August 15, 2024

As an experiment I decided to try using a pair of vintage fountain pens in my regular ‘rotation’ of pens I use at work. I was interested to see how practical they are to use compared with modern pens.

My prejudice is that vintage pens are more trouble than they are worth. In my world view, vintage pens dry-up, have small ink capacities, very fine scratchy nibs, plus caps that don’t screw on and therefore less secure for travel.

The two pens I am using are a Sheaffer ‘Pen For Men’ V and a Parker 51. The Parker was my dad’s pen, bought when he started his career with (what became) British Rail in the 1950s.

From here on I’m going to refer the Sheaffer as the ‘PFM’. The idea of a fountain pen “proudly designed for men only!” seems very old-fashioned now! Out of curiosity I checked the design features of the Lady Sheaffer fountain pen and what was important was that it “refills like her lipstick” (much more lady-like obviously) and comes in range of colours from Tweed to satin…

After a couple of weeks use I can now say I was wrong on nearly every count.

The nibs on these pens are lovely to use — the PFM in particular — although I did have to have the Parker nib repaired a few years ago as it had become scratchy at some point in its long life. The two pens are very easy to write with although they are both cigar-shaped with no obvious grip section as they are lightweight. The PFM has a fine wet nib and the Parker is markedly broader with more opportunity for shading. Both nibs are inflexible ‘nails’ but the PFM has some variation in line depending upon the writing angle.

Both pens have a decent ink capacity. The Parker’s big ink sack can hold a lot of ink while the PFM has a complex ‘snorkel’ filling system that takes-up space but to works well if operated properly. Although caps are push-fit I’ve not had any problems so far with pens dropping-off the lanyard I clip them to — these are both light pens — and to be fair I’ve got modern pens that unscrew themselves by magic sometimes.

7th August 2024: That just leaves the issue of how well do they write after a couple of weeks back in storage?

15th August 2024: One week later and both pens write straight out of storage in the pen block!

Conclusion

It’s time to add two vintage pens that mean a lot to me into my rotation of fountain pens. I was always too cautious about using valuable old pens but nice things that work well are made to be used.

Stationery


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