Unexpected Find - Very Smooth Parker Vacumatic But Why ?

[cnnlim]

I was taking a short break with my wife in Kuala Lumpur last weekend and happen to be in a mall ( oh no, I forgot the name of the place, we were just passing by and decided to have lunch there ) where a weekend flea market was gong on.

 

To my surprise there was a small collection of vintage fountain pens on sale from various stores, and I picked up these two, at 2 different stores. I read a lot about Parker Vacumatics but this is the first time I physically get my hands on one.

 

With my limited knowledge, I believe these are Major and Debutante respectively. The smaller Debutante needs a new diaphragm, which I will work on that later. The larger Major works fine, it is drawing ink well and it writes fantastic !!!!!

 

Now it start puzzling me, what make it writes soooooooo smooth ??? No doubt it is the smoothest nib I had ever experienced since I started with FP once again 10 years ago.

 

Here are some facts about this pen :

- Inked up with Private Reserve Daphne Blue

- It has a fine nib, quite wet

- Overall the pen is very light, and smaller than all other modern pens I have.

- The nib is a little springy, but by no mean flex.

 

I have quite a number of pens in my collection, among them these are some of the very smooth ones which I am comparing against :

- Sailor PG with a M nib

- Montblanc 146 M nib

- Montblanc 144 M nib

- Parker 51 F nib - very smooth but it has a particular sweet spot that I need to hit to get that smoothness.

 

All the nibs are properly aligned to my best ability, and I can't tell any major differences between them when I check under magnifying glass. My question now is what make this Vacumatic stands out among the rest, it just feels so smooth regardless of the writing angle and there isn't a particular sweet spot that I need to hit to get that smoothness.

 

By no means any of the other pens bothers me in terms of smoothness, all of them write very nicely and I have no complain at all. It is just that I couldn't figure out what make this Vacumatic so special. I will do some further research on this but would appreciate if anyone can share some idea of what could be going on here.

 

 

[dcwaites]

Many Parker pens were used regularly over many years by their owners. That usage has smoothed the nib to the point that you have today in your hand.

 

I have one nib where the owner has actually written a flat spot on the nib. Fortunately, where I and the previous owner hold the pen match, so I can write comfortably with that nib.

[Buzz_130]

Very nice find, and the bottom picture shows a sticker still on the cap. The vacs are great pens. The light weight, perfect diameter, balanced feel, and vintage nibs make each one in my collection an excellent writer.

 

There's likely no particular design or engineering difference in your vac nib; you bought a great pen.

 

Buzz

[Bo Bo Olson]

Posted Standard sized, or medium-large pens had to have great balance and at the time the newest guts to be up to date. Pens with less than great balance didn't get bought.

 

IMO out side the Snorkel a thin, long pen and the Waterman 52, all the Large pens I own.....Safari, Lamy Persona, Large 146 (my '50's medium-long 146 has better balance), MB Woolf and a couple of others lack balance, they are under balanced non-posted, and over balanced posted.

 

What gets my goat, is those who for religious refuse to post a standard sized pen, and then complain that a Standard pen is too small. Of course it is, it's made to be perfectly balanced POSTED! Otherwise it could not have competed with the Sheaffer New Balance or the then great Conklin, or US Waterman, or Eversharp pens.

 

I have a '38 vac with a '36 Canadian made BB stub nib, that is a well balanced pen....and pretty too.

 

Often vintage pens have sat for a generation or two in the back of a drawer, so have micro-corrosion/ 'iridium' rust or drag on the tipping. A light smoothing brings that good and smooth a step under butter smooth. (I'm mostly happy to smooth mine to 'just' good and smooth...first it takes less time and second, it gives me that slight taste of touch....and don't slide off slippery paper.....helps to be a tad lazy too. )

 

It is good possible that your smooth pen was used often enough since it was made that it never 'rusted'. Having a working diaphram would indicate that, in rubber then seldom lasted more than 30-40 years.....and much less in India....depending I would guess where exactly you are and the climate there.

(Unfortunately, it appears modern rubber sacks are made much less well than the old White Company. I did have a rubber sack Estie that was from the lever shape, 60-62 years old before it died........I'm not at all sure, but think the attempt to re-start the old White Company some 5-7 years ago, failed; so rubber sacks may now come from China; because folks are talking about re-sacking every few years, instead of every few decades.)

 

One of the reasons that Eye Droppers stayed popular in India when it lost out to the Sheaffer rubber sack lever pen in 1912, had to be the often tropical climate of parts of India, which is bad on rubber sacks....even the old White or what ever English company made rubber sacks.

Edited August 13, 2016 by Bo Bo Olson

[cnnlim]

Many Parker pens were used regularly over many years by their owners. That usage has smoothed the nib to the point that you have today in your hand.

 

I have one nib where the owner has actually written a flat spot on the nib. Fortunately, where I and the previous owner hold the pen match, so I can write comfortably with that nib.

 

I think that make sense. I had a Pilot that I used exclusively during my school days and it became so smooth at the end. That is the smoothest nib as far as I can remember, but again I might be bias and I don't have it anymore for comparison.

[penmanila]

i'd put this down to sheer luck--congrats! i collect vacs (i stopped at about 100 of them and have since sold 30) and very few of them wrote that smoothly right out of the box, so to speak (because there was most often no box). many if not most vacs come with stiff fine points, which tends to make smoothness an issue.

[Parker51]

Actually, my conjecture is the opposite of some of the others, if the pen you are mentioning as very smooth is the one that is stickered, then the likely reason is it is simply unused! Yes, it is possible to come upon a new old stock Vacumatic despite it initially being sent to a retailer over 75 years ago. I actually own a couple that my grandfather received as gifts and never used. They are extreemely smooth, with nibs as nice as any new Pilot 823.

Edited August 14, 2016 by Parker51

[tamiya]

I was taking a short

Now it start puzzling me, what make it writes soooooooo smooth ??? No doubt it is the smoothest nib I had ever experienced since I started with FP once again 10 years ago.

 

....

 

All the nibs are properly aligned to my best ability, and I can't tell any major differences between them when I check under magnifying glass. My question now is what make this Vacumatic stands out among the rest, it just feels so smooth regardless of the writing angle and there isn't a particular sweet spot that I need to hit to get that smoothness.

 

By no means any of the other pens bothers me in terms of smoothness, all of them write very nicely and I have no complain at all. It is just that I couldn't figure out what make this Vacumatic so special. I will do some further research on this but would appreciate if anyone can share some idea of what could be going on here.

 

Gold nib, generous blob of hard tipping, polished by years of proper use... can't manufacture that in a modern factory! also big generous ink feed with ink reservoir not far away, it's never stingy

 

I still have most of my favourite Sheaffer/Pilot/Parker pens from KL school days and yup, today they're still smooth-as today as I remember back when filling innumerous exercise books. Don't remember them ever needing "running in" or perhaps our excercise book paper was pretty rough?

 

Occasionally (eg bored, killing time in dept store) bought some FPs mostly Parkers into the 1990s & 2000s - most were still made pretty nicely smooth & wet... Vectors being an exception, had a few of those and they always wrote dry. These FPs didn't see as much use (uni notetaking << Asian school homework) but they still write nice out of the box back then.

 

Fast forward to today... dunno but every new Parker I've tried in recent years, never felt good enough to buy they all feel stiff & scratchy? YMMV I'm just not gunna spend $200+ on a new Sonnet that I gotta do work on to get it writing sweet.

 

Guess that's the curse of getting into pen tuning hobby... I know I can fix it, but I'm not buying an expensive pen to fiddle with plus I've got my oldies to compare against.

 

Ain't much newies out there that feel like them old Vacs, whatever the price!

 

Can't think of any tbh... MontBlancs aren't soft, Viscontis bit softer but don't flex the same.

[tamiya]

i'd put this down to sheer luck--congrats! i collect vacs (i stopped at about 100 of them and have since sold 30)

did you grow up in Manila?

 

Were most of your Vacs acquired in USA or Asia?

 

Just curious how popular or common Vacs were in Asia back when they were new... definitely Parker was a fancy aspirational marque BiTD, then again anything imported from US/UK/Europe never was cheap.

[Tweel]

It is good possible that your smooth pen was used often enough since it was made that it never 'rusted'. Having a working diaphram would indicate that...

 

(Unfortunately, it appears modern rubber sacks are made much less well than the old White Company. I did have a rubber sack Estie that was from the lever shape, 60-62 years old before it died........I'm not at all sure, but think the attempt to re-start the old White Company some 5-7 years ago, failed; so rubber sacks may now come from China; because folks are talking about re-sacking every few years, instead of every few decades.)

 

If it's the original diaphragm, I'd take that as an indication that the pen was never used, or very little and perhaps not for some time -- little air exchange occurring in the reservoir, so slowing oxidation, and no leaching of rubber stabilizers, etc. into ink. I also wonder, like Parker51 above, whether that's why the tipping is so smooth (no wear).

 

Regarding the sac manufacturer, the rebirth of White Rubber's operation as The Pen Sac Company actually occurred about 30 years ago rather than 5 to 7, they remain a going concern, and as far as I know are still the major source of sacs. I sometimes wonder whether the decreasing life of rubber in recent years (whether pen sacs or, for example, rubber bands) is due to the increasing level of ozone pollution in the troposphere.

[penmanila]

i grew up in manila and i did pick up a few vacs here NOS, but most of them were acquired in the US (where i did my grad studies in the late 1980s) and, of course, on ebay. i've also found vacs in vietnam, in china, singapore, etc. i'm sure they were all over asia, being fairly common pens in their time, and wherever there was a colonial bureaucracy you were likely to have a lot of imported pens.

 

 

did you grow up in Manila?

Were most of your Vacs acquired in USA or Asia?

Just curious how popular or common Vacs were in Asia back when they were new... definitely Parker was a fancy aspirational marque BiTD, then again anything imported from US/UK/Europe never was cheap.

Edited August 14, 2016 by penmanila

[tamiya]

i grew up in manila and i did pick up a few vacs here NOS, but most of them were acquired in the US (where i did my grad studies in the late 1980s) and, of course, on ebay. i've also found vacs in vietnam, in china, singapore, etc.--i'm sure they were all over asia, being fairly common pens in their time, and wherever there was a colonial bureaucracy you were likely to have a lot of imported pens.

 

ahh thanks for the confo!

 

yeah I vaguely remember Grandfather writing with something striated back in the 1970s but no such artefact has yet to be unearthed after their house/s got cleared in the 1980s - only got later pens. Always wondered if it could've been a Vac... and if he had thrown it out himself.

 

I'd happily swap his old Vac for the pile of 1950s Lego bricks we found instead!

(they're celluloid... and warped)

 

Sadly few EDC pens were considered heirlooms back then, eh? 20:20 hindsight

[Bo Bo Olson]

Tweel, glad to know that.......so I will stop passing on false info I had received...here on the com.

[Tweel]

Thanks, Bo Bo, I'm glad if I contributed a useful bit of info.

[zwack]

http://www.pensacs.com/index.html

 

according to their history page they started in 1986 and "now, ten years later" So they haven't updated that page since 1996. Given that the website is still there it seems likely that they are still going.

[cnnlim]

Yes, the smooth one is the one with a sticker still on the cap. I dip tested the other smaller pen and that one is not as smooth.

 

It has ink residual in it when I got it. The barrel looks clean, but I don't really think it is new.

 

I can't really tell how much usage it had gone through, I am attaching some pictures of the nib and perhaps someone can tell.

 

 

[penmanila]

thanks for the pics. i still think it's a lucky find. i do have a few vacs that i got mint and stickered, and while their nibs were okay, i wouldn't call them super-smooth in the way that some of my other pens are. but at any rate, you found a good one, so hey, cheers!

[rwilsonedn]

I guess there are a couple of possibilities. One is simply that Parker over the years has made some excellent nibs--especially back in the days when the high-end nibs were probably all hand-finished. If you happened to get a nib from a really skilled finisher on a really good day, it could be a thing of wonder.

Another possibility is that the pen spent time with a nibmeister before it came to you, and received individual attention. This seems quite possible if the pen is still in working order and clean.

ron.

[cnnlim]

Fountain pen usage is not common in the part of the world I am in. My guess is finding such an old pen that was tuned by a nibmeister here is highly unlikely.

 

Anyway, I have been enjoying this pen.

 

Most likely I am going to order some nib smoothing tools and start trying on my other cheaper pens. Lets see whether I can make it close to this one.

[tamiya]

Fountain pen usage is not common in the part of the world I am in.

Definitely not today & I dunno about JB, but up in KL as far as I'm told FPs were introduced by the "matsalleh" Brits during their occupancy in 1930s, 40s, 50s... amongst their other gizmos & gadgets

 

FPs were for writing English/roman, the literate Chinese wrote with brushes & ink sticks. Schools used pencils & older students got dip pens with inkwells... even into the 1970s we sat at old school desks with inkwell spots still.

 

Ballpoints only appeared in the late 60s with Reynolds & Kilometrico leading the populist charge but they weren't necessarily cheap compared to the cheap China FPs like Heros that were sold in KL by then at a fraction of price of UK/US inks & pens.

 

Most likely I am going to order some nib smoothing tools and start trying on my other cheaper pens. Lets see whether I can make it close to this one.

It's a steep slippery slope I'll be waving from the bottom of this deep well...