Fixing my FIL's fountain pens
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Nice! How did the 51 write after you hacked it?
@LuFins-Dad said in Fixing my FIL's fountain pens:
Nice! How did the 51 write after you hacked it?
Excellent. I used a very fine grain buff stick to smooth out the nib, and it works perfectly. Not as springy as the original nib, but smoother and a little thinner line, which for me is good.
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@mark said in Fixing my FIL's fountain pens:
Very cool! I am not much of a writer, but I know cool when I see it.
Mark, you'd love fountain pens. I think they'd be very much up your street.
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@mark said in Fixing my FIL's fountain pens:
Very cool! I am not much of a writer, but I know cool when I see it.
Mark, you'd love fountain pens. I think they'd be very much up your street.
Believe it or not, when I went to the equivalent of late elementary and early middle school, fountain pens were required to be used. I got through a lot of Parkers.
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Believe it or not, when I went to the equivalent of late elementary and early middle school, fountain pens were required to be used. I got through a lot of Parkers.
@Doctor-Phibes said in Fixing my FIL's fountain pens:
Believe it or not, when I went to the equivalent of late elementary and early middle school, fountain pens were required to be used. I got through a lot of Parkers.
Do you remember the model name?
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Fixing my FIL's fountain pens:
Believe it or not, when I went to the equivalent of late elementary and early middle school, fountain pens were required to be used. I got through a lot of Parkers.
Do you remember the model name?
@Aqua-Letifer said in Fixing my FIL's fountain pens:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Fixing my FIL's fountain pens:
Believe it or not, when I went to the equivalent of late elementary and early middle school, fountain pens were required to be used. I got through a lot of Parkers.
Do you remember the model name?
Not a clue. They would have been cheap ones.
A 10-year old left-hander with a fountain pen makes a heck of a mess.
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@Aqua-Letifer said in Fixing my FIL's fountain pens:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Fixing my FIL's fountain pens:
Believe it or not, when I went to the equivalent of late elementary and early middle school, fountain pens were required to be used. I got through a lot of Parkers.
Do you remember the model name?
Not a clue. They would have been cheap ones.
A 10-year old left-hander with a fountain pen makes a heck of a mess.
@Doctor-Phibes said in Fixing my FIL's fountain pens:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Fixing my FIL's fountain pens:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Fixing my FIL's fountain pens:
Believe it or not, when I went to the equivalent of late elementary and early middle school, fountain pens were required to be used. I got through a lot of Parkers.
Do you remember the model name?
Not a clue. They would have been cheap ones.
A 10-year old left-hander with a fountain pen makes a heck of a mess.
You're a lefty also? How did you escape the nuns?
They literally tried to beat left-handedness out of my dad. Didn't work.
I don't think it's any surprise that "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)" is one of his favorite songs.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Fixing my FIL's fountain pens:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Fixing my FIL's fountain pens:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Fixing my FIL's fountain pens:
Believe it or not, when I went to the equivalent of late elementary and early middle school, fountain pens were required to be used. I got through a lot of Parkers.
Do you remember the model name?
Not a clue. They would have been cheap ones.
A 10-year old left-hander with a fountain pen makes a heck of a mess.
You're a lefty also? How did you escape the nuns?
They literally tried to beat left-handedness out of my dad. Didn't work.
I don't think it's any surprise that "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)" is one of his favorite songs.
@Aqua-Letifer said in Fixing my FIL's fountain pens:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Fixing my FIL's fountain pens:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Fixing my FIL's fountain pens:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Fixing my FIL's fountain pens:
Believe it or not, when I went to the equivalent of late elementary and early middle school, fountain pens were required to be used. I got through a lot of Parkers.
Do you remember the model name?
Not a clue. They would have been cheap ones.
A 10-year old left-hander with a fountain pen makes a heck of a mess.
You're a lefty also? How did you escape the nuns?
Church of England school. Penguin-free zone.
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My father in law has an ungodly amount of fountain pens. Many, many pen cases full. Most of which look nice, but would only cost you $5 to $8 on alibaba.
...Not all of 'em, though.
Recognize any of these?
The one on the top is one of the most iconic and ubiquitous fountain pens of all time, the Parker 51.
The one in the middle is just a rando.
The one on the bottom is a Parker Sonnet.
I figured I'd try my hand at fixing these up.
The Parker 51 has a hooded nib, so you can leave it uncapped for a much longer period of time without the nib drying out, which I like—I do a lot of starting and stopping with the kind of writing I do. Also, it's a snap cap, so you can open it with one hand. Very nice. And, the pump mechanism to fill it is very easy to use, and a lot less messy. Classic pen, and more importantly for me it's an absolute freaking workhorse.
But, it was fucked. The hooded section and the nib were completely misaligned, and because Parker fucking glued the section to the feed, this was problematic. They make a modern version of the 51, but (1) it absolutely sucks—for starters, it's a twist cap instead of a snap cap, which, why in the fuck, and (2) the parts aren't backwards compatible. I had to buy some tools and a cheap Chinese knockoff of the original 51 to cannibalize a few parts and fix the thing. Here's a realigned section with a new nib and feed. (It would have been nice to keep the old nib, but it was pretty well damaged. Better to just start over.)
The middle one was inked up about a decade ago, maybe more. No shit, it wrote right out of the case. The seal on that cap was amazing.
The Parker Sonnet is a pretty standard-issue fountain pen. Metal barrel, plastic section, typical nib, typical feed, cartridge or cartridge converter compatible. Looks classy, writes well. But don't let the nib fool you, it's just stainless with 23k plating.
It was a little screwed up, but fortunately, you can take these apart pretty easily. The only issue I had was that the nib has wings that clamp onto the side of the feed, so you really can't remove it easily. I decided to leave that alone since you could get it pretty clean without further fiddling. It writes just a little bit dry for my preference right now, but I'm hoping that over time that'll smooth out.
@Aqua-Letifer said in Fixing my FIL's fountain pens:
The Parker 51 has a hooded nib, so you can leave it uncapped for a much longer period of time without the nib drying out, which I like—I do a lot of starting and stopping with the kind of writing I do. Also, it's a snap cap, so you can open it with one hand....
...But, it was fucked. The hooded section and the nib were completely misaligned, and because Parker fucking glued the section to the feed, this was problematic.I love this. If I ever had to describe Aqua to someone who's never met him, I would just let them read this to get a sense. Combination of knowledge, passion for learning, and vulgar pragmatism.
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Update: The Parker Sonnet is a fake.
The engraving on the band says "IIIQ", which in Parker versioning parlance means that this pen was manufactured third quarter 1990.
Except Sonnets weren't made in third quarter 1990. Depending on which country you lived in, the earliest runs started somewhere between 1992 and 1994.
It was a hugely popular model when it came out, and there are a ton of knockoffs. Many of which have this incorrect version engraving.
It's a shame, too, because this one was pretty clogged with ink, which implies my FIL used it quite a bit.
So what I did was I ordered an actual Sonnet from around the time this pen was actually made. The knockoffs are very accurate dupes, so what I'm hoping to do is to swap out the nib, feed, and cap for an actual Sonnet so that it's still my FIL's pen, but technically no longer a knockoff.
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Resurrecting this thread because...
Daughter and I went to a couple of local antique shops last weekend. The first shop was a bust. We spent a couple of hours in there and didn't see one fountain pen.
We had better luck at the 2nd shop.
I found a vintage Parker 45. It was pretty dirty with what appeared to be decades of dried ink inside and outside of the converter, but I bought it anyway. They were asking $40 for it. I offered $30 and they agreed to the price.
I am kicking myself for not taking any before shots but i will include some after the many hours of soaking and cleaning photos.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that it has a 14k gold nIb. Its my first gold nib pen.
I inked it with Bungubox Ink of the Witch and it writes beautifully. Very smooth and wet. No skipping. Very happy with it.
We also found a pretty cool, brand new, unbranded pen in silver and gold that has a compass in the top of the cap. It writes exceptionally well for a no-name $15 pen. I inked it with Noodlers Cardinal Kestrel.
The 45 is awesome. It writes so nice and smooth. I'm using it at work every day now.
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Very nice 45! Hooded nibs are great. Really nice pens, Mark!
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This fountain pen obsession is just getting worse. We went vintage pen hunting again last weekend and we found more Parker fountain pens. I ended up with two more 45s and my daughter found an excellent 51 and a 45 with a misaligned nib which I am now using as an excuse to get into nib repair. WHAT???
I also have two new Schaefer pens in my cart at Goulet Pens. Along with a blotter and blotter paper, a bottle of ink...
A far as hobbies go, this one is not even close to the expense of any other hobbies I have pursued. Plus it's just a lot of fun and is actually improving my handwriting. That's something I never even thought about in my 62 years of existence.
The 1964 vintage stainless 45 Flighter in the center of the first photo, is my go to pen at work now. It is so good!
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This morning I did my first nib adjustment.
This pen was very rough with right to left strokes. Left to right strokes were much smoother but it also had an inconsistent flow of ink and would skip while writing.
After adjustment it writes so much better. No skipping and much more consistent feeling in all directions. It still has feedback but that also feels consistent and much smoother now. It was pretty annoying to have variable feedback depending on rhe direction of travel.
Closeups of before, during and after adjustments.
