Restoring a Wearever Pacemaker

[Scooby921]

We celebrated Fountain Pen Day in the office last Friday. Apparently placing a few signs around the office the day before prompted a few co-workers to find and bring in some fountain pens they had lying around the house. Sammyo came to my desk holding a Wearever Pacemaker that someone had handed to him. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. The week prior I had seen Inkluminati's photos from the pen show and I was very intrigued by one of the pens he found. Sammyo knew what it was and directed me to some other pictures on the web. So it was quite exciting to suddenly be holding nearly the same pen!

I don't know the whole back story, but I believe it was found in a garage while cleaning and tossed into a drawer for many years. It's pretty obvious it was someone's daily writer for a while as there are plenty of tooth marks in the blind cap and it's a bit deformed.

Before restoring / polishing:
Clip and band are tarnished. Body is scratched, dirty, and dull. Feed is full of dried up ink. Nib is dirty and tarnished.

[Scooby921]

Started by soaking the pen in soapy water and then some cleaning solution. It appears the last ink used in this pen was blue...



Then I heated up a pot of water to soak the barrel and section to soften up the shellac and disassemble things. Much to my surprise the ink sac was still intact. The spring bar was still functional as well, though very rusty. As a precaution I've ordered a new ink sac and a new spring bar. Once disassembled I began polishing the barrel and caps. The section looked to be in good enough condition to not need any work.

After cleaning and polishing:








As soon as the new ink sac and spring bar arrive (this week) I'll get it put back together and get on with a writing sample to see how it does.