A Canadian Waterman Ideal

[Paul-in-SF]

I found this pen recently, and it's a bit interesting and maybe unusual? It's an Ideal, small at 12 cm, with a lovely brown pearl (celluloid?) exterior. It's a lever filler and the nib looks about the same size as my 52-1/2V, so I guess that makes it a #2.

 

One interesting feature is the clip, which is a ball clip that wraps over the top of the cap; at the top is the Ideal logo (again, it's also on the side of the clip) and the whole thing is apparently held on with two rivets. It has a tiny cap band too. Both of these are made of a very dull metal, which may mean that every bit of the gold plating has worn off, or maybe it's made of something that is tarnished. I'd be interested to know how to improve how these parts look.

 

The barrel imprint says "Waterman's Made In (Ideal logo) Canada Fountain Pen." The nib says "Med. Rigid Waterman's Ideal 14K." There is nothing on the end of the barrel nor anywhere else on the barrel that I can find; there is nothing written on the lever either. I'm still in the process of cleaning the nib and other metal parts.

 

I looked through all the vintage pen sale sites I know of and couldn't find anything that looked much like it, except a couple of V (for vest pocket, I think) pens where the clip was shorter. Here are some photos. I'd love to find out the model.

 

[pen lady]

David Nishimura (Vintagepens.com) had one of these on his site a few years ago and described it as a ''Junior''. I have the same pen in my collection, (it's always a bit of a thrill when I see one of ''my'' pens on his site) though mine is missing the ball from the end of the clip. Right now, in his Waterman section, he has a pencil from the same range, dating it from 1943. My pen also has the same rigid nib as yours and is the same colour. The clip design made it ideal (sorry for the pun) for military use. It could go into a tunic pocket and sit low enough for the pocket flap to close easily.

[Paul-in-SF]

Thanks, I missed that because I wasn't looking at pencils.

 

And I've just discovered that the tips of the tines are broken off as if someone had attacked them with pliers. Not pretty.

[PaulS]

Hi - there's a virtually identical pen in the Davis & Lehrer Waterman booklet (page 104) and, like yours, this clip dsign is described as Military, as suggested by pen lady. The fitments on the book example are chrome, so likely yours was the same originally. Oddly, the book doesn't use the word Junior for this particular design, but size wise it appears to be the same as a Junior, an example of which sits next to this Military clip example, on the same page.

 

Real shame about the tip of the nib missing - I sometimes wonder if this is an indication that the pen sailed close the wind in terms of being sent to the breakers - folk who might cut off the tip ready for melting the gold content of the nib.

 

I have a pencil with this style of clip, so helps me too with dating. I would think this pen is almost certainly celluloid - try rubbing with one of the cream micro-polishes - should give you the table tennis ball smell.

[Paul-in-SF]

Would chrome on the fitments have so completely disappeared, leaving only the base metal? I'm hoping that it really was nickel plated and that with the right polish it will come out.

 

For the cream micro-polish, did you mean that for the body or for the trim (or both)? I don't have any yet, I haven't had any vintage pens that I cared about the appearance, but this one is very appealing to me for some reason. I'm strongly considering just buying a replacement nib, they are out there although it will be a challenge to find one that doesn't cost more than I paid for the pen.

 

I bought the pen "as is" on ebay, and they didn't mention the broken point but it still went pretty cheap.

[PaulS]

You could use for both - but rubbing trim can be unwise sometimes - Waterman plating is often thin and doesn't stand up to frequent rubbing.

The box/lever on this pen is definitely chrome plated so the clip would almost certainly have been the same. If the clip has lost its plate entirely you might slip some protection underneath and then rub with vigour - you won't bring the plate back but it's a way of at least polishing the base metal so that the clip doesn't appear quite so rubbishy. Perhaps war time plating was less than good.

The marbling looks as though it will repay a good clean and polish - should come up well.

I know the guys here use an alternative to the more expensive proprietary micro polish - Simichrome possibly. Sympathies re the loss of the tip of the nib - sellers are a pain not to mention such a profoundly important matter. I've not seen a W. nib with this particular imprint - don't know easy or otherwise it's going to be to source a replacement, but fingers crossed for you. Remember to warm up the section before wacking out the nib in a nib knocking block (say all that quickly)

Edited July 10, 2019 by PaulS

[Paul-in-SF]

The good news is that I have that nib from my 52-1/2V that I complained about being too wet to write with and that seems to be the same size, and the feed from this pen has a much narrower ink channel, so I'm hoping they will work together and this feed will tame the wetness of the nib. I have managed to get the nib and feed back in the section, so all I have to do is re-sac it and try it out. It couldn't hurt. There do seem to be other nibs out there, I just want to try this first.

[Paul-in-SF]

I can report that this had qualified success. The nib writes, and it writes with a reasonable ink flow. It does however have a tendency towards hard starts when it hasn't been used in more than, say, an hour or two. Once started it does continue until I stop.

 

I am also going to (probably) waste some of my time trying to salvage the original nib, perhaps by smoothing down the jagged broken places, to see if it can write without having any tipping, maybe as a sort of stub nib.