My Smallest Wahl yet, 214AW

[KBeezie]

Picked this up yesterday, first find of the new year (along with an early Conklin Crescent filler, and later in the afternoon an Esterbrook SJ).

Found it buried in a little box of junker pens (mostly 3rd tier FPs, BPs, MPs, damaged nibs, etc etc) at the antique mall.



Looked it up in the 1925 Wahl catalog while I was in the shop to figure it to be a 214AW miniature pen (2" length, "0" nib, Checkerboard pattern, gold-filled, ring top).

Cleaned up the old ink, polished up a little bit.



Until this little guy, my smallest Wahl was this 431A (also shown next to one of my thicker Wahl, a Lazulitic blue Gold Seal with a Personal Point #4 "Flexible" "B").



Took a little bit of heat and patience to get the section out of the barrel, did notice there was a small crack in the hard rubber tubing used for the nipple, but figured it was minor enough that the sac being shellac'd right on it would be fine, especially since the feed sticks out the back of it, not leaving really any room for it to squeeze inward.





Got a new sac on it, I adjusted the nib for alignment and heat set it better to the feed allowing me to pinch in the gap between the tip a little bit (still present but much smaller than it was).

Shown here next to the Wahl 431A, Sheaffer OS Balance, the modern Platinum Century #3776, and my Wahl-Eversharp Doric (Jet Black, standard size, vac-filler converted to a button filler, hence the Duofold blind cap).

[Wahl]

Nice, congrats !

[Robalone]

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[KBeezie]

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If it has a #0 nib and is same size as mine (which it would be if it has a #0), it's going to be a 21#AW, the # is the pattern, in your case it's called a "Colonial Design", so yours is a 213AW (A = Gold, W = Ringtop).



Which happens to be in the 1925 Catalog.

I want to find a colonial design, ripple, or even the 'hand engraved' looking ones. I mainly come across the dart/unique, or checkerboard.

[Robalone]

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[KBeezie]

It's interesting to see a warranted nib that doesn't follow the same nib size standard as the Wahl (likewise waterman, etc etc). Seems more in line with the WASP Clipper I have where their #4 is much closer to a typical "no.2" nib, and was the smallest size of that specific model (likewise their biggest model having as #7 nib is hardly larger than either a Conklin, Wahl, or Waterman #4).

[FredRydr]

It's interesting to see a warranted nib that doesn't follow the same nib size standard as the Wahl (likewise waterman, etc etc)....

It can be the bane of restoring older vintage pens when swapping nibs.

I was going crazy dealing with Conklin's own numbering for nibs produced in the first decade of the previous century. They changed the sizes for the same numbers around 1904, and I was stuck with incompatible parts requiring me to buy even more (and rarer) parts in order to complete a 1904 No. 4 crescent pen, and then I had left-over parts for a larger 1904+ No. 4 crescent pen!