to write immediately. And speaking of reliability, not once has it skipped on me either. Of now layed down almost 70 pages of notes, and the pen is still going strong (although I’ve refilled the ink). I think the hooded nib also helps against the ink drying out, but to be honest, I’ve never left it uncapped for any significant time.

Have a beautiful weekend!

I had mentioned earlier that the Esterbrook Copper J I purchased on eBay had a medium nib on it, and because of this, I felt it was unusable as a day to day pen.

Let’s talk about the new saga of the Esterbrook.

Well, my first attempts writing with it (by dipping the ink, and testing the lever fill mechanism with water) had proved successful. The nib was amazingly smooth, but just a hair broad. Perfect, I thought, since I’d be retiring that nib, and replacing it with an extra fine. Unfortunately, reality was waiting to dash those hopes. It turns out there was a small hairline crack on the plastic finger grip area. It was totally invisible, and I’m sure the previous owner didn’t notice it, either. Well, after I unscrewed the medium nib, and replaced it with the extra fine, boy was I in for a surprise! I used the lever fill to suck up a goodly quantity of Noodler’s blue, and then the fun began. It turns out the capillary action that makes the pen work simply loves cracks of this sort. Blue ink was all over my fingers. I slowly wiped the grip area with a paper towel, and when I reached the crack, it was obvious where the ink on my fingers came from. It was soaking into the paper towel at an alarming rate. Since I hadn’t paid a lot for the pen, and it was useless as is, I decided to try some armchair repairs.

I dumped the ink and rinsed the pen completely, then removed the nib and cleaned everything until I was sure it was clean. Then I used some cyanoacrylate (crazy/super) glue I had sitting around to fill the crack. I actually had to push the crack open to even find it. After the glue dried, I has a slightly unsightly glue “puddle” on the side of the grip region when the nib was inserted. Not really noticeable during use, but definitely noticeable when looked at. I’m debating on how to remove the glue to be flush with the grip area. I’m thinking fine sandpaper. There’s still a fine crack at the rim that I missed, but otherwise, the repair seems a success.

The new extra fine nib is a bit of a dissapointment. It’s scratchy as all get out. I’m going to try some 2000 grit sandpaper later to smooth the edges. The nib is quite obviously brand new, and since it’s a 2550, I’m not sure whether or not it’s iridium tipped. It might just be the sharp corners haven’t “broken in” yet, and a slight smoothing is just what the doctor ordered. We’ll see. On the plus side, the line weight is nice and usable. However, I’ve begun discovering that my normal hand position tends to be very close to the paper, and an exposed nib like this forces me to place my fingers farther back along the pen’s shaft, making it slightly uncomfortable to use. Not a good sign.

On the successful front, I used some 3M rubbing compound and a microfiber cloth to a put a nice shine on the barrel and cap. They both are quite shiny and nice now. I just did a rough job, and need to do an in-depth polishing job if I want to do it right. I’m quite pleased by the preliminary results though.

I also used a diamond stone I use for my chisels on the Sheaffer nib. I followed the instructions on the previously mentioned website, and I’ve got a good vertical stroke width, but the horizontal stroke width is still too wide. Much better, though, and quite encouraging results. I also took a few figure eights over the 2000 grit paper, and the nib is much smoother. I need to fine tune it a slight amount this weekend, and I should be much happier with the snorkel. On the other hand, the snorkel suffers from the same hand position issue the Esterbrook does; that is, my fingers are farther up the shaft then I’m used to. The juries still out, but it’s not looking good for this one, either. At least the nib problem is almost solved. I should mention I used some great close up photos on the web to bend the nib forward to back to what I believe the correct angle is. Previously, the nib was bent forward, almost as if it had been dropped.

Well, that’s all for now. Enjoy your weekend.

Nibs

Originally uploaded by j_ruthenberg.

Here’s a rather poor attempt to capture the nibs on the two vintage pens.

On top, the Esterbrook. This is the 1555 (medium width, rigid) nib, which is really, really wide for me.

On the bottom, you’re staring at the Sheaffer Snorkel, which has a triumph nib, although it’s bent. It’s hard to see here, but the nib is bent slightly in toward the paper. Also, the nib is medium in width, but writes like a broad in my opinion. I think this is due to the nib putting down to much ink. I’m not sure. Looking around at nib repair places makes it look like I’ll have to pay a mint for this bad boy to be fixed.

Two Old Timers

Originally uploaded by j_ruthenberg.

Here are two vintage pens, plus a nice vintage Sheaffer box.

On top is a gray 1950’s vintage Sheaffer Snorkel in the Valiant trim line. Just a beautiful pen, although the nib is in rough shape. I’ve got a better picture of this.

On the bottom, you’re looking at an Esterbrook model J in the copper color.

Innards

Originally uploaded by j_ruthenberg.

Here, I’ve dissassembled the two Hero Pens. You’re looking at the aerometric fillers on each.

On top is the 329, while on the bottom is the 100. While the mechanisms are similar, they are different. Sorry about the poor photo, I’m still learning.

The primary difference between the two mechanisms seems to be the guage of metal used. The 100 has a much heavier guage. It also is better constructed, but it’s hard to show exactly how in a photo.

Overall, the 100 is much heavier than the 329.