The New Collector

By Donna Swartz

All rights reserved by author

James S. Day, Jr. of Bowling Green, VA, has written to us with a description of his first fountain pen restoration. Restoration is usually covered elsewhere in the PENnant, but Jim’s description of his first experience in this area will strike a chord with other new collectors. Who among us has not been tempted to try some repairs but has been daunted by the possibility of wrecking something of value. Everyone will tell you to practice your repairs on cheap pens at first, but what happens if you only have one pen needing repairs and that one is your treasure? Jim’s treasure is a product of Sheaffer’s, the company that prior to the end of WWII had an apostrophe before its final “s.” We don’t necessarily recommend Jim’s course of action (there are good restorers out there to work on your most valued pens) but he got a lot of satisfaction out of tackling this one. He calls his contribution “Pen Restoration 101.”

My first total restoration of a fountain pen was of an old Sheaffer’s vacuum filler that had been a gift from my Aunt Kate.

Until I entered high school, I would spend four to six weeks of each summer vacation with my aunt and grandmother. I think my fascination with fountain pens started way back then. My earliest recollection of a fountain pen was this Sheaffer’s that resided in a pigeonhole drawer in my Aunt Kate’s tall secretary desk in the corner of her living room. It had a 14k gold filled cap and a Triumph “Lifetime” nib with a black “striped” visulated body.

I was five or six years old. This was the only pen I had ever seen with a streamlined gold cap and the perfect conical nib that was Sheaffer’s trademark in the 40s and 50s. The pen had to be used as a dip pen even then as the vacuum
filling mechanism had already ceased to work.

I had a routine of daily chores to perform. After completing my chores I was allowed to use the pen but it always had to be used at the secretary and returned to its appointed storage drawer. It was at this same secretary desk that the pen was used by my aunt for almost all family correspondence. In these years before television, my hours between dusk and bedtime were filled with reading, listening to the radio and writing with the Sheaffer’s.

I grew up and summer vacations went the way of other childhood memories. I went to college, served in the Navy, married and raised a family. Although I had accumulated several fountain pens, none had the mystique of the gold capped Sheaffer’s that belonged to Aunt Kate.

One Christmas many years later my Aunt Kate was visiting with my family in Virginia. After dinner she called me aside and placed the gold capped Sheaffer’s in my hand and said she wanted me to have it. I hadn’t thought about that pen in several decades.

Most of my fountain pens were in working order, or enough so that restoration wasn’t necessary. Here was a pen that I had always admired, that in my memory had never worked. Now it was mine. I had to restore it if possible!

I began reading up on the Sheaffer’s Vacuum Fillers. I met Sam Fiorella, who referred me to Father Terence Koch from whom I could get washers and seals as well as some special tools I would need to complete the restoration. Some weeks later, with all the items I thought I would need on hand, I retired to my study on a wintery Sunday afternoon to begin “pen surgery.”

The Sheaffer’s Vacuum Filler of the 1930s and the 1940s is one of the more difficult pens to repair. I probably would not have had the patience and tenacity to figure out how best to repair this particular pen had it not been such a part of me for over forty years. Once I was able to get it disassembled (using warm water soaks and a hand held hair dryer) I determined that all of the internal parts were in very good condition. The most difficult part of the disassembly was removing the small plastic cylinder that holds the feed and prevents the plunger from being removed from the nib end of the pen section. That part finally succumbed to about 140 degrees of warm water soaking and a screw extractor.

The stainless rod that operates the filler piston and the restraining nut that held the moveable seal in place were in good shape. Nothing was cracked or corroded. I was also lucky that the packing and seal assembly in the plunger end of the section came unglued and I was able to rebuild the packing gland and add more layers of seals to make the repair more thorough. This part of the repair is much easier to do with the packing gland and seal out of the pen.

After replacing all of the seals, fixed and moveable, and careful reassembly with attention to alignment of the feed and nib, I had a brand new 1939 or 1940 Sheaffer’s Lifetime Vacuum Filler. I have been using it several times a week for over a year and it works perfectly and doesn’t leak.

The vacuum fill design has a limitation of probably only about one hundred or so refills before the moveable seal will have to be replaced again. That is a small price to pay to be able to have a working model of the very pen that fired my interest in fountain pens almost 50 years ago.

Incidentally, restoring a Sheaffer’s Vac Fill pen successfully requires a good deal of patience. Sometimes you just have to put it aside for several days until you are “in the mood.” The good news is they are beautiful and functional pens once restored, and almost every other pen rebuild after a Sheaffer’s Vac is a piece of cake!