Waterman pen mystery

[Jjanek73]

Hi everybody,

 

I´m new here at FPN, but not completely green in fountain pens. Besides the new ones, I like to buy some not functioning vintage and repair them to working condition.

 

This pen was listed as Waterman Ideal with rolled gold overlay, which can´t be capped. My first thought was it is safety pen (seller was visibly unexperienced in vintage pens) with stiffened mechanism. But disassembly show it is piston-filler.

 

 

There is inscription on cap, but not on body

 

 

All the parts have same overlay pattern and without nib and feed, cap can be screwed to body

 

 

Nib also seem authentic

 

 

I made pen functional (was not so difficult), but cardinal problem persists

 

 

 

Naturally my first thought was cap is from another pen, probably safety. But it matches the body in shape, pattern, style... I´m really confused. Any ideas?

 

Best regards to everybody and thanks to moderators and members for great forum!

Jan

 

 

[kestrel]

Here's a link to an earlier FPN post on the Royal Plate Waterman's.  Not much info but the photo links still work. 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/130727-waterman-royal-plate-42-12v/

 

Nice pen.  I'm curious to hear from the experts about this one.

[joss]

That pen is a head scratcher indeed.

 

The metal parts seem genuine Waterman but to my knowledge Waterman never produced piston fillers. The last picture suggests that the cap will touch the nib points when it is screwed onto the barrel: does the cap have an inner cap?

 

The piston twist-knob resembles that of 1950s German piston fillers, such as those from Osmia or many other German pens from that era. Could the metal parts originate from a Waterman eye-dropper and were they transplanted onto a 1950s piston filler?

An eyedropper did not have a blind cap though. But it is odd that the metal overlay on the blind cap does not cover the blind cap top. It may also be odd that the 'wavy line' barrel pattern is also repeated on the blind cap. Chances are low that this pattern lines up properly on both parts. Pens with metal overlay generally had blind caps with a different or without pattern, as seen for instance on this Duofold with gold overlay. Was the blind cap maybe cut from the barrel top? If so, would a skilled craftsman succeed in fitting a straight tube onto a tapered blind cap?  

 

 

 

[Jjanek73]

Thank you both Kestrel and Joss. 🙂

 

Head scratcher is the right word. Cap has inner cap and not only will touch nib when screwed to barell, it will touch nib before it even catches the first thread of barell threading. To screw it fully, it lacks about five milimeters in length.

I´m not sure if blind cap could be cut from barell top, barell is cylindrical while blind cap is slightly conical and pattern respects that.

You are right, Joss, that safety pen caps do not have inner cap - and also here threading is on open end of cap, not deep inside nearly the closed end...

 

Jan

 

P.S.: May the pen use some really.. really short nib before so it would fit into the cap??? 🤔

[joss]

If nib, feed and section would belong together you could try forcing the nib & feed deeper into the section. But the nib already has a crack (from the breather hole downwards) so I would not do that with this nib.

 

What is the overall length of the pen? It seems that the piston does not have much room to move up and down inside the barrel.

[JungleJim]

Lovely pen! Sorry I can't help since I am no Waterman expert. The only two things I can think of is that the nib was originally a #1 Waterman nib that was replaced with a much larger (and longer) #2 nib, or that this pen had originally had 2 caps as Jan speculated, an inner and outer cap as is seen in this Waterman Safety pen...

 

link:   https://www.peytonstreetpens.com/waterman-s-ideal-542-1-2-v-safety-pen-rare-solid-14k-gold-fine-flexible-ny-nib-superior-works-well.html

 

All the Best.

[shalitha33]

Sorry no idea what this is and I am no waterman expert either. I have one telescoping cap waterman 52 1/2v .outer cap of the telescoping cap is where the outer patten is and this is not screwed in. It's a slip cap that fits in to the inner cap. Outer pattern of the inner cap is simply lines like at the back of a 52 1/2 v overlay. It's there just for the grip and will not align with any other patterns. My guess is that this is a 18k or gf overlayof a safety on some other cap of some sort?

[Jjanek73]

Joss: there is no way to put nib into the feed so far - maybe #1 nib as JungleJim suggested. I seems strange anyway why would somebody change the nib for bigger one, when cap is unusable with it. It would make more sense to use some non-original nib of adequate size (I´ve seen some pens here in Czech rep. - e.g. have Omas Lucens from thirties which I get for a song with steel Centropen (czech) nib from fifties). 

 

Piston can move for cca. 15mm, which makes a bit more than half mililiter of usable ink capacity - not much less than standard cartridge.

 

Thanks everybody for replies! Mystery lingers on... 😉