#conklin fountain pen

[goodnight-ensign]

Treated myself to a new pen today

[chaosandorder46]

Kind of obsessed with this pen today.

[form-function]

For the Beauty of the Earth

For the Glory of the Skies

Conklin All American Pau Preto - Diamine Ochre

Monteverde Ritma Walnut - Diamine Meadow X Nahvalur Jade (homebrew)

The ink mix was just a rough 50/50 and I only filled one pen. Turned out extremely well IMO completely by chance.

The Ritma was one of my first purchases. I love the feeling of a nice wooden body. Similarly the Conklin just feels warm and smooth from the hardwood.

[syncallio]

About that Conklin Crescent: I actually ended up with two. Much to my surprise! A small one, 25P, and a large one, 211L. It's the 211L that has a big ugly crack in the cap.

And here's how I made ABSOLUTELY SURE that crack would stay closed.

Not a pretty fix, but it'll do the job. Once the epoxy is fully set I'll clean it up a bit.

Sad to say I'm not sure I want to ink it because the cap wasn't the only thing that was cracked. The nib has a nasty long crack along its length, starting at the base. You can't see it unless you take the nib out. Maybe someday I'll pick up a homeless Conklin nib to replace it.

Anyway, here's some shots of these iconic pens:

Some fun facts about the Crescent: it was wildly popular when it was first introduced, both for its fine quality and for the fact that you could fill it one-handed. Among its fans was Samuel Langhorne Clemens - Mark Twain - who was then paid to endorse it.

Clemens's own Crescent is on display at his home/museum in Connecticut. And is apparently badly discolored and missing some bits. Proof of how much he loved it!

Conklin was so proud of their Crescent that they were reluctant to try anything new and fell behind in the game. Everyone else was doing things like using plastic instead of hard rubber and inventing new, more convenient filling systems. Conklin eventually caught up (the Nozac and Endura are both highly regarded) but they didn't survive much past World War II.

[doom-secretary]

Writing with my Conklin Endura and it's lovely except for some ink flow issues. Could be the ink (Tono & Lims) or maybe the connection? Will have to experiment. It also tends to write better if I slow down.

[moved-to-thanatologie]

one last thing before i do the adulting thing:

emmrich would be a fountain pen snob send tweet

[pocketwish]

the fountain pen community: fountain pens don't have to be old fashioned! look at all these modern designs! bright colors! dynamic shapes! not your grandma's pen!

me: tortoiseshell........

[evitcani-writes]

Restored Conklin Slim Pocket Crescent Filler from 1923

Here’s my process of restoring it! I didn’t take great before pictures, but it wasn’t in great shape (and certainly didn’t work).

Below the cut is the original state and my process of restoration.

Original State

It came with a cracked and scuffed lid. The lid was pretty fragile. Light pressure would likely break it. The crescent and nib are 14k gold and the body was pretty “sunburnt” ebonite. The filler sac had melted and the shellac had calcified.

Process

First was a LOT of cleaning. By hand, sanding off the white… stuff from the lid. Then a lot of rounds of a hypersonic cleaning before everything was ready.

The ebonite needed re-dyed. I decided to go for a matte black and went the route of using Black 3.0 in light layers. Once completed, I painted the engraved letters to match the nib and crescent which was tricky.

On the lid, I used UV resin on the crack to strengthen it. Then sanded it mostly flat. It got the same treatment as the body with coats of Black 3.0.

I left everything to dry after spraying a coat of protectant. After another round of UV protective sealant and drying, everything was reassembled.

Attaching a new sac was interesting. As the shellac used in attaching latex ink sacs had calcified, I began a process of carefully whittling away each layer of old latex until I reached the ebonite feed tube. Finally got to that satisfying cinch of dropping the tube onto the feed tube and testing it worked.

Writes great! Has some feedback, but is very flexy. Fun to write with.

What the Process Should Look Like

If you can't tell, I'm not an expert at this. I don't know how well this will hold up to wear. The cap cracked in the same place when I screwed it on. I'll have to fix it again, but it doesn't affect the function of the pen, the ink has stayed pretty wet.

Many people think re-dyeing the ebonite to any capacity is hurting a historical object. I went this route so as to bring the pen in line with my own aesthetic (and its original state) while also being temporary and harmless to the pen itself. The paint and sealant can be easily peeled away without taking off the UV affected layer of ebonite (something which could cause significant harm).

I also used a lot of hypersonic cleaning to avoid having to use brushes which could harm the ebonite. The objective was preservation while wanting to keep the pen used as it was intended to be.

And what a beautiful little pen I've found in this one. Nothing writes quite like it except a dip pen. The tines flex beautifully, able to create wide pathways and sharp points in a moment while still easily writing as well as any rollerball for quick notes.

If you manage to get your hands on one, I urge you to consider restoration. They are beautiful little things, made to last. Plenty of videos on youtube can walk you through restoring the ink sacs.

[inkophile]

Frankly Walnut Ink From Robert Oster And Federalist Pens

Federalist Pens sent a bottle of their exclusive ink Frankly Walnut from the Robert Oster Signature collection. It flows very well in the Conklin Duragraph 1.1 stub that I have had since 2015. Not too wet as some inks can be from such a wide nib. This is definitely my kind of ink since it wrote without a skip after over a week of no use. Swatches are good for relative comparisons. Here Frankly…

[slightly-sigilant]

I'm finally digging into my ES backlog, starting with Shades of Yesterday. I can tell that the writer's actually familiar with fountain pens and it delights me tremendously

Everything in this passage is a real fountain pen filling mechanism, as far as I can tell:

"filling your pen with an eyedropper" - eyedropper fillers, exactly what they sound like. And yep, some do have an unfortunate tendency to leak through their screwed-together bits.

"a rubber sac inside the barrel" - squeeze sac fillers, where the ink container is a little flexible sac you can squish and unsquish, sucking up ink to refill the pen. I think this type was more common in the past and has mostly been superseded by piston and vacuum fillers, but they still exist (Pilot Metropolitans come with a squeeze-style converter, for example)

"the manipulation of air pressure to suck ink into the pen" - I think this one's referring to vacuum fillers but I'm not 100% certain?? It's the kind of filling style I have the least familiarity with.

"refills with a simple twist of the base" - piston filler, maybe?

That being said, it's possible that all of these lines are just describing variations of sac-based filling systems, since Fallen London is set in the late 1800s and (according to Wikipedia and what I can scrape together from a bunch of fountain pen nerdery sites) all of the early fountain pen non-eyedropper filling designs were based around sacs rather than the plastic tubes that most piston/vacuum-filler converters use today. The mechanisms for deflating the sac varied, but the principle was the same - squish sac, put nib of pen in ink, unsquish sac to pull ink into the pen.

Conklin crescent-filler: https://rupertarzeian.com/2023/04/08/early-thoughts-on-the-conklin-mark-twain-crescent-filler-fountain-pen/

Waterman twist-filler: https://vintagepens.com/filling_instructions_twist-fillers.shtml

Sheaffer lever-filler: https://www.newpentrace.net/article102501_127.html

Parker button-filler: https://penhero.com/PenGallery/Parker/ParkerDuofoldFiller.htm

Full disclaimer that I'm not a pen expert or historian so I could be wrong about some of these

[chaosandorder46]

New pen day!

Fountain Pen Revolution, Himalaya v2

I was hoping this nib would be super flexy and it's not (but does have some flex), but I love the look and feel of this pen.

The nib is stiff enough that I can use it for normal writing which I really can't do with my other flex nib fountain pen (Conklin endura).

Compared to the Conklin, this pen isn't nearly as smooth or flexy, but at less than half the price, that's expected.

[syncallio]

Hoo boy, there's a new pen repair I'm gonna try. Yesterday I won a very old Conklin Crescent with a cracked cap. Which is to say, it's hard rubber, which is considered unrepairable. Most things won't stick to rubber, let alone bond well enough to fill a gap.

But some madperson on Reddit fixed a hard rubber cap with Milliput epoxy, and according to them it's holding up nicely. So I'm gonna give it a shot.

I hope it goes better than those Sheaffer Triumphs I tried to fix. I still don't know why the seals won't seal.

[penhero]

This is a Stratford fountain pen in emerald green metallic pearl c. 1940.  It is very similar to and appears to be the immediate predecessor if not the basis for the the c. 1940-1943 Stratford 77.  Advertisements for this pen appear only in 1940.  The primary differences are the clip style, cap bands and nib.  It's a 4 7/8 inch button fill fountain pen that uses a striped celluloid very similar to the 1st generation Conklin Nozac Penline.  The pen fills by removing the blind cap from the end of the barrel, inserting the nib in ink and pressing the button to compress the ink sac and fill the pen.  The clip is stamped with the Stratford logo.  The cap band has a fletching or arrow feathers design.  The cap top band has two thin lines.  It features a Lucite ink view section.  The trim and the nib were lightly gold plated and shows typical heavy plating loss.  The nib is stainless steel and stamped Iridium over TIPPED over MADE IN over U.S.A.  The color has faded and the blind cap is brown.  The similarity of the celluloid to the Stratford 77 probably means this model was also offered in striped emerald green, silver grey, and golden brown metallic pearl and jet black.  It sold for 49 cents in 1940.

[grimawormtonguenamesyoulathspell]

I've been asked to create a weeks-worth of creative prompts for this fountain pen community I'm a part of.

I really enjoy getting to draw and write my favorite book quotes. Today's quote was for Frodo Baggins...and J.R.R. Tolkien.

I picked my most Frodo-looking pen I could think of. This Conklin Toledo in Burgundy was the one.

[petermorwood]

I was upstairs when I sent @dduane, downstairs, the link to the Conan Doyle version, and got a response that was audible right through the floor. :->

The people who buy these things will never fill them or write with them, they may not even dip them in ink to find out if they're smooth, scratchy, whatever. They'll just put them in a deposit box until enough time has passed that they can sell them on, "uninked", for a profit to someone else who will never fill them or...

*****

It's like owning a classic car and never taking it on the road, or even putting enough fuel in the tank to hear the engine turn over. Check out Jay Leno's Garage on YouTube to see how owning classic cars is really done.

I bet there are people who think the same way about fountain pens. They, of course, will be using proper classics from way back, made for writing with all day and every day - Waterman, Conklin, Parker, Mabie Todd, Onoto, Conway Stewart etc. - not something whose sole purpose is an investment that happens to be pen-shaped.

*****

Despite making pens and mechanical pencils since 1918 I'd never heard of Waldmann before this - which means nothing, there are lots of pen brands I've never heard of, but high-profile ones do cross my radar now and then if only to prompt the same thought: "Uh... Nope."

I was surprised that it uses the same cartridge / converter filling system as any cheap fountain pen - though after a moment's thought, the pen's never going to be closer to ink than the bottle it's packaged with, so how it's (not) filled doesn't matter.

It's probably the reason why a lot of very expensive production pens are also C/C. Why install a filling mechanism that'll never be used?

*****

Their fondness for 925 sterling silver as a material reminds me of Yard-O-Lead, which do the same thing, to the extent of dropping their non-silver "Retro" range a few years ago. Underneath the hand-decorated solid silver, Y-O-L pens are also just cartridge / converters.

IMO once a pen approaches the €-£-$ 1000 mark (many get interesting well before that, hello Lamy 2000) it should be a piston, or vacuum, or eyedropper, or side-lever, or plunger, or something more unusual than C/C.

Just because.

*****

Most of that silly price isn't the pen but the Conan Doyle / Agatha Christie document which is part of the package. Looking at the Waldmann website, a similar pen by itself would probably sell for about or under a grand (silver content keeps the cost up).

And for that or much, much less, the choice of pens to actually WRITE with - backed by lots of reviews about how they do - is far, far wider.

My Book of Wishful Thinking has a list... :->

In the words of my people:

...Yeah, no.

[craftcompare]

Conklin All American Fountain Pen - Tortoiseshell - Fine Nib

This Conklin All American Tortoiseshell Fountain Pen is a prime example of Conklinandrsquo;s thoughtful and innovative approach to design, including t... http://dlvr.it/T9VPFm