At the risk of putting myself at a further disadvantage, I feel compelled (truly) to publicly sing the praises of one Stacy Hills and his extraordinary work. His specialty is lovingly, expertly restoring Sheaffers. Sheaffers, particularly but not exclusively, so you see some other restorations pop up in his feed as well.
Look, Sheaffers are my bag. They dominate my collection and I have, use, and adore Sheaffers of many eras. Lots of folks can re-cac a pen nice and neat and many can also beautifully restore a pneumatic pen, and I am grateful we have so many smart and knowledgeable Sheaffer-centric craftspeople in the mix but we clearly can add one more name to the list. His specialty is a that he can do a vac-fil restore that will absolutely knock your socks off.
Some folks will put in crummy plugs that just fall apart after a couple fills (not saying who heh heh), some will put in plugs more carefully and those will hold and work reasonably well, okay fine, but then there are those who rebuild the whole kit and caboodle. Stacy does not plug, he redoes all the seals, the rod, the packing unit, etc. When he is done, the plunger glides smooth and pops at the end of the travel when the vacuum seal is broken and the pens fill full and write wonderfully.
My sample size is not small and my experience with restorers is pretty wide ranging.
Stacy did a rebuild of an Oversized Crest Vac-fil, an OS Balance Vac-fil (what a pen), a Statesman II vac-fil, an amazing Vac-fil desk pen with a factory stub nib, a Triumph Wideband, as well as redoing my factory S4 Statesman Snorkel and probably others I am forgetting. The man knows what he is doing.
He is active on Instagram as paperwantsapen and his google photo stream (linked in his Instagram profile) is sick. Inventory heavy now (hubba hubba) but if you scroll back you see his documentation of the restorations he has done. Absolutely beautiful work. Vac-fil restoration is not an easy job. Harder still to get it to work well. But a well working lovingly restored Sheaffer is a joy. I just want to say that as someone who has a half dozen or so pens that have passed through his hands that I have been nothing but pleased, he’s a square dealer and a good guy to boot. His turnaround is good and he backs his work.
There, I have just made it harder for me to get my next pen from him, but he deserves his props.
