Waltham Combo repair.

January 5

I'm not putting this in the repair forum because I am no expert at repair, and wouldn't want anyone to take my advice. Just recording something I did.

I have a Waltham Combo pen/pencil that I got for very little some years ago. This is one of those vintage items with a lever filler fountain pen on one end, and a twist operated mechanical pencil on the other. I have several other of these combos by other makers, mostly Wearevers, but one Remington, and one Arnold.

The Waltham has a rather pretty vintage celluloid pattern, but unfortunately had two large cracks forming in the barrel. It was not broken all the way through, but you could see it coming apart when twisting the pen, for example when unscrewing the cap. Although it was not worth paying a professional to try to mend this, I've been meaning to have a go at it myself for some time. I decided not to worry about making the repair invisible, just wanted to see if I could get a functional pen.

I had a couple of tries at fixing this with JB Weld epoxy, but absolutely could not get it to set. Must have been user error of some kind, although I was following the instructions as closely as I could. Maybe I got the epoxy mix wrong, maybe I didn't clamp it properly, don't know. But I couldn't make it work.

So I tried Krazy Glue, and that worked. It's holding quite well. I cleaned off some some residual epoxy on the exterior with an emory board. As I said, I'm no expert at repair, but it doesn't look bad (to me). Put in a new sac. Filled the fountain pen with a cheap ink, Hero Blue-Black, and put a darker lead in the pencil than the one that was in there.

Didn't really have any great hopes for it as a writing instrument. Waltham was a third tier brand, after all. The nib said 14k gold plated, but all the gold plating is gone, which didn't say much for the original quality. Surprisingly, though, it is very nice to write with, very smooth, and a nice wet writer. It's not something I'd carry around with me, but I think I may have found a new desk pen.