Chatting with a neighbor over the weekend, I brought up my 'guilty pleasure' ... fountain pens. She, a spry 87 year old, brought out 4 pens. Her 18 year old granddaughter immediately claimed one, a Marine Green Shaeffer Balance that I dated to the 1934/35 time period. Yes, another convert to the fold. Do I get a toaster? 2 of the others still need better identification, looks like a Stratford Regency and an Imperial, both lever fill. If I can't get them identified at the Portland Pen Show, I will post them on the forum.

Anyway, now to the reason for this particular post. Other than the Schaeffer Balance, the cream of the crop was what I believe I have identified as an Eversharp Skyline with a striped cap. Looks like the nib has a fair amount of flex to it. Don't have time to take a picture and post right now. It will need some restoration. I've thought of Mr. Binder but I wanted to see if any of you had thoughts of other candidates that have expertise with the pen and the nib in particular.

Thanks in advance.

Mine was lovingly restored by Danny Fudge at 'The Write Pen'. Great person, great prices and 2 weeks or less turnaround! Link at the bottom of my signature.

Danny fixed many of my pens,great guy

Ron Zorn did a masterful restoration of a Skyline I snagged from Mom's kitchen drawer. Cheers,JohnnyT

Thanks for this, I have one misbehaving Skyline demonstrator which has been a thorn in my side for a while now.

I don't think you need anyone special to restore a Skyline. I've worked on about a half dozen of them now, which isn't really a massive amount of experience, but I've found the following to be true:

1. The gold fill almost never brasses.
2. The sections always come off easily.
3. The nibs are almost always wonderfully smooth.
4. The solid plastic (maybe not the striped) is extremely durable.
5. The flow is always nice and wet.

Almost all the ones that I've acquired looked like hell when the showed up in the mail. In particular, the gold plating almost always looks like it's completely corroded beyond repair. But I've found that a few seconds with some rottenstone to polish it brings the gold back to "like new" condition.

Usually I use #4 pumice to work out the scratches on the plastic, and then bring it back up to a shine with rottenstone. This takes about an hour at most and it's just about all a Skyline needs to look really sharp.

Most of the ones I've had have been missing the breather tube. I haven't got around to sourcing replacement tubing yet. They seem to work just fine without it.

I agree with most of Stickman's advice, but would add that the levers frequently have high-point brassing and the barrel plastic can degrade significantly. I've read quite a bit here and elsewhere about Skyline plastics and understand that some are more fragile than others and theres no telling which is which (i.e. it may be individual batches of plastics and not limited to certain colours or years of prodcution). I have half a dozen Skylines in varying condition: I would have one more if the barrel hadn't virtually disintegrated during fairly careful and routine maintenance. Now I have some Skyline parts so it wasn't altogether a bad experience, though it did feel that way when I heard the barrel crack!

I'm more careful with Skylines than i am with most other pens of their vintage. I've also broken one. For me, the scariest part is putting the section back in.

It's also true that the lever tends to get worn where the cap fits over it. That doesn't really concern me.

I would disagree with the statement that the solid plastics are durable. Skyline barrels have a tendency to crack at the threads if you don't use heat to remove and install the section. If you're doing this with no heat and haven't broken one - you will. The Derby threads are notorious for shrinkage, I would guess at least half of the Skylines I've repaired have loose cap/derby threads or inner cap shrinkage on the gf metal cap versions.

Nonetheless, Skylines, in my experience restore as well as about any vintage pen; Estie's excluded. The plastic and gf caps polish up very nicely. If the caps aren't dented and the clip is in decent condition, you can have a very nice pen.

I have a really nice looking standard sized Skyline in my pocket right now. Blue barrel and derby, green and black (or very dark blue) longitudinally striped barrel with a wide cap band. No brassing and a broad nib that writes a bit like a stub. Quite a pen.

I have a mint set NOS with price tags on them (hard case and warranty paper too), but the lever moves up only about a 1/2". I imagine the sac has ossified, from never being lubricated with ink all these years. I've never replaced the sac on one of these. Does the section start at the top of the threads? Because if not, I don't see any seam.

Anyway, it sounds like it is probably best to have it taken care of by someone who has worked on Skylines before!

You are right on 2.5 out of 3 of your comments and suppositions.

1) The sac has probably gone hard but even had there been ink in it the rubber would have deteriorated over the years.

2) Yes, the "seam" is where the section meets the threads on the barrel, and

3) If it is not something you do regularly, you are best advised to send it to a repair pro.

Syd

Thank you, Syd.

I don't think a skyline would be much harder than an ordinary lever fill....

What makes it tricky is the brittleness of Skyline plastics. If you're careful, patient, and slow, you should be fine. If you try to rush things, it's easy to end up with a broken Skyline.

...I should have gone a-readin' before I rather quickly restored one this morning.

Like a lot of folks, I watch eBay for good deals on serviceable classics. I don't really have a collection direction, and as such don't seek out certain pens and bid them up- the pens I've won on eBay are generally dirty, unrestored, little information, mislabeled, with decent nibs and usually have me as the only bidder. Very slow way to get these pens, but I'm after cheap serviceable pens that'll give me some experience repairing pens while building a small and diverse collection of vintage pens.

I won a Skyline, $10 shipped, with the usual vague description and bad photos. First, I was pretty bummed out because the pen wasn't all that dirty, everything was in working order, *and* the nib needed no adjustment. The sac was somewhat hardened, but still filled, though poorly. Dipped it and found that it was a stub! It's very snazzy. I ended up spending 20 minutes to clean it up and resac it, definitely ship shape.

I had no idea the plastic was fragile... I used a lot of force to take the section out with my hands. I guess it's a good thing I managed not to break it. And I took it out and put it back in a dozen times. The only thing wrong with it is the cap- perhaps it's shrinkage as discussed above, but it seems that the nib bumps up against the metal at the tip of the inner cap, or something else- I have to be pretty careful when putting the cap on, or keep the derby loose.

Are stub nibs on these puppies common? It sure writes nicely, that's for sure! Really quite a treat- very smooth. My first stub, even.

Regards,
Aaron

Another possibility is that the nib is not seated deeply enough in the section.

Dan

One of my Skylines has been a pain for me ever since I got it last February; it would always dry out - the nib was starving for ink, no matter what ink I used, even Skrip Blue.

About a week ago I realigned a balky Majestic that had previously been useless and got it working much better, which rebuilt my confidence for home pen repair projects. So on Saturday I pulled the nib & feed on this Skyline, reset them the way I thought they should go, and - voila! It now works "pretty good", as they say here in Minnesota.

Of course the plastic is old and fragile, just don't manhandle it and you'll be OK.