Green Pen Club - Show Us Your Green Pens!

[Mercian]

6 minutes ago, Misfit said:

@Mercian that’s sweet. It’s nice seeing the mechanical pencil. What lead size does it use? 

It takes 0.9mm leads.

Which I only found out after buying some hand-made (& commensurately-priced) 1.18mm leads from Yard-o-Led 

I got some inexpensive 0.9mm HB leads in the next town over, and they do fit my 450 

My next order from Cult Pens will therefore include some Pentel ‘Ain Stein’ (sic) leads in 0.9mm - currently thinking they’ll be ‘B’, but I may go for the ‘full-fat’ ‘2B’ leads.

 

Hmm, I guess I’m now finding my mind wrestling with the age-old dilemma of ‘2B’, or not ‘2B’… 

 

(Sorry. I’ll get me coat….)

[Mercian]

7 minutes ago, Misfit said:

I have a Pelikan brown tortoise that dates to 1954. 

Colour me jealous!

 

I just bought an early 1980s M400 Brown Tortoise - and it is a Thing of Beauty  - but the italic grinds on those bouncy early-50s nibs are absolutely fantastic!

[Misfit]

I saw you had posted the lead size, and tried to edit my comment. You were too fast for me. @sargetalon helped me find my brown tortoise. I messaged him about one on eBay that he said was a frankenpen. Then he looked and found the one I did buy, saying it was from 1954.  I used his Pelikan Perch blog to see how the pen dated to an exact year. And it did! It has to do with the script on the nib, and something else that changed within the year of 1954. 

[AmandaW]

39 minutes ago, Mercian said:

Which I only found out after buying some hand-made (& commensurately-priced) 1.18mm leads from Yard-o-Led 

So now you will be requiring a pencil which takes 1.18mm leads. Where's the downside to that? (Ignoring the hit to the bank account, of course.)

[Mercian]

6 minutes ago, AmandaW said:

So now you will be requiring a pencil which takes 1.18mm leads. Where's the downside to that? (Ignoring the hit to the bank account, of course.)

You’re reading my mind! 

[Mercian]

44 minutes ago, Misfit said:

It has to do with the script on the nib, and something else that changed within the year of 1954. 

Would that be the engraving on the cap band?

My pen has no engraving on its cap band, but around the bottom of its barrel (just above its piston knob) is engraved ‘PELIKAN 400 GUNTHER WAGNER GERMANY’.

 

My pencil has ‘PELIKAN 450 GUNTHER WAGNER GERMANY’ engraved around the top of its green-striped barrel, just underneath its clip-ring.

 

I am very impressed with the pencil. Mine doesn’t contain an eraser or a jam-clearing rod, but it is very well-made, beautifully-balanced in the hand, and it does have the feature where its push-button gets extended outwards when the last portion of the currently-loaded lead has cleared the inner jaws of the feeding mechanism, warning the user that it’s nearly time to re-load.

Deutsche gründlichkeit FTW 

[Bo Bo Olson]

32 minutes ago, Mercian said:

it is very well-made, beautifully-balanced in the hand,

I had always hated MP's, until by accident I grabbed  the 450.....six week later while I learned how to change the lead, I finally put it down again for a fountain pen.

It is now sitting next to my monitor.

[Runnin_Ute]

On 3/24/2023 at 10:17 PM, Penguincollector said:

It looks like outer space! So pretty!

I think so too. The material is called "Copper Mountain" and it has Copper in it, but looks more like a photo from the Hubble Space telescope. 

[Penguincollector]

On 11/15/2023 at 9:17 AM, SLinkster said:

A couple of Lanbitou TWSBI knockoffs

  I’m pretty sure that these are the pens that I am stubbing for the Pelikan Hub. Do you know if the feeds come out for cleaning? 

[Penguincollector]

1 hour ago, Runnin_Ute said:

I think so too. The material is called "Copper Mountain" and it has Copper in it, but looks more like a photo from the Hubble Space telescope. 

  That’s such nice material. 

[SLinkster]

55 minutes ago, Penguincollector said:

  I’m pretty sure that these are the pens that I am stubbing for the Pelikan Hub. Do you know if the feeds come out for cleaning? 

Yes - friction fit. These are the 3059 with Lamy style (wing?) EF nibs. I'll be interested to know the outcome of your experiments. 

 

But be careful. I now have a spare nib, spare barrel and spare cap. 🫤

[Penguincollector]

6 hours ago, SLinkster said:

Yes - friction fit. These are the 3059 with Lamy style (wing?) EF nibs. I'll be interested to know the outcome of your experiments. 

 

But be careful. I now have a spare nib, spare barrel and spare cap. 🫤

  Understood. I better try it with mine before I go wasting pen club money.

[The Elevator]

On 1/23/2024 at 8:45 PM, Mercian said:

now finding my mind wrestling with the age-old dilemma of ‘2B’, or not ‘2B’… 

😂😂

[Nethermark]

Her my green Osmia's

The lower ones look black but are a very dark striped green that Osmia called Russian Green

[Misfit]

@Nethermark that’s a fantastic collection of green pens. I like the top four pens especially. 

[Nethermark]

5 hours ago, Misfit said:

that’s a fantastic collection of green pens. I like the top four pens especially. 

Thank you!

 

The top four are also the oldest ones. The top one is an Osmia Normal from the Parker era (about 1930), the second one is an Osmia 222. The third one is a Progress made in England, and frankly, I'm not completely certain whether it is an Osmia, or whether it is made after Osmia left the company. Information is rather scarce here. Stephen Hull writes about it in his book on the English fountain pen industry, but I'm still confused after reading that. The fourth pen is an Osmia 192 that is supposed to be a vacumatic filler, but has been changed to a piston filler. I see this regularly. Probably a repairman didn't know the Osmia vacumatic filling system, or just couldn't repair it and then changed the filling system. Unfortunately, it's very hard to get replacement filling systems

 

 

[Misfit]

Thank you for all that information. Fascinating stuff, truly. Fountain pens from the past are great pens. 

[Bo Bo Olson]

Green...and....red Osmias....envy cubed.

 

Of my 8 or so Osmias, only two have any color. Do have a couple BCHR ones.

And I do count pre-war Boehlers as Osmias. In that I have a full tortoise and a couple BCHR Boehlers.One with a great clip. 1938 just after Hitler conviscated the gold, the nibs were gold plalted from Hitler's ally Italy.

Do you have any Osmia's with this clip?

 

The Boehler brothers split their Osmia company in 1938....Faber Castell finished buying up Osmia by 1950 because Faber Castel only made a second tier pen, and needed a first class one...then the egotistical fools started erasing Osmia from those pens...the Degussa made,diamond marked semi-flex nibs were lat to have the diamond errased....in the late '50's.

Boehler managed to make school pens until the '70's. I have two prewar, and one that surprised me by having a semi-flex pen that was '60's-70. A blue pen that didn't make it into my blue pen contribution.

 

Here is a pen I stole the pictures for in the pen cost €350 some 15 years ago when Osmia at €60 was way, way over my limit.

A mid 30's Osmia Supra (Deluxe) Luscus.

A real signuture pen, looks to be BBBB or more.

A Grail pen that never showed up by the time I'd saved up that sort of fortune.

[Nethermark]

11 hours ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

Green...and....red Osmias....envy cubed.

 

Of my 8 or so Osmias, only two have any color. Do have a couple BCHR ones

Thank you!

But that is a very nice Osmia 76 you have there! And the Osmia Supra Luxus is really amazing. Haven't seen anything like that so far.

[Bo Bo Olson]

8 hours ago, Nethermark said:

Osmia Supra Luxus

Is not mine, but a grail pen.

 

This was my very first BCHR pen (a no name, with box and old script paper (just said first class pen) and of it's type of chasing still my sharpest.

My limit then was about €30 and that pen cost me 70.

I had before that thought I would never afford any BCHR pens, then it rained them.

It sat in the repair box for a good decade plus....out of sight out of mind...and I was still buying and just lately repair them has kicked in.

Francis had to rebuild the guts for me (which I knew...and by me some times I'm so stupid cheap...I could have bought the guts back when that pen was relatively new to me, but cheaped out, then the guts for that pen never showed up again. )....and the steel nib marked with a Panther jumping through a Capitol P  steel nib is a top Wet Noodle.

 

Better than my 1918 Waterman Gothic wet noodle , better than one of my two '52 wet noodles, and as good as the other and as good as my Soennecken Wet noodle.

Very much unexpected.

Mauricio who repairs and sells superflex pens, says to make a feed and nib work perfect takes a lot of fiddly work.

When I sent that Waterman Gothic..(new sac) and that BCHR no name in for repair. I saw both of those as semi-flex.

Francis did fiddly work and returned me two unexpected Wet Noodles.