I picked up a couple of old, low-end stratford pens on Ebay, and I'm wondering whether they are likely to be worth refurbishing or not. I know very little about them. They were advertised as lever-fill (they're not, they're button-fillers), and generally seem to be cheap plastic all around.
The nib says "special alloy made in USA" and appears to be very thin gold plate that's flaking off in places. The nib on one is broken off (doubt *that's* worth fixing), though the other one appears okay, though the slit doesn't look like it's exactly centered. On the plus side, it seems to flush okay, and I'm getting old ink out of it. It may write as-is, I'll find out shortly. :-) It's not obvious to me how to take the barrel off though, so I can't say for sure that it's not leaking inside (if it just unscrews then it's tight enough that I'm a little afraid to force it).
(These are the relatively bad pics from ebay; I'll try to take something better if ayone thinks it would help.)
What do you think?
Thanks!