For Want of a Fulcrum:
The Sad Story of Waterman Lever Boxes
By L. Michael Fultz
All rights reserved by author
Archimedes, a Greek mathematician circa 450 B.C.E., declared that,
given a long enough lever, a fulcrum and a place to stand, he could
move the world. Roughly 2360 years later, the L. E. Waterman company
faced a problem of considerable leverage.... an Iowa jeweler named Walter
Sheaffer had patented a method of self-filling a fountain pen by means
of a lever actuated device for evacuating a soft rubber sac (when the
lever is released, atmospheric pressure forces ink into the partial
vacuum in the sac). Sheaffer's pens did not sell as well as Waterman's
(who was the market leader) but his patent stood squarely in the way
of Waterman's profits since a reasonable court might well find that
any Waterman lever system infringed upon Sheaffer's patent. Waterman
searched for other lever designs to try to find one which had its own
unique features. They purchased designs and patent rights from various
inventors between 1903 and 1916.
Archimedes's patent on the lever had expired. What remained to be
fought over was the method of attaching the lever to the barrel of the
pen, the method of attaching a pressure bar to the lever, the method
of guiding the pressure bar within the barrel, and the method of returning
the pressure bar to its resting position so the sac could fully re-expand
when filled with ink. Sheaffer's method of placing a pin through both
the barrel and the lever so that the pin acted both as the fulcrum and
to retain the lever in the barrel was a simple, elegant, patentable
idea. Fulcrums (like levers) were not patentable. Waterman's problem
was to find another method of attaching the lever to and retaining the
lever in the barrel of the pen which was sufficiently different from
Sheaffer's to avoid paying a royalty to Sheaffer.
Waterman's success at avoiding patent infringement is, today, one
of the most troubling problems for collectors of Waterman lever filled
pens… so very many of them have broken lever boxes. Since Waterman
could not use the pin on which the lever hinged to hold the lever in
place, they had to resort to placing the lever in a frame (with a pin
on which to hinge the lever), then use tabs to hold the frame in place
in the barrel. This solution to a patent problem left the Waterman lever
system weak (it also made it expensive).
There are two different problems with the box or frame of a Waterman
lever... the first is that it has almost no strength to resist outward
(or upward) pressure. This is the very sort of pressure which exists
when someone forces the lever of a Waterman up after the sac has hardened.
The frame bends at its weakest point… namely, where the hinge pin
passes through it. (Usually, after the frame bends, it breaks.)
Pen collectors learn early to test the soundness of Waterman lever
boxes by very gently trying to lift the lever… using a pressure
carefully calculated to see if the lever moves, but not to move it so
far or so hard as to bend or break the box. Sometimes broken levers
can be detected in this way, sometimes not. Sometimes the lever breaks
(you feel bad, the dealer gets mad and so forth).
Could not Waterman have made the frame heavier? Perhaps a little,
but any thickness beyond the thickness of the side of the barrel reduced
ink capacity; and, probably as important, increased cost. (Besides,
had the pens lasted forever, how could the repairers make a living or
how could Waterman sell another pen?)
What about the pen collector, disheartened at having purchased a pen
with a broken lever box (or, perhaps worse, having broken it himself)?
That the Waterman lever design had some problems is of little consolation
to the collector holding a #58 ripple with a broken lever box! What
can he do? It is time for another of Fultz's rambles through metallurgy,
the workings of the jewelry trade, and pen repair practices. All of
the comments below apply to the standard 5X (52, 54, 56, 58) series
Waterman pens, but almost every one applies to the other numbers of
Waterman lever fillers such as the S.F. ("S.F." stands for
self-filling), 9X, 3X, 7, 5, Patrician, Hundred Year, Emblem, etc.
Asking repairers for a new lever box usually results in derision.
(If I have any, I would much prefer to hold them in reserve to repair
my own #58 rather than yours). There were some cast reproductions made
a few years ago, but they were very soft, looked suspicious and no longer
seem to be available. The answer to finding a replacement Waterman lever
box is usually to murder another pen and cannibalize it.
Did I mention that Waterman 5X series lever boxes come in several
sizes? One size fits the #2 and #4 size pens, one size fits the #5 and
#6 size pens and one size fits the #8 and #10 size pens (yes, Virginia,
there is a #20 PSF lever filler). Metals: Waterman levers and boxes
come in solid gold (14K, 18K, 9K depending on the country.... most are
yellow gold, but pink gold and white gold examples exist), sterling,
gold-filled, nickel-plate, gold-plate and chrome plate. The structural
metal under the gold-filled, gold-plate, nickel-plate and chrome plate
lever boxes is brass. All of these metals are non-ferrous (literally
not iron) which means they become brittle when they are worked, but
can be both hard soldered and annealed. A skilled craftsperson can remove
a lever box from the pen, remove the lever from the box, hard solder
the broken joints, redrill the holes, fit a new pin, then reinstall
the box in the pen. Estimated time.... somewhat over an hour (unless
a tab was broken in removal, then add another hour or two); estimated
cost, more than you want... (Hard soldering is done with silver alloy
solder, flux containing borax, and heat of about 1100 degrees, just
short of the melting point of the brass. Of course the parts must be
replated after soldering.) Fortunately, hard soldering the box will
also anneal (remove the brittleness) from the metal.
This brings us to the second problem with the Waterman lever design....
those tabs which hold the lever box assembly in place. They became brittle
when the lever box was manufactured, more brittle when it was staked
into the barrel and more brittle still when they were stressed a few
thousand times as the pen was filled.... in other words, these tabs
are ready to break if not already broken and removing a lever box is
the surest way to break them. If you break off one or more tabs, they
can be hard soldered back into place (estimated time required... more
than an hour). Estimated cost... a lot. And the cost and risk rise dramatically
if the repairer must remove an overlay or filigree from the barrel in
order to remove and repair or replace a broken lever box (and why is
it always the sterling ones...).
Beware! Inspect all Waterman lever fillers to see if a broken lever
box has been epoxied into the barrel (or even if a pin has been driven
through the sides of the barrel to hold the lever and box in place).
Should you find such a situation, you may wish to discount the value
of such a pen by at least 50%. If you find a Waterman with a broken
lever box, you may wish to discount the value of the pen by the cost
of repairing or replacing the lever box (perhaps as much as $300 based
on my informal survey of pen repairers; very few of whom could or would
supply a lever box).
Another complication... You may have noticed that the mechanisms and
pressure bars inside Waterman's "S.F" lever fillers are different
from inside the "5X" and other, later pens (and if you haven't
noticed, you almost certainly haven't looked). The "S.F."
version has a rounded lower end to the lever which actuates a pressure
bar connected to a "J" bar. It is the "J" bar (so
named because it is shaped like the letter J) which lifts the pressure
bar from the sac when the lever is closed. "J" bars are springs
and, like all springs, if flexed enough times, they break. Since the
Waterman version of the "J" bar is riveted to the pressure
bar and since this assembly seems to be narrower than any of the replacements
now available, broken internal parts in your Waterman 514 P.S.F. "Golfer"
can be a real tragedy.
Later Waterman lever fillers use a different internal mechanism. On
the 5X, #7, #5 and so forth pens, the lower end of the lever terminates
in two tabs or 'feet' which engage under rolled 'lips' in the sides
of the pressure bar and form a pivot. When the lever is closed on these
later pens, it carries the pressure bar up and away from the sac. Once
again trouble lurks just below the surface... These little 'feet' sometimes
break off. This disaster often happens when one attempts to remove the
pressure bar from the lever in order to perform some other repair (such
as fixing a broken lever box). The pressure bar itself seems to have
been designed to not be easily removed, for it has a tab which snaps
up to prevent the pressure bar from sliding out of the pen when the
sac is withdrawn. Reinstalling this style Waterman pressure bar requires
squinting down the interior of the barrel to line up the 'feet' with
the 'lips', then sliding the pressure bar over the feet until the tab
locks. It should be noted that this procedure requires more hands than
one person owns since the lever must be held with tweezers or forceps
while being slipped into the barrel, the lever must be held at nearly
a right angle to the barrel and pressure bar, and a fiber optic or other
light source is needed to be able to actually see the lips slide over
the feet. Imagine yourself or your favorite repairer holding the lever
and barrel with the left hand, gripping forceps and guiding the pressure
bar with the right hand, while holding a flashlight in the mouth or
under the chin.
Hence another caution: if you pick up a Waterman lever filler and
hear something sliding or rattling inside the barrel, be aware that
this is not a good thing. To sum up, Waterman lever filling pens can
be valuable and are interesting to collect, but you may wish to begin
stockpiling parts- pens with sound lever boxes to use as spares.
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