My newest Waterman acquisition arrived yesterday & I love it.



Edited to add pic of updated collection.

And bandless t'boot. Less common that way. But be gentle with it. Nice pen!

david

Thanks! I thought it might be less common w/o the band.

Simply fabulous.

Not owning a rhr pen, does the colour fade at all? There seems to be a slight difference between that hidden by the cap and the rest (not a criticism of your fabulous pen!) I see my bhr pens fading before my sight, I wondered if rhr does something similar.

I'm very jealous, and always have my pathetic bids overtaken. This is my favourite pen material.


Greg

Greg,
The color is definitely darker in the area covered by the cap. I don't know if that means the exposed barrel faded or the hidden part stained.
I really like hard rubber too. Not so much the chased ones - I like the smooth HR.
Good luck with your future bids!
Pep

P.S. I think fading is made worse by immersing in water...

...
I really like hard rubber too. Not so much the chased ones - I like the smooth HR.



Yep, smooth for me too if still nice and glossy. Much rarer though, I'm even tempted by the few modern hr pens with smooth finishes (in fact there's only the CS pens I know with the chased).


Greg

Flashy pen- like writing with a tiny stick of dynamite.

Nice description!

Oooh, envy! I love the red hard rubber and I'm a softie for the ringtops.

Mostly the fading of hard rubber, any color, is caused by light.

Good to know.

Is it true that one shouldn't soak hard rubber pens, especially in warm water?

That is what I hear, it causes mottled fading and/or whitish spots. But most damage that I have seen has been from sunlight, or even house lighting over long periods of time, fading the color.

I believe that HR fading is caused by the oxidation of the hard rubber, which is mostly caused by exposure to UV light. I believe that hot water will also cause oxidation, but I am not sure about that. I think that cold water does not actually cause oxidation, but if there has been any oxidation from light exposure and the pen does not already show it, cold water will rapidly cause the HR to fade or spot.

At least, I think that is the story. We have some chemists who could probably describe it better.

John

If I recall the very general rule of thumb about water is that it will cause a wash away of the coloration that has been oxidized already by actinic light. The water itself isn't causing the oxidation, rather the actinic light did that. The water washes off the coloration that has already been damage- which itself isn't good if you want a black pen. But the real cure is to avoid actinic light.

Thanks, everyone, for the information on fading. I had to look up "actinic."

From Wikipedia:

Actinic light is light which produces an identifiable or measurable change when it interacts with matter.

The term was first commonly used in early photography to distinguish light that would expose a film from light that would not. Non-actinic light could be used in a darkroom without risk of exposing light sensitive films, plates or papers.

Early films, plates and papers were sensitive to the high energy end of the visible spectrum from green to UV. Such light was actinic light. Red light was non-actinic.

So we can view our hard rubber pens under a red light, in which case the rhr pens will look white!

Just to confirm a previous post, if the oxidisation process has not yet started the material is quite hardy and water is not much of a problem. If oxidisation has started keep it well away from water, it will turn almost instantly fade. I would say that almost all old hard rubber pens have begun to oxidise to some extent by now and so should be kept away from water.

It is possible to go back a tone by rubbing with oily skin (like under your lip after lunch!), this seems to give a black gloss (on BHR), but won't reverse (may even speed) any processes of decay.

Does the coloured hard rubber oxidise at any less rate than the black?

With so many fabulous pens around being rendered ordinary on an insidiously slow and silent basis our hard rubber heritage is disintegrating before our eyes, we should set up a Hard Rubber Preservation Fund for research into how to stop and even reverse the dreaded process of the devil himself, oxidisation.


Greg

HRRF (Hard Rubber Restoration Fund) - a great idea, Greg!