Wasn't the Lever Fill Pretty Much the Best Idea?

[loganrah]

3 hours ago, Ron Z said:

As one pen friend frequently reminded me when I brought out my Boheme, "There's a reason why they quit making eyedroppers and safety pens."

I think that's what most people say about fountain pens in general "there's a reason everyone uses ballpoints" (or just a computer). 

But I don't think that just because fashions changed means a design wasn't good. How often can you really not spare the 1 second it takes to extend the nib of a safety pen? And those times are what Japanese Eyedroppers are for (or P51's if you need a pull cap). 

Also, the Boheme is a fake safety pen, its just a cartridge pen with a retractable nib; I don't want anyone to take that as representative of the type.

[hari317]

6 hours ago, Aether said:

Lever/button is not needful.  breaks the lines of barrel from being pure.  also pen can never be used as eye dropping.

I seem to recall Parker advertising that their button fillers could be used as dropper filled pens till the time you could get the sac replaced. I am not sure how well that would work.

 

[hari317]

Some pens can tolerate PVC sacs. If you install PVC sacs on such pens, you pretty much have no need to ever replace the sac again.

 

 

[hari317]

7 hours ago, loganrah said:

Another contrarian view: In my experience the problem of leaking pens has not been solved (even in modern ones) and for primarily that reason I prefer Japanese Eyedroppers and Safetys. Safetys also have the advantage of being essentially immune to drying out and having very robust internal parts compared to a sac, so they can be used with many inks that you might be more hesitant to put in a lever filler.

Hi, even good quality pens can leak sometimes due to failure or wear of some parts. 

Safeties and shutoff valve Eyedroppers are equally susceptible to seal wear and failure leading to leaks. In fact, most vintage safeties and japanese eyedroppers found in the wild will leak significantly till the seals are restored.

[Aether]

Parker #51 aeromatic pen.  Has an ink sack that is needing to be squeezed.  where is the lever? where is the button or twist cap?  Not needful.  as I was been saying, unscrew barrel and squeeze sack manually.  That is what you do to fill P51 aero.  The P51 represents the epitome (?right wording) of pens with sacks.  It is a simple fill up system, it works well, and look to be near immortal. 

[txomsy]

There's one thing for sacks: being inside the pen, they will be protected and last longer. I always fear that one day they will fail all the same, drying out, frozen, melt or just pulverized. In my experience, few plastics and mechanisms outlast continuous use wear.

 

Then there are also those piston fillers with a softish  transparent plastic piston head... which I feel the same about. And the mechanism may also wear out.

 

In the end, the eyedropper is the one requiring less maintenance. Yet, it also has its drawbacks.

 

I'd surmiss that the ideal system has not yet been invented. But then, if one were to find a system that has no maintenance, never fails, does not leak, does not stain... what chances would it have in modern consumerist world against one that requires periodic maintenance and guarantees a manipulable turnover/obsolescence for the maker?

 

On a side line: for me metal pens have proven better than plastic, and -again for me- I haven't found issues with the balance or weight of mine.

[Bo Bo Olson]

1 hour ago, Aether said:

where is the lever? where is the button or twist cap?  Not needful.  as I was been saying, unscrew barrel and squeeze sack manually

Yep, unscrew the barrel, squeeze the thingy 10 times, put barrel back on.

Or lift the lever 4-5 times rapidly and are good to go.

Of course modern day folks are use to always screwing off and screwing back on, if in their hurry they don't damage the pen by doing so; in they can never relate to old cartoons with folks squirting each other with a sac pen..................never really happened, but lots of things never really happened in cartoons.

 

Actually I have no problem with my P-51 (nail so just there as a palce holder after all one Must have a P-51 and P-75; got mugged by the P-75 and his little brother the silver BP; while drooling over finally getting an Adult pen, a Black and Gold Snorkel......Only took me 40 years to get a Snorkel from that day.

 

That silver pen got so little use; a desk drawer (forgotten) , afraid of the Pen Collectors; who had collected all my fountain pens from 4th to 10th grade and collected my Bics there after.

 

No wonder the used fountain pen market took off so big when the net finally arrived.

 

Most of my life was the traditional One Man, One Pen...............Then the wold went crazy, one of each make, one of each model...one of each color.  Psst, don't tell anyone, but there are those who match exactly every color of fountain pen ever made with it's very own matching ink color. The world is much more OCD than it use to be back in the Good Old Days of One Man, One Pen.

 

[Aether]

20 minutes ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

Yep, unscrew the barrel, squeeze the thingy 10 times, put barrel back on.

Or lift the lever 4-5 times rapidly and are good to go.

Of course modern day folks are use to always screwing off and screwing back on, if in their hurry they don't damage the pen by doing so; in they can never relate to old cartoons with folks squirting each other with a sac pen..................never really happened, but lots of things never really happened in cartoons.

 

Actually I have no problem with my P-51 (nail so just there as a palce holder after all one Must have a P-51 and P-75; got mugged by the P-75 and his little brother the silver BP; while drooling over finally getting an Adult pen, a Black and Gold Snorkel......Only took me 40 years to get a Snorkel from that day.

 

That silver pen got so little use; a desk drawer (forgotten) , afraid of the Pen Collectors; who had collected all my fountain pens from 4th to 10th grade and collected my Bics there after.

 

No wonder the used fountain pen market took off so big when the net finally arrived.

 

Most of my life was the traditional One Man, One Pen...............Then the wold went crazy, one of each make, one of each model...one of each color.  Psst, don't tell anyone, but there are those who match exactly every color of fountain pen ever made with it's very own matching ink color. The world is much more OCD than it use to be back in the Good Old Days of One Man, One Pen.

 

 

Aha! At least one person gets what I was writing down about.

 

[Estycollector]

1 hour ago, Aether said:

Parker #51 aeromatic pen.  Has an ink sack that is needing to be squeezed.  where is the lever? where is the button or twist cap?  Not needful.  as I was been saying, unscrew barrel and squeeze sack manually.  That is what you do to fill P51 aero.  The P51 represents the epitome (?right wording) of pens with sacks.  It is a simple fill up system, it works well, and look to be near immortal. 

I do understand your aesthetical preference, but for me having to unscrew the pen section, and especially on a pen like the Parker 21 with thinner plastic, the opportunity to crack or cripple the pen exists. My only aerometric Parker is a NOS 21 and I am very careful. 

[Karmachanic]

 

Wasn't Isn't the Lever Fill Bulk Filler Pretty Much The Best Idea? 😁

[como]

On 3/17/2021 at 9:00 PM, Seville said:

Lever was totally the best idea until this morning when I cut my nails and this afternoon tried to work the lever on a Waterman 100 year pen.

 

Philip

😃😃😃 I did the same. Now I can neither operate a lever nor pinch a newly cut cork seal into a barrel!

[bunnspecial]

The Parker Aeromatic was mentioned in the OP.

 

I'm not sure I'd class that as a "complicated" or "difficult to repair." To me, an Aero is more or less a lever filler stripped down to its bare essentials. There's no lever, but rather you just squeeze the pressure bar directly onto the sac. It has the extra advantage of having a sac that basically never goes bad...

[ethernautrix]

The piston fillers I like have nibs or nib units that can be screwed in or out. That way, if the piston mechanism breaks, I can use a syringe to fill the pen with ink.

 

Turns out... if I can use a syringe to fill the pen (or empty cartridge), then that's what I like.

 

The only vac-filler I have is a Pilot 823. (The TWSBI mini vac-filler's plastic broke. After I dropped it a few times. My bad.) I do like this filling method. Very much.

 

Being able to easily see the ink level is a bonus.

[OMASsimo]

Apparently, this is a highly subjective matter and there is no “best”  filling mechanism. I wrote happily with fountain pens for a good 40 years without even knowing of the existence of any sac fillers. I grew up with piston and cartridge fillers and had no reason to complain about this. If you grew up with lever fillers, you probably feel the same about those. They simply work, both have strengths and weaknesses and it’s a matter of taste which one you might prefer. I have lever fillers in my collection but don’t use them very often. I mostly choose a pen for the writing experience, which is dominated by nib and balance rather than the filling system. After all, you write many hours but fill just for a minute. There are few sac fillers among my favourites, they are from the 1930s, and all of them are button fillers. They still would be my favourites if they had a different but equally well working filling system. The only slight complaint I have with older sac fillers is that some of them tend to burp when the ink level gets low.

[bunnspecial]

FWIW, one of my favorite pens is a lever-it's a 1930s Oversize Balance in red veined gray. It's a family piece, but also a fantastic writer.

 

Still, though, for a couple of reasons it stays on my desk and only gets inked occasionally.

 

Typically in my pocket is a piston filler, generally a Montblanc and among among those a 146 is preferred.

[Mech-for-i]

Well best filling system is the one that work for you , but best filling system from an engineering POV , well a sac equipped variant likely cannot compete cause the sac do constitute a fairly weak link in the system and lever filler likely rank pretty low among sac equipped filling mechanism. Sheaffer Touchdown would IMHO rank best among all sac equipped type of filling mechanism.

 

That stated, good old no fuss Eyedropper is , from a pure mechanical and engineering POV the best. You just had only 1 mating surface to care for and with no moving or parts that could wear out by the filling action itself , it just last and last.

 

As far as self filling mechanism goes one can hardly not put the piston filler top. Not only for its durability and functionality but also ease of use.

[TheDutchGuy]

On 3/19/2021 at 6:52 AM, hari317 said:

I seem to recall Parker advertising that their button fillers could be used as dropper filled pens till the time you could get the sac replaced. I am not sure how well that would work.

 

 

That will work. I frequently buy old European button fillers with crumbled sacs. Remove the remnants of the sac, the pressure bar and the button. Apply some silicon grease to the threads between barrel and section. Ditto on threads between blind cap and barrel. Put the pen nib-down in your ink bottle of choice and fill through the hole where the button used to be (good luck doing this without the pen standing in the bottle...). Screw on the blind cap, clean the nib and you’re good to go. Of course, all the pros and cons of eyedroppers apply. If you save the button and the pressure bar, you can have the pen re-sac’d at any time of your choice.

[hari317]

32 minutes ago, TheDutchGuy said:

 

That will work. I frequently buy old European button fillers with crumbled sacs. Remove the remnants of the sac, the pressure bar and the button. Apply some silicon grease to the threads between barrel and section. Ditto on threads between blind cap and barrel. Put the pen nib-down in your ink bottle of choice and fill through the hole where the button used to be (good luck doing this without the pen standing in the bottle...). Screw on the blind cap, clean the nib and you’re good to go. Of course, all the pros and cons of eyedroppers apply. If you save the button and the pressure bar, you can have the pen re-sac’d at any time of your choice.

That’s good to know. 
why not seal the blind cap as you describe and fill ink into the barrel from the section side? Once filled screw the section down as usual.

[hari317]

Excerpts from an old Parker manual regarding button filler used as regular (dropper) filled. 
 

[Estycollector]

9 hours ago, OMASsimo said:

Apparently, this is a highly subjective matter and there is no “best”  filling mechanism. I wrote happily with fountain pens for a good 40 years without even knowing of the existence of any sac fillers. I grew up with piston and cartridge fillers and had no reason to complain about this. If you grew up with lever fillers, you probably feel the same about those. They simply work, both have strengths and weaknesses and it’s a matter of taste which one you might prefer. I have lever fillers in my collection but don’t use them very often. I mostly choose a pen for the writing experience, which is dominated by nib and balance rather than the filling system. After all, you write many hours but fill just for a minute. There are few sac fillers among my favourites, they are from the 1930s, and all of them are button fillers. They still would be my favourites if they had a different but equally well working filling system. The only slight complaint I have with older sac fillers is that some of them tend to burp when the ink level gets low.

So, when I started this thread, I was not saying my favorite filling system is a lever type, only that  it was simple and easy to repair as compated to more complicated systems introduced by Parker and Sheaffer. Even Parker when back to a sac type fill after the vacumatic type. Of the lever type, my early '50's Sheaffer Crest seems a  better repairable type  than the friction fit of the Esterbrook 

 

I suppose my favorite fill system would be the Lamy converter because it is easy, holds a good amount of ink, and if it fails it does not render the pen inoperable since a new one is available.