Hi my Waterman loving friends:

So, my newest purchase arrived in the mail today: a Waterman C/f matching fountain pen and ballpoint pen set. As I didn't have a C/f yet, I was quite excited to write with this pen and see if I liked it. I do, although it is more slender than the pens to which I've grown accustomed. I bought this for a song on ebay, so that was fairly exciting as well. I also found, as a result of searching through some old posts here, that one of my refills for my Must de Cartier ballpoint pen would fit the C/f ballpoint. It fit like a glove. Fantastic.

However, the real excitement arrived when I started investigating the pen box in which the two pens were housed. It's the original box, and I fully expected to find all the cartridges missing. Well, I was quite mistaken. Not only are all the original cartridges there (all eight of them!!!), seven(!!) of them are actually still full of ink. One was empty and completely clean. I tell you, it was like opening presents on Christmas morning. Wow. I'm still in shock as a matter of fact. Not only that, but these cartridges are quite easy to refill with a syringe. I took the empty one and filled it with my Noodler's Bulletproof Hunter Green, which I've been wanting to try for a couple of weeks. Exquisitely smooth writer, with a 14 k nib that actually has a bit of flex to it. Surprising, I must admit.

At any rate, I simply wanted to share my joy with you.

Todd

Take out your credit card, call 1-800-BEST-PEN, and touch 0 when the long spiel about sending a pen for repair starts. The person who answers may well be Mary Bouffard, who runs the Waterman service center in Janesville, Wisconsin. Purchase a couple of converters for your C/F -- they're the same one that fits the Waterman Lady. At $11.50 each, they're a bargain, and they're so much easier to use than carts and a syringe.

Thanks Richard!

I do have to admit, though, that I would rather refill a cartridge 100 times over with a syringe than use a converter even once. I must be the only Waterman fountain pen lover alive who despises that *&^%# converter. I have made more and bigger messes with just one fill of that monster than all the cartridge refills put together.

Picture this scenario: I thought the converter was in tight, but I must have pulled it off when I was unscrewing and screwing the mechanism. So, instead of pushing the 3/4 full converter of ink back into the bottle, in hopes of getting a better pull on the ink, I pushed the ink out of the converter onto the pen, my hands, the table, and anything else in the general vicinity. I think even the dog had a bit of ink on him. Unfortunately, I had been watching the nib in the ink bottle and not the converter.

I much prefer refilling my cartridges with the syringe. Simple and precise. Even better are the vintage waterman pens with the sacs permanently glued into place. I love those. No mess. Very little cleanup. Just pure, clean, fountain pen ink fun.

Todd

The C/F converter is a press-bar affair, with a reasonably grippy, rubbery interface with the nipple. No fear of a similar catastrophe. It's not quite lever filling, but it's pretty close.