Wartime Parker Vacumatic Single Jewel - Emerald Pearl

[Honeybadgers]

I believe this to be a major, let me know if I'm incorrect

 

I got this pen for my birthday from my mother. She found a vacumatic for about $80 on ebay in what looked to be great condition, with a flex nib.

 

It was definitely misrepresented in some ways. The seller must have used different pictures, because the nib and feed were both quite damaged. The nib had bent tines and had two hairline cracks in the breather hole, and the feed had broken fins. But the price was honestly low enough that I was not upset at all. Because this is by far my favorite looking pen material - stacked celluloid.

 

My love for this material started with seeing the Visconti Divina Metro in green celluloid. I bought one as my first grail pen, and wound up sending it back to visconti because it didn't write properly and ink was getting trapped in between the metal sleeve in the grip and the celluloid, causing nasty discoloration. The replacement wrote properly but the design flaw in the grip was insurmountable. It was never going to be usable. I will definitely miss those sterling silver strips.

 

I started looking around for other pens with stacked celluloid, and realized that old vacumatics seemed to be the only other pens to ever do this staggeringly gorgeous material. Held on end it truly looks like a new york skyscraper, and if I could make all my pens into this material, I would. So I was determined to make it into a usable pen.

 

I reached out to nibs.com as my first stop, and Michael was incredibly helpful. He said that he couldn't repair the nib as it would simply crack again when flexed, nor did he have any replacement feeds, but he pointed me towards Joel Hamilton, who is an amazing person. I sent him the feed and section, and he sent me back two, one meant for a superflex in case I wanted a firehose, for the same price.

 

I kept looking for a nib repairer and found Greg Minuskin. Greg's a damned great guy, and told me about his fancy laser welder that could repair the cracks and keep the pen usable. I sent him the nib, and he not only straightened it and fixed the cracks, but hand-chased the parker arrow to keep it looking correct, for what I consider a really reasonable price of about $140. If you haven't checked out Greg's site, definitely do so, as he also sells fully restored pens for unbelievable deals (I am also the proud owner of a spencerian ground needlepoint eversharp a-la greg, at a price I'd have never believed)

 

I struggled a lot with getting the nib and feed in the section, wound up making a knockout block from a piece of wood and an pair of pliers with rubber tubing, a heat gun and dish soap, but I got it together and she writes amazingly. The pen's got a nice patina, good clarity in the barrel, the cap and blind cap are both correct and match, and will be a daily writer through med school and beyond. Definitely not going to see field use as a medic, that's the lamy 2000's job, but it really doesn't feel fragile whatsoever. Absolutely able to be used in a daily capacity (though for me, "at work" sometimes involves wrestling crazy people and getting punched right in the breast pocket)

 

The nib is a thing of wonder. It's soft, with excellent snapback, a proper western F that's buttery smooth with almost no feedback that flexes to a BB without feeling stressed at all. I really don't know why modern pens aren't this soft anymore. It's still eminently usable for everyday printing. The feed is very wet and keeps up with the pen perfectly, really shows off the sheen of what I consider the perfect ink match - Sailor Tokiwa Matsu, a dark forest green with heavy red sheen. Maybe not a great nib/feed for the super wet inks that don't behave well

 

Weight is very light, about the same as a Lamy safari. Dimensions wise, I'd say it's broadly similar in the hand (sans the front-heavy feel) to the lamy 2000. Writes well posted or not, posts deeply and securely.

 

I've had it inked for a couple weeks at a time and no dryout issues whatsoever, even when unused for 3 or 4 days.

 

From a writing perspective, I still think my Schaeffer statesman snorkel is a better writer to my preferences (despite being a nail) as a vintage pen, but this thing is really, REALLY special, particularly down to the material. If you want a Visconti Divina or wall street but don't want to drop $700, this gets you there and then some. I think I may prefer the lockdown or speedline fillers as they were metal, and the plastic plunger feels like it may break if I ever accidentally drop it while it's off for cleaning or being inked, but this pen is really something and worth seeking out. Properly restored, these vintage pens are every bit as good as any modern pen. Honestly, of my 5 or 6 vintage pens, they ALL write better than my lamy 2000 or visconti homo sapiens did out of the box.

 

 

 

[mitto]

Beautiful pen. Thanks for sharing the story of bringing it back to life. I love Vacumatics. I love vintage parkers. Especially the Vacumatics and the 51s.

[penmanila]

nice pen and good story, congrats. don;t worry about the plastic filler--it's much stronger than you think vacs grow on you (i should know, having had over a hundred of them at some point).