Something a Little Different: A Pen Restoration Project - 1950's Waterman Ideal Lever Filler

Unrestored vintage pens seem to be extremely hard to find around here.   After a couple years of looking around, nothing - until a couple weeks ago, when my wife, who volunteers at a charity thrift store brought home a surprise.  Someone had brought in an old Waterman Ideal 'Leader' pen/pencil set, (circa 1950).  The pencil was not functional, and the lever-filler pen had an old, dull nib, no sac, and the pressure bar had broken off the lever.

I was considering sending it off to one of the many very talented pen restorers out there, but it suddenly occurred to me that I actually had some silicone sacs in stock (for my eventual plan to make button fillers and bulb fillers).  So I figured I might just as well have a go at this one, and see what I could do.

I found a link on FPGeeks.com to a tutorial on Richard Binder's website on how to repair the lever assembly (thank you Richard Binder!), so with a bit of patience and holding my tongue just right, I managed to reattach the pressure bar to the lever (this type of lever assembly has the lever attached to the pressure bar, while many do not).

The feed needed some serious cleaning, and the nib was a very dull matte, barely recognizable as 14K gold.  Fortunately the feed cleaned up well with soapy water, and the nib polished to a beautiful shine.

Using a bit of shellac to secure it, I put a new silicone sac onto the nib section, and with a bit of talc to lubricate it, it slid into the barrel with no trouble.

So, the acid test - I dipped the nib, and worked the lever, and lo and behold, it pulled up plenty of ink with no problem.

The nib itself is a flexy nib (not overly so, but much more than modern ones).  The writing sample shows a very poor example of how poorly one can actually write with a flexy nib  ;-)  The sample is on Clairefontaine paper using Pelikan Royal Blue.  The line variation shows up much better on cheaper paper.

Well, that was a first for me.  I can see why some say that vintage pen repair is addictive!

Thanks for looking!

Ken