Vintage Waterman Ideal

[sodul]

This fountain pen belonged to my grandfather and my mom gave it to me when I last traveled back to France. It is still int he original box with the matching pencil version.

 

I was not able to fit my converters or other cartridges I had laying around. At some point I cut off a bit of a cartridge in the hope to make a fit, but I ended up with a very leaky pen. It looks like it could be converted to an eye dropper, but the risk of getting ink everywhere is preventing to even entertain the idea. I would hate to ruin the box as well.

 

It is a very fine nib, even finer than my Pilot MR Fine and has a little flex to it but not that much and does require some pressure, less than my JinHaos, but some. The feed is not in a great shape and is missing a few ribs, I do not know if/how this affects performance, but the pen writes well as a dipper, a little scratchy and grabby for a daily writer unfortunately. I'm not willing to work on that nib just yet, maybe in a few years when I get the confidence to not ruin it it just by polishing it. I was expecting a nib marked as "18 Cts" to be a lot softer but I know nothing about gold nibs. The pen caps are marked "DOUBLE OR LAMINE" or "double gold laminated". My mom will be disappointed that they are not pure gold as she believed.

If you can help me identify the exact model and year for this set, it would be great, thanks!

 

 

[Left FPN]

The FP looks like a Taperite.

[sodul]

Aren't the Taperite Parker 51 inspired and feature a hooded nib? Per http://www.richardspens.com/?page=ref/profiles/taperite.htm but this page led me to look for the Crusader.

 

I did find other pens matching closely, although mine is made in France. So most likely this is a french Crusader from the early 50s.

[Xof72000]

It's a french model (but sorry, I do not know its name...).

It uses glass cartridge refills.

[Left FPN]

The mid 40's to mid 50's saw a range of pens.

 

I am better on post 80's.

[sodul]

The closest match is definitely the rounded section version of the Crusader: http://dirck.delint.ca/beta/?page_id=3403

 

The dimensions are not an exact match, the nib is different, mine has ribs on the section and the cap is also different, but since nothing else come even close I guess that would be it. Apparently the production run was from 1946 to 1953, with late run models having screw on caps.

 

Are there modern converters that I can modify to work in the pen or should I look for glade cartridges? I assume that vintage glass cartridges would probably not seal properly anymore.