Mauve Striped Casein Cs Dinkie 540

[PaulS]

posting partly because it's an interesting colour - much different to the usual run of CS marbles, swirls and plain colours - and partly as I've spent two days gluing it back together, so showing off my not-so-good repair skills.

Appears to be a casein pen from c. early 1930s in a colourway which according to Jonathan Donahaye's web site looks to be dark and light mauve stripes - length is about 95 mm.

It resisted the hair dryer and section pliers so I used two pairs of section pliers, and suddenly owned a pen in about fifteen pieces, and spent the past couple of days with the araldite. At least the repair meant having to sand the entire surface then polish, so opportunity to see the pen more as it might have looked eighty odd years ago.

[cleosmama]

Thank you for sharing that. It's a lovely color.

[PaulS]

hi - thanks for the compliments - in fact looking at my pix above have suddenly realized I've overdone the colour adjustment on my Picasa editing - the colour now appears blue, and in the flesh it's most definitely mauve. If I get the time I'll take some more pix and try to get the colour right before posting.

Took the first pix under a sort of strip lighting, so possible daylight might be better.

[mallymal1]

That's a pretty pen, Paul. What a shame about the mishap.

 

Can you read the inscription?

[PaulS]

Hi Malcolm - I wrote down the barrel imprint before the damage occurred. Good job I did as the imprint has now disappeared completely.

It read.......

DINKIE No. 540

Conway Stewart London

MADE IN ENGLAND

 

I could have sworn that the 'd' in London was missing the up-stroke - it looked like an 'a' - probably just a poor moulding imprint.

[northlodge]

I really admire your determination to remedy your error.

 

I am sure we have all suffered from a similar misjudgement, I certainly have a large box of bits to demonstrate my membership to the club. And yes they remain "bits".

 

The colourway is interesting. I have only seen similar once, and that was on an unusual (full size) Curzon. Perhaps availability to the UK pen industry was fleeting.

[PaulS]

among the many difficulties when making this sort of extreme repair, is that of unwanted thickness of glue build up as the reconstruction progresses. Sticking together two or three pieces isn't a problem, but when this becomes a dozen or more - some of which might only be 3 - 4 mm is size - then the adhesive starts to make a real difference and can add excess to the original size. Of course, the entire thing can't be rebuilt in one hit - it has to be done in sever stages, so by the time you get down to the last small bit there isn't the space left for it.

So the last piece had to be reduced in size by a lot, but eventually went in. The whole thing just annoyed me because of my own stupidity in rushing and not having patience, and now the pen is minus any value, but it only cost £10 in the first place and can at least stay in the cabinet and almost look good