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

[TheDutchGuy]

1 hour ago, hari317 said:

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.

 

Thanks for asking, I should have clarified that. The reason is that I am sure that the blind cap and its threading were designed for frequent use, i.e. every tine you fill the pen. But unscrewing the barrel from the section is only necessary when the sac is replaced, i.e. once every 5 to 7 years or so., and hence I am not fully sure how it would stand up to frequent loosening and tightening.

[bunnspecial]

3 hours ago, Estycollector said:

more complicated systems introduced by Parker and Sheaffer. Even Parker when back to a sac type fill after the vacumatic type.

 

I'm still not understanding what makes the Aeromatic "more complicated" than a lever filler. In one, you have an opening in the side of the barrel with a metal lever on a pin pressing against the pressure bar that pressed on the sack. In the other, there literally is nothing BUT the pressure bar and you push on it!

 

Also, when was the last time you bought a lever filler "in the wild" that didn't need a sac? When was the last time you bought a 51 aero or 21 that just needed a cleaning before inking it up?

[Aysedasi]

Ironically, notification of this has just popped into my email......

 

https://conwaystewart.com/products/conway-stewart-churchill-honey-noire-lever-fill?utm_source=Conway+Stewart+-+Main+List&utm_campaign=88f0dab1ca-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_12_09_+calibre_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_362db6c9c1-88f0dab1ca-421286805&goal=0_362db6c9c1-88f0dab1ca-421286805&mc_cid=88f0dab1ca&mc_eid=3027526421

 

Lever-fill only....

[hari317]

The 51 has a PVC sac. Resac a pvc compatible vintage sac pen with a pvc sac and it will last equally long. 
 

the most long lived without any service are the English 51s which had a plastic long breather tube instead of silver. Even if the Parker 51 sac is trouble free the silver breather tubes were not. 

[Estycollector]

2 hours ago, bunnspecial said:

 

I'm still not understanding what makes the Aeromatic "more complicated" than a lever filler. In one, you have an opening in the side of the barrel with a metal lever on a pin pressing against the pressure bar that pressed on the sack. In the other, there literally is nothing BUT the pressure bar and you push on it!

 

Also, when was the last time you bought a lever filler "in the wild" that didn't need a sac? When was the last time you bought a 51 aero or 21 that just needed a cleaning before inking it up?

I got an Easterbrook Deluxe circa '55 with the orginal sac a couple of years back. I have just had two Parker aeromatic 21's. The first was a gift and had to be soaked and cleaned to work. The sac was in bad shape, but intact. 

 

I've already responded that for me the aerometric is a sac system like the lever. unscrewing the Parker's with thinner plastic can potentially crack and leave the pen unrepairable whereas the Esterbrook can easily be put back into survice. 

 

I do acknowledge your points and am not argueing to suggesting I am necessarily correct or even trying to be correct. I just felt it was something interesting to discuss. 

[Bo Bo Olson]

4 hours ago, bunnspecial said:

there literally is nothing BUT the pressure bar and you push on it!

 

Also, when was the last time you bought a lever filler "in the wild" that didn't need a sac? When was the last time you bought a 51 aero or 21 that just needed a cleaning before inking it up?

Flick, flick 3 or 4 times 5 times at most and done....vs unscrew barrel,  squeeze 10 X, screw back on........The P-51; P-75 and such does take five times longer to fill than a lever pen.

 

Yep if someone would make a fiberglass sac like on the P-51, we wouldn't have a sac problem, but the 34 years a patent use to run, saw the change over to make the company lots more money Cartridges. And Easties and Wearever were run out of town by the $$$ cartridges...And they are still super expensive. Actually by Ball Points.

My smoke gray DJ Eastie was a '48-52, by lever design, and the sac finally turned to mush when it was @ 60 years old. I only got 4-5 years of use from it, in it was an inherited pen.

Rubber sacs use to be good for 30-40 years, and I too had one that was 60.....but your lever pen is older than 30-40 years to start.

Then add rubber sac eating supersaturated inks...that they  did not have in the day of rubber sacs.

Some reputable repair men, on this com, refuse to warrantee rubber sacs if supersaturated inks, and one US ink maker........those inks can eat a rubber sac in a week-10 days some have found.

Others say they have used their rubber sac.....a long time with those forbidden inks.

 

White use to make great ink sacs. (the basic 30-40 year lasting ones) ....I don't know how well the restructured White sac worked.....but lots of complaints about Chinese sacs.....but who knows....they might well have been using supersaturated sac eating inks.  

[bunnspecial]

2 hours ago, Estycollector said:

I got an Easterbrook Deluxe circa '55 with the orginal sac a couple of years back. I have just had two Parker aeromatic 21's. The first was a gift and had to be soaked and cleaned to work. The sac was in bad shape, but intact. 

 

I've already responded that for me the aerometric is a sac system like the lever. unscrewing the Parker's with thinner plastic can potentially crack and leave the pen unrepairable whereas the Esterbrook can easily be put back into survice. 

 

I do acknowledge your points and am not argueing to suggesting I am necessarily correct or even trying to be correct. I just felt it was something interesting to discuss. 

I know, this is just a discussion, and a good one at that! 
 

I guess I can plead ignorance on the 21. I have one, but after cleaning I’m not sure if I even inked it. I do remember writing with it for a while after the initial water flush. I guess I rehydrated what was left in it, and it was pure happenstance that I found it would write. 
 

In any case, I have somewhat more experience with the 51 and have never handled one that I thought felt fragile. You can tell that the 21 was definitely built to a price. 
 

And yes the silver breather is a weak point. I have a plastic one on my odds and ends box from a 51 Special that had a nib bent into a pretzel and I cracked the hood trying to take it apart. 
 

I suppose I can’t throw all sac fillers under the bus either. I bought a celluloid Duofold button filler last month that had been in a friend’s “Flea market pens I haven’t even looked at” box(the same box that’s also yielded several 51s, Snorkels, Touchdowns, and in my pocket now from a visit yesterday a Sheaffer lever Balance with a “Feather touch” nib) and the sac on that Duofold was/is good. The Duofold is inked now. 
 

In a broader sense, I wish that the current PVC sacs didn’t have issues with celluloid. I have two PVC sac pens that were bought from a well regarded repairer/restorer. One is a hard rubber Duofold, which he said he did because hard rubber doesn’t have the porosity issues of celluloid. The other is a Snorkel, and he used PVC because the consequences of a ruptured latex sac in a Snorkel outweigh the drying out risk. The Snorkel(just bought a boxed pen/pencil set yesterday), as much as I love it, is pretty much the polar opposite of simplicity. 

[Aether]

1 hour ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

Flick, flick 3 or 4 times 5 times at most and done....vs unscrew barrel,  squeeze 10 X, screw back on........The P-51; P-75 and such does take five times longer to fill than a lever pen.

 

Disingenuous.  It is an insignificant amount of seconds in either case.  Seriously what are you going to do that is productive in those few seconds saved with a lever instead of unscrewing a barrel of a 51? 🙄

[Bo Bo Olson]

This is a nit picking thread....so my nits are different than yours.

 

Instead of a screw around pen....

No, I'm going to use an Esterbrook, in I can change nibs and not get stuck with a nail, like in a P-51! The Esterbrook had a number of nib widths and stiffness's.

Second, I grew up with lever pens; the P-51 and the King of Pens a Snorkel were for Adults, after one got a Job.

Having a job and weirdly ...pre-credit card era, money in my pocket, on my way to buy the High Status thin, black and gold Cross ball point....that cost a whole $8.00; an expensive Jotter $3.75.

 

So while over a black and gold Snorkel I got mugged by a silver  P-75 ($22 silver dollars) and his little silver brother ($18 in real money) the MP/BP. There was a pencil cartridge that Parker use to make.

Like I said, weirdly carrying a fortune in my wallet, I got mugged, by the Bling Brothers.

 

So what did I have....unscrew, squeeze, re-screw. Well I knew how that worked..knowing of the P-51, not that I ever fondled one, and it wasn't until I was in the Com for a while that I found out, I should have looked under the pen lid in the box before tossing it....or I'd known the P-75 was also a cartridge pen. What a surprise!

Now in modern days, you can also fit a converter in the P-75; a triple threat.

 

 

So for neigh on, 40 years I was One Man, One Pen....seldom used in it didn't get taken out of the house but 4 times after I left it on a collage cafeteria table and had taken 5-6 steps and no one said, "You left your pen."  A lesson...in every other fountain pen I ever had, was collected by sneaky wild pen collectors.

 

And no, I didn't have one of the pretty Esterbrooks, but the 1961 model, with cheap ugly pressed plastic like the P-51 or Snorkel. An Esterbrook with a cheap metal top....which was a cartridge pen!!!///maybe not; I wasn't interested much in fountain pens back in the day....they were.

I do have a '60s Wearever that is a lever pen.

I'm near sure my Venus was a cartridge pen.....but there came a day in the '60's when those cartridges took over and I was ever so glad to find cheap ball point sticks, instead of having to buy expensive cartridges. My parents still had their one and only fountain pen, a classy Snorkel in the drawer for filling out checks, so there was the bottle of ink that never emptied, in it was never used.

Sigh, I remember the sunny summer morning clearly, the Day Dad, Let The Snorkel At Home!!!

Taking a free black government issue Skillcraft ball point instead. It wrote in grease, didn't matter if it got lost or broken.

Sort of reminds me to dig out my single Snorkel...

..being in Germany, collecting US pens is harder to do....especially in US mail costs 3 X to cross the pond, than German mail does. So I basically use Pistons....9/10's of my pens are piston pens.

 

As an Arrogant American Army Brat in Germany, thought if a piston pen was any good, American's would make them....not understanding how much money it cost to make them, or how much money was made making expensive cartridges.

[Aether]

Quote

...cheap ugly pressed plastic like the P-51

 

?? Don't think the lucite was pressed. Have a parker #51, there are no joins.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Pressed out of a machine....not drilled. Not pressed in two halves of a die....but pushed...pressed out.

It don't matter what plastic is pressed out, lucite or precious resin....pressed.

Lamy was very involved early with the Artus pressed plastic machinery.....even bought them up...right after the war.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Would I have bought a lever pen in 1970/71....no, I wanted the King of Pens a Snorkel that had it's tiny rubber sac....but thats what was....in the Best American pen of the time. ...out side the P-75. I never had much interest in a P-51; we were a Snorkel family....having one....and just one.

One Family, One Pen.

[kestrel]

I love vintage pens and confess that I have, on occasion, plunked down dollars to get a filler system I had never seen before.  In times of COVID there is something special about a blow filler. 

 

For robust construction, ease of repair, ease of use, and taking up a lot of ink I vote for the crescent filler and its derivatives.  Only two moving parts (crescent/hump and locking ring) except for a few oddballs like the Grieshaber with twist locks and that pressure bar is almost indestructible.  Most lever fillers are well made but I have spent a lot of time sourcing Waterman's lever boxes and Conklin levers (especially Enduras).  The crescent design is more than 120 years old and still in production.

[hari317]

13 hours ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

Pressed out of a machine....not drilled. Not pressed in two halves of a die....but pushed...pressed out.

It don't matter what plastic is pressed out, lucite or precious resin....pressed.

Lamy was very involved early with the Artus pressed plastic machinery.....even bought them up...right after the war.

Bo bo, the lucite 51 hoods and barrels were indeed machined on purpose built lathes generally called “screw machines”. The parts were not pressed out like in extrusion or moulding. HTH. 

[Bo Bo Olson]

OK, glad to know, but sure looked (and feels) pressed.

 

Ignorance is oft based on an assumption; and everyone knows what happens when one assumes. So I was wrong (good thing I'm above counting; and taking off my shoes in public to do so); in it; quacked like a duck, walked like a duck.....and turned out to be a chicken in a mud puddle.

[lovemy51]

i'm going back to dip pens

[Estycollector]

1 hour ago, lovemy51 said:

i'm going back to dip pens

Never have to send them out for certain.

[ParramattaPaul]

Interestingly, Conway Stewart has just introduced a new lever fill Churchill (IIRC) to their present offerings.

 

Personally, while I love my vintage lever fill pens, and use them, I prefer converters for their convenience and reliability.  Converters offer all of the advantages of a cartridge and a lever fill without many of the disadvantages. 

[Bo Bo Olson]

Conway Stewart is alive again...hurray!!!

They had some of the most beautiful pens I could never afford.

[eric.zamir]

I've owned quite a few lever fillers, from ancient to modern, but I've never liked the system, and I'm now totally off them. The bags don't hold a lot of ink, I hate the burp towards the end of the load, and I'm tired of ordering sacs from overseas. Where I live, in the Middle East, rubber sacs and diaphragms don't last long. Yeah, the vacs are off the list as well. That's why I'm selling my Pompeii and Oversized Burma Doric. I'm keeping the brown vac and 1919 Waterman 54 overlay because they were from my mom and have quite a history. And they write great.
But I'm sticking with pistons - Pelikan, Montblanc and Omas - for the foreseeable future. Those vintage piston MB's are amazing.

My two cents...