I'm sure this must be answered somewhere on the board, but I've done a few searches and all I'm coming up with is people repairing their own pens.

Where I live, it's slim pickins for fountain pens. I stopped at the local antique shop a few days ago to see what they had; the owner said they didn't have much, "but here, just take this one". He handed me an old and dingy-looking fountain pen.

Once I looked at it under the light, I was happy to see that it's a Parker 51 Vacumetric. Not very pretty, almost completely black, but you can see under bright light where the color used to be. Not surprisingly, the sac needs to be replaced.

I'm not much interested right now in purchasing a $40 tool to mess around on a free pen, but I'm willing to spend $20 to have someone who knows what they're doing get this guy going. Looking around on alt.collecting.pens-pencils, it looks like Nathan Tardiff *used* to do a pretty good vacumatic repair, but it seems he's pretty busy lately making darn good ink.


Can anyone recommend someone or somewhere for a vacumatic repair?


Thanks!

I can make a few recommendations. Couple of these fellows have restored more than 200 vacs each for me.

Ron Zorn of www.mainstreetpens.com recently became moderator of the repair column here at FPN.

Richard Binder is a well known nib-meister who also does great work on vac restoration. www.richardspens.com

and Joel Hamilton of www.ink-pen.com has fixed some of my trickiest and fanciest vacs.

I'd guess restoration will cost you around $35, but feel to ask these fellows yourself.

regards

david

If I can echo what David I said any of the above, Ron Z is a moderator here and did have a shorter queue than some.

You could also try Dillo or DWL, both who frequent these parts

I would say that the "51" Vac is well worth a restore, they are one of the most rugged pens around, but the repair may cost you a bit but not a lot more than your estimate, but still worth it IMHO.

Jim

Hi,

I would be glad to fix it for the $20 you want to pay.

If you want I can teach you how after I restore it. (Little booklet) I just want to restore it first just so that you can feel what a properly restored "51" feels like.

Dillon

I second all the recommendations, including our own (gee that has a nice sound to it) Ron Z. However, I do want to make it clear that being a moderator here (that sounds great too!) should not be a factor in your choice. We're trying to remain as commercial free as possible which gets a bit dicey when we have people in the business as moderators. On the other hand, it shouldn't stop anyone from sending work to Ron