&%*$#ing Engraved Pens

[wspohn]

Ahh, erasing an engraved pen is like resorecting a dead man.

Music to my ears

 

 

Mostly not going to happen. The only way to remove engraving is to remove a layer fo the metal (or whatever) slightly deeper than the engraving. That almost inevitably leaves a flattened low spot that is particularly noticeable on something with a round form like a pen.

 

You can get away with removing initials on the ends of caps, for instance, and you might be able to remove them on the barrel, leaving a flattened cartouche area that used to be rounded, as long as it doesn't look too out of place, but that's as good as it gets.

[Procyon]

I am generally fine with engraved pens, especially if it is attractively done. Sometimes the engraving can be quite intriguing, also. Such as this pen I purchased from a Denver antique dealer, who had acquired it from a large estate in the local area. It's a ca. 1923 Parker Duofold Deluxe "Big Red" - a very expensive pen for the time. Here is a picture:

 

 

 

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1311/5164423695_a6854d0516_b.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a close-up of the signature. It appears to say "Molly Brown".

 

 

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4063/5165027822_9441216ec5_b.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whether this is indeed the pen of the "Unsinkable" Molly is open to question. The antique dealer had no proof, but he did think it probably belonged to her. She is certainly a legend in the Denver area. I don't know, but it is interesting to speculate.

[Dutchpen]

i always use pens with engravings for parts.

when the engraved part is made of sterling silver, i polish it away.

 

i bought a cross classic century ballpoint, brand new with ITH laser-engraved in cap, it is not noticeable anymore after polishing and the pen was only €10,-

[OcalaFlGuy]

Ahh, erasing an engraved pen is like resorecting a dead man.

Music to my ears

 

 

Mostly not going to happen. The only way to remove engraving is to remove a layer fo the metal (or whatever) slightly deeper than the engraving. That almost inevitably leaves a flattened low spot that is particularly noticeable on something with a round form like a pen.

 

You can get away with removing initials on the ends of caps, for instance, and you might be able to remove them on the barrel, leaving a flattened cartouche area that used to be rounded, as long as it doesn't look too out of place, but that's as good as it gets.

 

I will agree to the above for a metal bodied pen.

 

Not necessarily so with a plastic/celluloid one though. With those, I also think it makes a difference whether the name was heat embossed or actually engraved though I think even the later can be "erased" without substantially altering the surface. By the Pros anyway...

 

Bruce in Ocala, FL

[turban1]

:hmm1: Now I have to think of something incredible clever to have engraved on a pen as a message to all future owners......."I was here first", "take care of this pen or I will haunt you", "I'll be back for my pens", "This was supposed to be buried with me!", "I am watching you! :hmm1:

This was supposed to be buried with me ... I love that.

ron

 

Supposed to be buried with you, eh? Where do you buy a fire-resistant fountain pen?>

[turban1]

I consider them memento mori, things which keep me mindful of the fact that there were people here once who are no more, and one day I will be as they are.

 

what a splendid person you must be, Mister Bitterman! I hope that all fountain-pen users are somewhat like you, comfortable among your ghosts, at home with tradition, free from excessive ego and happy to be part of an historical continuum knowing that soon we depart this life and what we think that we own we merely retain for a few short years before it passes on to others.

 

i often feel the same, until i think of somebody having his moniker engraved. or tattooed on the family dog. then i buy an unmarked pen. but, honestly, i prefer your sage and civilised approach to life.

Edited January 7, 2011 by wimg
Language used

[Johnny Appleseed]

Ahh, erasing an engraved pen is like resorecting a dead man.

Music to my ears

 

 

Mostly not going to happen. The only way to remove engraving is to remove a layer fo the metal (or whatever) slightly deeper than the engraving. That almost inevitably leaves a flattened low spot that is particularly noticeable on something with a round form like a pen.

 

You can get away with removing initials on the ends of caps, for instance, and you might be able to remove them on the barrel, leaving a flattened cartouche area that used to be rounded, as long as it doesn't look too out of place, but that's as good as it gets.

 

I will agree to the above for a metal bodied pen.

 

Not necessarily so with a plastic/celluloid one though. With those, I also think it makes a difference whether the name was heat embossed or actually engraved though I think even the later can be "erased" without substantially altering the surface. By the Pros anyway...

 

Bruce in Ocala, FL

 

I have to agree with Bruce. There are a number of ways to remove engraving on non-metal pens, though some techniques are better than others.

 

For hard rubber/ebonite, many of the imprints are heat embossed, and can be removed by heating the pen to cause the compressed HR to expand. In fact, you sometimes see this when a worn HR pen has been heated inadvertantly or- in the course of restoration - the imprint relaxes to its original dimension, but the rest of the pen is substantially worn, causing

the imprint to become raised. Oh, and heating will also erase any factory imprints or chasing, unless care is taken to insure that only the area where the un-desired imprint is gets heated.

 

For celluloid, one needs to actually fill the imprint with a celluloid of the same color and pattern, disolved in an appropriate solvent, and then polish it down. Done right, the results are nearly indetectable. It is obviously much, much easier with a solid color than with, say, vacumatic stripes.

 

A less desireable method is to lathe down the entire pen body so that it all matches. However, that will also remove any factory imprints and leave the pen body thinner and weaker, so it isn't the best idea.

 

John

[OcalaFlGuy]

Heat lifting will also work on plastic/celluloid IF the "engraving" is actually heat embossed

and not a pure (removal of material) engraving.

 

It is a pretty touchy affair though. Any/all (stress inducing) springs like lever retaining rings

and j-bars should be removed before the heat lifting or when the barrel material is softened they

can deform the barrel. The line between what is needed to lift the indentation out and the one

where the barrel deforms is very, Very thin. (DAMHIK, IJK, OK? :embarrassed_smile: ) It also is advantageous to be able to Very Precisely focus/aim the heat right at what needs to be lifted and that's alot harder to do than it sounds.

 

The pros however are much more successful in doing this correctly instead of creating a barrel flambe. (Not speaking for Ron, but I would suspect this is one of his, "turn the radio off for" repair tasks... )

 

Not quite the same thing, but sorta, on the material fill in method. Farmboy (Todd Eberspacher) has done this with chipped Estie jewels which would be much deeper damage than an engraving. I believe he makes a paste out of powdered damaged jewel material and MEK and fills in the chips with that. The MEK evaporates and he then smooths out the newly added hardened plastic. I have seen the results, the repaired jewels are pristine.

 

Bruce in Ocala, FL

[FOX]

My pens are all engraved with the names of the pen manufacturers.

 

Is there really any pen that isn't engraved?

 

People only don't like a name engraved in a pen, if it is a name they don't know.

 

The name engraved in a pen doesn't always detract from the value, sometimes it can increase the value.

 

So they don't hate that the pen is engraved, they hate the person for being poor and unknown to them.

 

[riff raff]

I consider them memento mori, things which keep me mindful of the fact that there were people here once who are no more, and one day I will be as they are.

 

what a splendid person you must be, Mister Bitterman! I hope that all fountain-pen users are somewhat like you, comfortable among your ghosts, at home with tradition, free from excessive ego and happy to be part of an historical continuum knowing that soon we depart this life and what we think that we own we merely retain for a few short years before it passes on to others.

 

i often feel the same, until i think of somebody having his moniker engraved. or tattooed on the family dog. then i buy an unmarked pen. but, honestly, i prefer your sage and civilised approach to life.

See? Posts like these are why I keep coming back to this silly thread! :ltcapd:

[Durham K]

I had a winning ebay bid where the seller asked to keep the pen and refund me as he discovered that the pen had his birth date engraved on it!

[BelArgent]

I am generally fine with engraved pens, especially if it is attractively done. Sometimes the engraving can be quite intriguing, also. Such as this pen I purchased from a Denver antique dealer, who had acquired it from a large estate in the local area. It's a ca. 1923 Parker Duofold Deluxe "Big Red" - a very expensive pen for the time. Here is a picture:

 

 

 

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1311/5164423695_a6854d0516_b.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a close-up of the signature. It appears to say "Molly Brown".

 

 

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4063/5165027822_9441216ec5_b.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whether this is indeed the pen of the "Unsinkable" Molly is open to question. The antique dealer had no proof, but he did think it probably belonged to her. She is certainly a legend in the Denver area. I don't know, but it is interesting to speculate.

 

 

While not outside the possibility, this seems unlikely as Molly Brown was living in Long Island when this pen was made. According to one of my books by a local Denver historian, who has this to say about Mrs. Brown: Molly Brown originally went by Maggie (or Mrs. J.J. Brown). Although she owned the house here in Denver until her death, after 1909 it was rented out and she and the family never lived in it again. If she was in Denver, she preferred to stay at the Brown Palace (different Brown. No connection to Molly. Although she apparently wasn't above letting people think that she owned the Brown). After the Titanic, she mostly lived on Long Island, NY, where she was better accepted in society or in Florida. She died in Long Island in 1932 and is buried there, next to JJ who died in 1922. I don't know how much of a "legend" Mrs. Brown was/is to Denver, a town whose local history is filled with larger than life characters, since the family no longer lived here after 1912. She seems to be a bigger legend elsewhere, due to her connection to the Titanic and Hollywood. Although the efforts to save her house in 1971 from the wrecking ball was the start of the modern preservation movement in Denver.

[SnowLeopard]

I respect the engraver's art...especially on a pen with a famous name on it. My only engraved has such a moniker... but, I rarely see the thing...such a party animal...like it's former owner. I'm thinking, it actually has the transferred signature of the former owner...cool.

Edited November 12, 2010 by SnowLeopard

[professionaldilettante]

The only doubts I have about initials are that they belong to someone still alive, and looking for their pen!

as long as they're dead and buried, I don't mind.

I don't know... would being 6 feet under stop them from searching?

[jniforat]

well, FOX stated it perfectly. ha ha, i can't add anything more to the discussion as that post sums it perfectly! +1!

[troglokev]

I don't know... would being 6 feet under stop them from searching?

Keep it quiet, PD, but zombies aren't for real.

[coastie]

We never truly own anything, except our name. A name tells us who we are, our reputation goes with the name. After all when we are gone what is left? A few pieces of paper, photographs, memories other people have of us. Even the memories fade away in a couple of generations. But there remains the name whether its on a headstone and if we are fortunate a book, or a monument. For some people a name on something, like a fountain pen is all that's left that tells anyone "I was here". So I don't mind a fountain pen with someone's name on it.

 

To give a further insight: A few weeks ago at a local auction I bought some paperwork that had belonged to an Army Major. In the group was his ID cards, award certificates and other related articles. His medals, patches and insignia were in another box which I didn't buy because there was no name attached to them. I hated the idea of the paperwork being separated or bought by a reseller.

 

One of my best pens is engraved with a guys name and "U S Navy" it's a Sheaffer New Balance and I bought it because of the engraving.

[Bo Bo Olson]

""""also, if i buy a pen w/ someone's name, then i put my name on it too. i started doing this when i bought a 51 with 4 tiny names engraved of previous owners, and now it has mine. i think that's cool and special."""""

 

I find that truly neat.

 

Johnny Appleseed was right, there was some times more hate than today, like in Know Nothing times, when if you said OK, you got punched in the nose..it coming form German dialect Olles Korrekt.

The Know Nothing Party hated all foreigners equally, and slaves too.

 

How ever, I was not precise, I meant in my life time; which included Tricky Dick, the man you would not buy a used car from, even in 1960.

 

Once again, times change, no one sold used fountain pens much back in the day. It was a mark of Class to have your pen with your initials or name on it.

 

We did have pen collectors back in the day....many collected my fountain pens and Jotter ball points, with out my knowledge. Yep, having my name or initials on it, would have saved me lots of money.

 

I do have a couple of pens with names on them...my only thought is when, not if, I should go to my Jeweler and have the gold of the name, refreshed with new gold leaf.

I got them cheaper because of the name, if I sell them, then I'll get less as is; but I've no plan to sell them. They have good nibs.

[Lothianjavert]

I don't mind a pen that has been engraved. It's a little piece of history. A name like "Throatwabbler Mangrove" or something embarassingly obnoxious would give me more reason to buy the pen!

 

I have not engraved any of my pens with my name. There are time it would have been practical (as a way for the pen to hopefully find its way back to me!), especially as a teacher when so much was always getting "borrowed". Yes, my scissors were labeled. So was every darned desk and chair. Otherwise, they'd disappear and not return. It's not fun coming in to find half of the desks gone because they were borrowed for an "event" and didn't get put back because no one could remember which desks came from each room and having to scramble to track them down before the students arrived. Still, I couldn't just put my name on one of my nice pens.

 

The pen with the list of names is neat though- as if it has its own lineage. I have not seen one like that before!

[Vargouille]

I don't mind a pen that has been engraved. It's a little piece of history. A name like "Throatwabbler Mangrove" or something embarassingly obnoxious would give me more reason to buy the pen!

 

I have not engraved any of my pens with my name. There are time it would have been practical (as a way for the pen to hopefully find its way back to me!), especially as a teacher when so much was always getting "borrowed". Yes, my scissors were labeled. So was every darned desk and chair. Otherwise, they'd disappear and not return. It's not fun coming in to find half of the desks gone because they were borrowed for an "event" and didn't get put back because no one could remember which desks came from each room and having to scramble to track them down before the students arrived. Still, I couldn't just put my name on one of my nice pens.

 

The pen with the list of names is neat though- as if it has its own lineage. I have not seen one like that before!

 

No, no, no, it would never be Throatwobbler Mangrove. It would be spelled out as Raymond Luxury Yacht. Not to mention the royalties from the Ministry of Silly Walks...