Spors, Et Al.

August 19, 2014

New arrivals in the house of trdsf! I've been wanting one of these for a while, and landed two in one lot: the middle two pens are Spors glass-nibbed FPs, one lever fill and the other my first crescent fill -- all the crescent needs is a new sac and a little polishing and it should be good as new. The brown snakeskin on the bottom is a Eberhard Faber Permapoint (with no cap, unfortunately) and the black pen on top is completely without identifying marks.

To which I can only say "Woot!"

August 20, 2014

I see 4 caps. Looks like a great haul.

August 21, 2014

Well, yeah, but the caps above it is a blue-gray striped Sheaffer with no pen. I'd love to find a matching cap for the Faber (or pen for the Sheaffer cap), they're both quite nice in-hand.

There were three other pens (and a mechanical pencil) in the lot as well -- two of those have no identifying marks either; one's a combination pen/pencil, the other I thought was an Estie, but it hasn't any identifying marks either. The third is a ubiquitious Wearever in bright red, with a weirdly small nib.

August 23, 2014

One of the SPORS' nibs looks longer and thinner but I am curious as to what sort of line they write. Samples?

August 23, 2014

The green crescent filler does appear to have a modern replacement glass nib; I've thoroughly cleaned it inside and out, replaced the sac, and polished it. It looks gorgeous... but it doesn't write very well. It's balky to start and prone to dumping great blops of ink. I may have the wrong ink for it; I don't know. I've got Pelikan Brilliant Black in it. I'm going to try the Hero blue-black next, and when it arrives, the J. Herbin Olive Green. I'm hoping it's just a matter of finding an ink with the right flow characteristics.

The other one is going to require a new J-bar and pocket clip before it can be considered restored; I'm going to put a new sac in it and fill it manually and see how it behaves. If that one puts down a nice line, then it might be an issue with the nib in the crescent. How to correct that outside of just replacing the nib, I don't know.

I do plan to have a word with the glassblower at the hotshop at the Conservatory near where I live... granted, nibcrafting is more lampwork than it is glassblowing, but he might have some suggestions, ideas, or just plain inspirations.