Nice Vintage Red Marble Piston Fill..., um wait...,..., WHAT?

[Jeph]

I thought it was time to share another tale of Ebay woe to offset what may appear to be a constant stream of steals. Most of the time when junk shows up I just take the hit, toss the crap pens in with the others and move on. This one I had stretched a little for due to the color and the similarity to other vintage pens that I have. It was advertised as having a steel nib, but I now have plenty of spare 14K Pelikan nibs and good performance steel nibs to transplant in pens that warrant the special attention. So $33 later (about double my usual dice rolls) I sat around and waited for the mailman.

When the pen arrived, the first thing that I noticed was that the piston knob and cap closure were both hard rubber. That was a good sign. The next thing that I noticed was that it was shipped full of water. That is strange, but it boded well for the piston condition and the lack of cracks. The nib was a very basic steel nib and clearly was a replacement but that was not a problem. There was also a lot of weird gunk around the section but old ink does strange things so that didn’t bother me. There were no identifying marks anywhere on the pen but that is not uncommon for old German piston fillers. What quickly got my attention next was the barrel and cap material. It was a nice barely translucent red marble and not a decorative overlay like I had feared. Now I was excited. The ink window was a little cloudy and had some stains but cleaning should help that. I emptied the water and tested the piston. It was functional, but slightly weak. No problem as I know how to fix that. I removed the hard rubber parts, the section and feed came out easily and I plopped the disassembled pen (less the hard rubber bits) into the bath to soak. Here are some pictures of what I was looking at when everything went into the bath before I continue my tale.

Red Marble.jpgRed Marble Open.jpgRed Marble Barrel.jpgRed Marble Cap.jpg

I was cleaning the barrel when I noticed that something was wrong. Very wrong. The section bore was off-center. What is more, with the gunk removed you can clearly see that not only had the section been sleeved, but whoever did it was apparently cross-eyed. Looking closer, the off-center bore was not even round but decidedly oval. Looking inside the bore it looked like the bore was either formed with a warped file, or as was starting to believe, the cross-eyed repairman was also drunk. Then I looked at the feed. It was a very simple double groove (W) feed with rudimentary ink catching tines on the sides. But it was not round either. It is almost oval, except for that is also not symmetrical. So my drunken cross-eyed repairman shoved a sleeve into the section, make a somewhat hole like opening in it, and then shoved in the worst made feed could find matched with a cheap steel nib and sealed of it together with some mystery goo. I don’t even want to think about what it might be.

This pen is not worth any more of my time or money. Shortly after I post this it will go in the box with the other crap. I should destroy it to save someone grief down the line but I cannot bring myself to do it. There is not really much to learn from this installment of my tales of woe other than there is no substitute for personal inspection prior to purchase.

Red Marble Section Sleeve.jpgRed Marble Section Bore.jpgRed Marble Feed C-S.jpgRed Marble Nib Fit.jpg

[Farmboy]

Why not install a new sleeve in the section? You were already planning on installing a new nib. Thread the new sleeve and install the entire nib unit.

[fountainpenkid]

Are there any markings on the pen? It reminds me of a couple nice German brands (Kaweco, Osmia, and one other that is not coming to me at the moment) and it might be worth saving. Boring out the section or getting an expert like Brian Gray to make a new one shouldn't be too hard to do. That said, if this is really a 2nd tier pen, I wouldn't bother.