Early solid red dollar pen. Look at the lever and the cap ring close to the cap lips.
The guys at the shop had not yet mastered the injection molding process. The lengthwise crack looks like a weld line.
Also look at the differential shrinkage of the plastic under the cap and at the joint between barrel and section.
Anyway soon the Esterbrook engineers and floor shop people learned and started to produced some of the most robust plastics.
So this is a historically significant Esterbrook.

That's a cool one.

Cool! I like how you have it photo'd on The Book.

Great find. Thanks.

Neat. I wonder how quickly the plastic manifested these imperfections, seeing as they went with different materials.

Maybe that's because the pen is made of celluloid, rolled from sheet to form a tube.

Esterbrook did not begin to use injection-molded plastics until well after World War II, and the Dollar Pen had been discontinued for many years by then.

(pretending to be Daniel for a second - not that I have the wealth of info that he has - just the questioning style )

May I ask what is the source of the information re injection molding and Esterbrook?

Seriously, if you look at this plastic barrel close to section (second photo above) there is something that looks like a flow pattern from injection molding.
The pattern continues lighter along the barrel and the crack coincides with the pattern. If you imply that this is the helical layering of the sheet - I doubt it. The angle of the crack is too steep for this. Usually in these cases the helical layering leaves clear, discernible helical marks, which are absent in this pen.

I think that this pen was made by rolling the celluloid, too. Little too early for injection molding, figuring this was mid to late 30's, a new and expensive process.

I would have to say, what's the source for injection molding, but hey, that game is soooo old to all of us.

I really think this was either rolled and seamed with solvent, or even sorta screw extruded/welded, maybe explaining why the seam seems to spiral around the pen sorta.

Just a guess. No Esterbrook documentation to back it up. I might be able to get you the matching pencil, needing a clip, and having a matching crack to compliment the pen.

It is ubercool, nonetheless, great find.

Hi Rick, I would love to have the cracked pencil - please PM me backchannel.

Screw extruded tube and end welded is indeed possible. But I don't recall welding signs on the barrel top. I better find the pen to double check (not an easy task), but I know what you mean. Rolled and solvent sealed, I doubt it. As I mentioned above the angle does not make sense. It is interesting that the transitionals show signs of some kind of welding on the top of the barrel but the Relief 66 whose colors are close to the solid color dollar pens have no signs of tube welding - it almost looks like a solid piece. Now, where the heck is the pen.

Pen models. The J series was Esterbrook's bread and butter well into the 1950s. It was celluloid. Hoban has a gap covering most of the early '50s, but that gap ends with the Icicle in 1956, and the Icicle is still celluloid despite its cheaper construction. In '57, according to Hoban, a sacless plunger filler appeared, and that pen is polystyrene. Hoban notes specifically that the barrel looks cheap. Hoban doesn't list a date for the introduction of the H and CH (purse pens), but they were the first that were made of a non-celluloid material, and they didn't appear until after the J gained its second jewel in 1948. (There were never single-jewel purse pens, and their introduction is commonly dated to c. 1950.)

Hmm. . . Interesting debate - pen history vs. polymer expert (for those not familiar, Antonios is an engineering professor whose specialty is polymers).

One wonders if this pen represents a trial process that did not work out. The fact that it is similar to the early reliefs, but not so similar to the later J series and dollar pens - and a solid color. Perhaps it represented an attempt to use injection-molded celluloid and found it didn't work so well for this size and shape - so they switched to the more successful rolled celluloid.

Keep in mind that injection-molding of celluloid was developed in 1865 for making billiard balls, but the process did not provide the consistancy that the later screw-injection molding (1940s) would have.

Speculation, certainly, but I wouldn't discount Antionios material expertise on this.

John

John - thanks but I am an ivory tower man. We are known not to able to see further than our noses

Richard you were not very careful when you read Hoban. You need to go back and do your homework
The injection molding theory is not my idea. It is exactly what Hoban says in the book (see the photo above - the background is ... Hoban's book or see below) - as speculation.

It is clear that injection molding existed in the 1930 (even earlier). In the 30s injection molding was becoming popular (i.e. was not common).
But I am ready to accept the possible alternative that Rick suggested this was extruded as tube and then solvent welded at the end with a plug.
This would explain the spiral form of the crack.

BTW here is what Hoban says in his book.