A slim but substantial Eversharp

[penwash]

This is Eversharp Ventura Slim, which is slimmer than say the Parker 51, but still feels nice in my hand which usually don't work too well with skinny pens.



The cool part is the Sterling silver cap. The funny thing is, I had this pen for a while, and when I got it and restored it, the cap was ... well, silver colored. And I wasn't aware that it is actually made out of Sterling silver.

A few days ago, when I rediscovered this pen, the cap has that "black" patina that is very distinctive of Sterling silver wares. Then it dawned on me that the cap is not a mere steel one. I personally like the tarnished silver look, and I know that with just a polish using jewelry cloth, its silvery sparkliness will be back.

The pen has a neat filling system that reminds me of Parker's Aeromatic filler, basically a bulb filler in a metal enclosure that we can press on to pump air/ink in and out of the ink sac.

The nib looks like this:



and when writing normally exhibit some stub character. It's a semiflex at the most, capable of some nice line variations. And I enjoy sketching with it.

[FredRydr]

That's a first for me. I like patina, but I'd polish that one.

[Sagebrush64]

Hhhhmmmm...Never seen one of those before. I also like the "patina" or tarnish....I think i'd leave it as is just because of the contrast with the clip!

[christof]

I like this pen with the patina a lot!
C.

[Chrissy]

I couldn't tell the cap was silver from the first picture, and to me it looked dull and uninteresting.
I'm with Fred on this one. That really black tarnish isn't for me.

[Deb]

It's patina on bronze; on silver it's tarnish.

[penwash]

Alright here's what the dictionary.com says:

patina
[ pat-n-uh, puh-tee-nuh ]
noun
1. a film or incrustation, usually green, produced by oxidation on the surface of old bronze and often esteemed as being of ornamental value.
2. a similar film or coloring appearing gradually on some other substance.
3. a surface calcification of implements, usually indicating great age.

So Deb is correct, the background or original use of the term patina is to describe bronze oxidation.
However I've seen the term now being used in a more broad sense as in definition no.2.

But I'm also okay if we call this pen's cap tarnished, because that's what it is.

I'm with Sagebrush and Christof, I love how the tarnished cap contrast with the gold-filled clip, so I'm going to leave it as is.

Now, if the new owner of the pen came along and wanted me to buff it, I'll get my tarnish-'b-gone and buff it up before sending the pen away.

[DipIt]

I think the tarnish looks good but I wonder why it should suddenly appear. Was there some thing novel in how it was stored? I have a few silver pens and have always stored them separately from ebonite bodied pens on the theory that sulfur is real quick about tarnishing silver. Was there and old ebonite pen in the vicinity? I have never seen this effect from just an ebonite feed but I am just wondering why the sudden tarnish.

[Deb]

Silver does tarnish pretty quickly - perhaps slower with air than sulphur. I inherited some silver tableware and in the end sold it because I was tired of polishing it. Tarnished tableware is not attractive! I'm not fond of the tarnished appearance in pens either but I can see that it might be more appealing than a blackened teapot.