Tales of a newbie pen collector - volume 1

[buddman]

Hello everyone. I posted my intro here last week ( https://fpgeeks.com/forum/showthread...er-from-London ) and took a few hours this morning to look at a few pens and see what could progress. Some things OK, some tales of destruction Im afraid. Poor pens lasted a hundred years until I showed up.

1. The first one I tackled was a Swan E444 black pen circa 1920. First thing I did was use a hair dryer heat prior to to open it up and removing the old sac. A metal strip fell out which I assume is half of a J bar so need to find another of those. The section with the feed and nib was seised as you'd expect, so I soaked it in water to try to remove the dried ink prior to knocking it out in a block. While that all worked fine, I didn't realise the pen is (I think) made of rubber, and the soaking I think caused the section to turn slightly grey (or at least I didn't notice it was grey before, so I think my damage here). It there anything I can do about that at this point, other than try to find a new section? Other than that, the trim polished up very nicely and it reassembled well.



2. Another Swan self filler in a very attractive green snakeskin pattern. This one went without a hitch. I didn't soak this one because of the issue i caused in the E444 above, but in retrospect its obviously not rubber! Do I have to look out for casein now... Trim cleaned well, new sack installed, all good.



3. A Shaefer's striped brown pen, i think quite nice. Does anyone know what model this is? An utter noobie f-up here and I broke the feed. At the barrel end the feed was very thin and i though not appropriate to try to bash it out like i did on the Swan, so i tried to pull it out from the front and it was too brittle and broke. So I need to find a new feed for that. Any tips on trying to locate these sorts of parts?





Couple of observations:

-some obvious learning points above re rubber and being more careful with feeds.
-I think I'll prepare my shopping list over a dozen pens or so, and order sacs/bars and stuff all together in the future rather than ordering part by part with no ideas what Ill need next.
- I had anticipated spending quite a lot of time polishing with micro mesh, but in the case of the ones i did here, they weren't so bad. I tried to find whether I could use micro mesh on rubber, and saw quite conflicting debate, so i decided not too. I just did a light polish with a Autosol metal polish and that seemed to remove the surface grit and provide a reasonable shine. Under a loop you can see lots of fine scratches, but Im not sure I'm bothered by that. In my watch collecting world, polishing is a cardinal sin. Im sure it has its time and place.

Questions

Is there a way to know if a pen is made of rubber?
Can you use micro mesh on rubber?
On the Sheafer's, the section on this one is clear, and I'm wondering how clear should it get? Is it supposed to be an opaque brown, or should it come pretty clear?
I used a standard Autosol metal polish on these pens, then removed any residue with a damp cloth, dried and applied a coat of Renaissance wax. Is there anything wrong with that?

Enough destruction for today. Appreciate your helpful replies...

David