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Modern Red Hard Rubber


rhr

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Modern Red Hard Rubber.

 

Over on Zoss, Glenn Craig asked whether any brave new company is working on a modern red hard rubber. Well, the only things holding it back are economics, and in the US, the further complication of safety standards.

 

Let's start with the safety issues. David Broadwell is right on this point. The old red hard rubber formulas incorporated not only mercury in the form of the mineral vermillion, or cinnabar, but also minium, or red lead, and litharge, or yellow lead, and golden and scarlet antimony. All these heavy metals are highly regulated and restricted in the workplace today, and that makes the old formulations of yesterday impossible. ("The Red Violin" is another matter altogether, David, more an issue of shellac, or varnish.)

 

There are at least two companies in the US that could make red hard rubber, but they won't use these old colorants. Chris Thompson is working with one of these companies to try to develop a rhr rod stock, but this is exactly the problem that he has run up against. He has a darker shade of rhr, but not the desired brighter orange tint. Also, the developmental costs of experimenting with trying to achieve that brighter color are quite high, so if he does succeed, the rodstock won't be cheap.

 

There are also three European companies that make hard rubber, one in Germany, and two in Italy. The German company, New York-Hamburger Gummi-Waaren Compagnie, is based in Hamburg, and it's been in the trade since the 1870s.

 

http://www.museum-der-arbeit.de/Ausstellung/nyh.en.html

http://www.museum-der-arbeit.de/index.en.html

 

They also make the darker shade of rhr, but the minimum order is 1000 meters of rodstock, and that's the other problem. All pen repairmen could use a few meters at least, and pensmiths such as Paul Rossi and Michael Fultz could make use of a few dozen meters or more, and some small pen companies could utilize a few hundred meters. Perhaps we'll have to get together a red hard rubber cartel.

 

But that still doesn't solve the problem of the color. Some might want a darker shade to repair older pens, and others might want the orange shade more common in the 1920s, to repair Duofolds and Watermans and the like. It might not be possible to please everyone, and the cartel will fall apart.

 

There might be a solution, though. In 1992, "Pen World" published a series of articles by Bob Tefft on "Materials Used To Make Pens". In one of them, he gave the formula for the rhr used in the later hard rubber Parker Duofolds. The early Parker rhr contained the usual heavy metals, but the later rhr from the later Duofold era substituted a synthetic aniline dye called Vulcafor Orange. That's the secret of those glorious orange later hard rubber Duofolds. The dye goes under about 50 different trademarked names, depending upon which company makes it. These names include "Tiger Orange", "Pyrotone Red", "Pigment Scarlet", "Tanager Red", "Blazing Red", "Flaming Red", "Fast Orange", and "American vermilion", all commercial names for chlorparanitraniline red, otherwise known by the chemical names,

2 - Naphtalenol, 1 - ((2 - chloro - 4 - nitrophenyl) azo), and

1 - ((2 - Chloro - 4 - nitrophenyl) azo) - 2 – naphthol.

 

Perhaps someone can be persuaded to take it upon himself, or herself to get in touch with Anselmo Volonta, the Italian company producing hard rubber rodstock for fountain pens that Giovanni Abrate mentioned, to see whether a special formulation using Vulcafor Orange would be possible. Then it's just a matter of getting the cartel together.

 

Sincerely,

 

George.

 

:ph34r:

Edited by rhr

rhrpen(at)gmail.com

 

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George, I appreciate the wealth of information you are providing, and your ideas/suggestions.

 

Are any of these companies you mention the suppliers of the modern manufacturers that use(d) ebonite?

Some pens come to mind Waterman Liaison, and the PCA pen which come close to vintage red color.

Also Bexley Ebonite and Dani Trio's Toscas are similar but their red is "less than red" in their ripples.

 

Az

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Are any of these companies you mention the suppliers of the modern manufacturers that use(d) ebonite?

Antonios,

 

They must be. I don't know which rubber company is supplying which pen company, but there aren't many of these rubber companies left, so they must be the ones.

 

The Waterman Liaison rodstock is a very dark woodgrain. Bexley is the maker of the PCA pen, so they probably use the same supplier for their pens and the PCA pen. Some of the Conway Stewart woodgrain hard rubber is also a bit muddy. You used the word "ripple" in your post, but none of these modern rodstocks are true ripples in the traditional sense of Waterman's ripple. Calling all the reds in these mottles and woodgrains "less than red" is very generous of you. I would call all of them very disappointing.

 

George.

 

:ph34r:

rhrpen(at)gmail.com

 

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