Cartridges For Vintage French Pens

[jmckag]

Recently I received a Bayard Souverain cartridge fountain pen, made in France probably in the 1970s. It has a nice 18-carat nib with a good amount of flex. I wanted to get it back in service. After exhausting my supply of various makes of cartridges an internet search and French pen blogs indicated pens made by Bayard, Unic and Stylomine use a ‘BUS 5’ cartridge (BUS = Bayard, Unic, Stylomine). The BUS 5 is no longer manufactured.

 

Fortunately my local pen store (Bromfield Pen Shop) came up with a solution. After a number of tries the answer is to use S. T. Dupont propriety ink cartridges. It stands to reason as Dupont is based in France.

 

The fit is initially a bit tight but the Dupont cartridge works well and stays in place. The ink flow is what one would expect and want. I’d be interested in hearing if anyone knows of other cartridges that might fit -- one similar in dimensions to the S. T. Dupont but only slightly larger around the interior neck opening pierced by the section.

 

Here are some photos of the Dupont cartridge and the Bayard Souverain.

[OCArt]

Glad you found a suitable cartridge. I'm sure this information will help others.

[jar]

That is a Parker standard (as opposed to International standard) and if it fits then Parker and Aurora cartridges and converters should also fit. The early ST Duponts used the Parker standard while starting with the Ellipsis ST Dupont switched to the International standard.

[jmckag]

Jar, thanks for the leads. I tried an Aurora cartridge and while it fits on the section it is 10mm too long. So the standard capacity versus large/King size will do the trick. Appreciated.

[BaaadSheepie]

I recently acquired a Bayard Souvrain (pic below) that seems to have some sort of glass cartridge in it.

 

I've tried dip writing with it, and it's a really nice, smooth nib.

 

The problem is that while the glass tube will move in and out by about 1 cm, it won't pull all the way out of the pen... it reaches a certain point and doesn't seem to want to pull out more. I'm not sure if it's jammed in somehow with old ink (so I'm trying to clean that out)... but I don't want to try and force it any harder because I don't want to break the glass tube.

 

The other possibility is that moving it in and out actually will suck up water into the tube... so I'd also considered the possibility that it isn't meant to be removed at all.

 

Anyway, any guidance people could offer would be great!

 

[Pentode]

Its very possible that the glass tube is the back end of an accordion filling mechanism.