Fountain Pens

Quite awhile back, I went into the attic of my father's house and rummaged through some of my grandmother's crafty stuff. My grandparents bought the house in 1959 so there's a lot of accumulated stuff. My grandmother was an artist, and an amazingly crafty woman. After seeing some old photographs for sale $1 each at the Johnny Appleseed Festival today, I thought of the upstairs bedroom filled with decades worth of old family photos. Here's some of Grandma before she married Grandpa.

Grandma did Water Ballet?!?!?! Whoa!

Turns out I'm not the only one who loved horses!!

Back when I was rummaging through the attic, I found three fountain pens and some ink. The two pictured below are broken and I'm considering buying replacement parts to fix them, but a blue sister of the silver Esterbrook J is serving my needs perfectly right now. The red pen is a Venus Presidential and has good reviews on some fountain pen forums so it may be the first I attempt to repair.

The Venus has a 14k gold medium nib, and I'm looking forward trying it out when it's fixed. The tip of the nib is well rounded and in fine shape. I think it might write very smoothly.

Unfortunately, I think the bladder was dry-rotted, so when I attempted to fill it with ink, I believe it snapped. I can't get a grip on the nib housing to pull it out and investigate.

I also can't get the nib housing on the silver Esterbrook J off, but from what I can tell, ink was left in it so long in the hot attic that it clogged and hardened. The nib is a 2556, used for accounting. The folded tip of the nib isn't as prominent as the 14k nib of the Venus, but I'm looking forward to testing it out when I get it unstuck from the pen and cleaned up.

The blue Esterbrook J has been a dream once I cleaned up the nib and housing. It's nib is a 9550 which, according to a 1948 nib advertisement, was used for posting, whatever that meant.

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So I couldn't wait. I used rubbing alcohol to loosen the dried ink from the silver J Series... Apparently, Grandma left a deep dark green ink in the pen. It was indeed glued shut. I managed to get the bladder and nib housing out of the pen barrel and the metal part of the nib out of the nib housing... But the plastic bit and the neck part that screws in and out of the bladder housing is good and stuck. Oy. Off to try a little gentle elbow grease.