Why Do We Do It?

[Cryptos]

• Disassembling pens
• Re-aligning tines
• Altering ink flow
• Creating frankenpens
• Grinding nibs into different shapes
• Smoothing nibs
• Restoring filling systems

 

These are just some of the activities we in the "pen club" get up to these days.

 

However, a question popped into my mind while considering this: are we radically different from those who grew up in the golden years of the fountain pen?

 

Perhaps I am not old enough to remember with sufficient clarity or accuracy, but I do not recall people doing these things themselves. Of course, my formative fountain pen years were the 1970s, so the use of our beloved instruments was already in serious decline. I don't think there was much emphasis or focus on the pen in my youth. It was simply a tool that got used. Perhaps there is a tempero-cultural element to this.

 

Does anyone know what people in the early 20th century would have done with a poorly functioning pen?

[BlueJ]

I presume they would send it to a specialist to repair, or back to the original manufacturer. I don't know if there were nibmeisters per se, but probably a watchmaker or stationery shop owner could work on a pen, and the manufacturers would provide top-notch service. All this was less expensive in relative terms in the past too, I would think.

 

The trend to obsessive hobbies enabled by the Internet is also a recent development. It was harder to learn how to DYI (Do It Yourself) before that.

[DrDebG]

I do think, however, that while DYI instructions were not as widespread pre-internet era, people went to the library to research issues. In particular, if someone wanted to know about how to "fix" their fountain pen, I can imagine that they would ask friends, family, acquaintenances since everyone used fountain pens predominantly.

 

When I learned to write in the 1960's, we didn't use fountain pens. We used these very strange looking ball point pens. At that time, fountain pens were for adults. I didn't get my first fountain pen until I bought it when I was in high school. So, when my first fountain pen (an inexpensive Sheaffer) had issues, I didn't know any better but to throw it away. It hasn't been until the last few years that I have learned more about fountain pen maintenance. And I haven't even started down the road of adjusting nib tines or
nib grinding . . . yet. On my inexpensive Chinese pens, I have swapped out nibs and adjusted feeds, etc. But I am sure that at some time, I will delve into all of it.

 

Hey, I'm growing and learning. I just mixed my first ink today!

[jar]

Of your list I only do maybe one or two of the items.

[OCArt]

I am a "fan" of Parker 45 pens and own half a dozen. Of those three have had their tines widened by some previous owner-- so at least this modification was common.

[Runnin_Ute]

I have done two or three on or list. Of course to replace a sac you have to disassemble. So that is two right there. Something I may get to do it again soon, as I just won an auction for another Estie....

 

How frequently did owners in the Golden Age of pens do their own work? Probably not frequently. Depending on need and if they had a backup and a local pen shop.

Edited April 30, 2016 by Runnin_Ute

[ISW_Kaputnik]

I wonder if many people "back then" simply weren't as picky as we tend to be. And by "we", I mean the sort of people who are interested enough to haunt a hobbyist forum. Minor scratchiness and somewhat inconsistent flow may have been tolerable for some, particularly if they didn't write that much anyway and had saved money by buying what we now call a "third tier" brand. If they did write a lot, and had spent the money on a higher end pen, then they could probably get the shop owner to tune it for them.

 

I've learned to tinker with pens largely because I became interested in vintage pens, and restoring them myself is cheaper than sending them out. I've gotten the professionals to work on them where I didn't feel confident enough; my only reground nib was done by someone else, and he did a good job. I've done minor tweaks on the nibs of some of my new pens, but if they don't work pretty well right out of the box, I expect the seller or manufacturer to take care of it for me.

 

I can imagine myself in the 1940s figuring that getting a new sac in my Dad's old pen from the teens would be cheaper than buying a whole new pen. But I have no idea how common this sort of thing was. I wasn't alive in the forties, and my dad wasn't alive in the teens.

Edited April 30, 2016 by ISW_Kaputnik

[catbert]

I guess quite a few poorly functioning pens of the early 20th century languished in desk drawers awaiting the invention of eBay.

 

My route back into all this was reacquiring some of my formative fountain pens from the 1970s. The greater appreciation I now have for my writing instruments is reflected in the fact that I no longer chew them, and sometimes even clean them. Still not much of a tinkerer, though.

 

Of your list I only do maybe one or two of the items.

 

Same here.

[Goudy]

How frequently did owners in the Golden Age of pens do their own work? Probably not frequently. Depending on need and if they had a backup and a local pen shop.

 

A lot of pens back then were sold with "unconditional" and "lifetime" guarantees, so trying to repair it yourself would be as reckless as trying to fix your iPhone while it was still under AppleCare.

 

I'm particularly impressed by John Holland's guarantee that you can drop their pens nib down from a height of six feet without damage:

 

http://i.imgur.com/hXrQ8jK.jpg

[ScienceChick]

I've done all but creating frankenpens and my answer to "why?" Is because it's fun and satisfying to fix something yourself. Well, most of the time anyway.

[sakayume]

I would think that if one had bought the pen (new) and it came with a guarantee, that one would simply send it back to the store or manufacturer for fixing. Just as if one were to buy a new, modern pen nowadays. Also, I would think it would have been easier to find an "expert" to work on any needed repairs when pens were sold at every corner store and such.

[Buzz_130]

I only do two or three things on your list, and I find myself doing them because we have few places left to do them for us. In the Golden Age, I can imagine that getting warranty service, repairs, or modifications was relatively easy.

 

Today, the niche of fountain pen users and collectors and rapidly exchange information. Meet as a group for pen clubs and shows, and you can learn a great deal.

 

But how many post have you read that people don't want to buy a used pen because they want the warranty of a new pen?

 

Buzz

[zwack]

As a counterpoint to that last comment...

cars... it is not hard to get your car serviced or repaired these days. information and parts for most repairs are readily available. Yet some people will buy a brand new car even though driving it off the lot causes about 1/3 of the value to vanish. People will pay for an oil change that they could do in five minutes.

 

Yet some people buy new cars pay for servicing and just use them. Others buy older cars and do the work themselves. which group is right?

 

Personally I have a mix of old and new pens and they are all slightly different.

[Cryptos]

I guess what I was really wondering about was whether perceptions of fountain pens had changed, and what may have driven that change if it has.

 

In the old days was a fountain pen just a tool that was not given much thought? Is it the dwindled number of repair specialists that has led people into DYI restorations. Or is that the pen, among the majority of us who use them, is not just a tool any longer but an object of interest in it's own right?

 

Obviously my questions spring from my own biases, but I thought is interesting enough to ask.

[zwack]

I use them as a tool,...

 

but I enjoy using them, a good tool is worth having. A new chisel might come off the line perfectly formed and do the job well, an old chisel might have been hand made, repaired several times, but still do the same job just as well. It might be better made more comfortable in your hand or have a personal emotional bond that a new chisel doesn't.

 

Oh and some people collect tools. :-)

[corgicoupe]

I think your 2nd paragraph may hold the key. When I was a kid in the 1940s, my dad would work on his car to keep it running. When I got my 1st car in the 1950s, I worked on it to make it a little different (remove the chrome), or a little louder (dual exhausts), or a little faster (carburetion, lifters, dual exhausrs, etc.). Now folks do the same with their pens (you insert the mods).

[Ink Stained Wretch]

As others have pointed out, you could get the fountain pen repaired by experts in that field back in the old days. There wasn't much of a need to be a tinkerer with your fountain pen.

 

I think that a relevant factor in this is that when people were buying fountain pens to use, in the first half of the 20^th Century especially, the pens tended to work properly right out of the box. There's significantly less of that happening today. Some people spend a bundle on a fountain pen and use it only as pocket jewelry.

 

There is also a significant difference, IMO, between ordinary users of fountain pens in the first half of the 20^th Century and we folks here on FPN. We are really paying attention to our fountain pens. Back in the period we're talking about they were just used. People were not obsessing about flex so much, and a lot of people were not all that concerned with what ink they used. In fact it was a known thing for people to go to banks or Post Offices to fill their fountain pens with whatever ink those institutions had available for the dip pens they made publicly available, on chains, for their customers to use in filling out forms and writing addresses, etc. Refillers at the public ink trough are not in a position to be choosy about their ink. That is a very different mindset from that which FPN members have toward nibs and inks.

 

So "we" on FPN are definitely different from the vast majority of the fountain pen users who were operating in the first half of the 20^th Century, We are doing very different things. And some of us feel we have to become tinkerers with the pens in order to enjoy them to the fullest. I bet that most people buying fountain pens during the period in question were not buying the pens with the anticipation of getting real enjoyment out of them. But that is exactly what most of us here on FPN are doing.

 

[sidthecat]

There were probably more craftsmen who repaired pens back in the day. Jewelers probably did pen work.