Well, I was at an antique store browsing for fountain pens and saw a Wearever for the second time. The nib looked silvery with blue ink stains but appeared to be intact, and the body was a white and pink-striped celluloid with black striping in between. The end cap was missing.
For a grand total of $6.50 plus tax, I bought it. I figured that at least it would be a practice pen for restoration. My understanding is that Wearevers are really cheap fountain pens and generally not worth restoring.
So . . .
The cap and pen had a bunch of old, dried ink on it. A bit of soapy water and the nib looked . . . like a gold nib again! I was expecting it to have no plating. I tried to rinse everything as best I could.I
then took it upstairs to the bathroom and blasted the area above the section with a hairdryer on hot/high and brought some grippy shelf linter stuff from fountainpensacs.com or someplace like that. I think you can buy the same stuff in a huge roll for around $10. After 2 minutes of blasting the pen right above the section, I actually got the whole thing to loosen. I thought it was going to crack first, to be honest.
Inside was a surprisingly decent looking sac. I was also surprised when the lever fell out - it's basically a red plastic button that pushes on a flexible piece of metal that runs the length of the barrel. Glued to the flexible piece in the middle is a lever bar, and since the piece is length matched to the end of the barrel-against the section when in place, the flexible piece simply flexes when you press the button, and when you let go the button pops back up and the sac is no longer squeezed. I was expecting something much more complicated.
Some ammonia-based pen cleaner from Goulet's and a Q-tip to try to get all of the ink out of the cap, and inside the sac (pen cleaning solution made the sac interior put out grainy black material, so I am thinking that pen cleaning solution is not rubber sac friendly, at least to vintage pen sacs, as it did the same thing to my restored Parker Vacumatic), and then a lot of water rinsing, and when I put the section and barrel back together I now have a pen!
The last pic is with Diamine's Sargasso Sea (I think it's Diamine). It's a scratchy nib, slightly worse than a Noodler's flex nib, and it doesn't start reliably. Also, the section has a crack which leaks a bit of ink when I try to wipe it (from the nib side, not the barrel side). I don't know if I cracked it by trying to take it apart, or if it was found that way - the crack is really hard to see. I've read that Wearevers use relatively crackable cheaper plastics, so . . . who knows.
On the other hand, it is a pretty pen, and for $6.50 it was a fun exercise. I'm going to try a bit of crazy glue on the section to seal that crack. I may give it to my daughter to play with when she's older. Or I guess that I can find another really cheap vintage pen with a decent nib and try to do a nib swap . . . vintage nibs are all #2, right? Or I could try a Noodler's Nib Creaper flex nib . . . this is assuming that I can get the current nib and feed out (which I doubt but haven't tried).
So . . . anyone have a spare Wearever end cap (pink or otherwise)?
For a grand total of $6.50 plus tax, I bought it. I figured that at least it would be a practice pen for restoration. My understanding is that Wearevers are really cheap fountain pens and generally not worth restoring.
So . . .
The cap and pen had a bunch of old, dried ink on it. A bit of soapy water and the nib looked . . . like a gold nib again! I was expecting it to have no plating. I tried to rinse everything as best I could.I
then took it upstairs to the bathroom and blasted the area above the section with a hairdryer on hot/high and brought some grippy shelf linter stuff from fountainpensacs.com or someplace like that. I think you can buy the same stuff in a huge roll for around $10. After 2 minutes of blasting the pen right above the section, I actually got the whole thing to loosen. I thought it was going to crack first, to be honest.
Inside was a surprisingly decent looking sac. I was also surprised when the lever fell out - it's basically a red plastic button that pushes on a flexible piece of metal that runs the length of the barrel. Glued to the flexible piece in the middle is a lever bar, and since the piece is length matched to the end of the barrel-against the section when in place, the flexible piece simply flexes when you press the button, and when you let go the button pops back up and the sac is no longer squeezed. I was expecting something much more complicated.
Some ammonia-based pen cleaner from Goulet's and a Q-tip to try to get all of the ink out of the cap, and inside the sac (pen cleaning solution made the sac interior put out grainy black material, so I am thinking that pen cleaning solution is not rubber sac friendly, at least to vintage pen sacs, as it did the same thing to my restored Parker Vacumatic), and then a lot of water rinsing, and when I put the section and barrel back together I now have a pen!
The last pic is with Diamine's Sargasso Sea (I think it's Diamine). It's a scratchy nib, slightly worse than a Noodler's flex nib, and it doesn't start reliably. Also, the section has a crack which leaks a bit of ink when I try to wipe it (from the nib side, not the barrel side). I don't know if I cracked it by trying to take it apart, or if it was found that way - the crack is really hard to see. I've read that Wearevers use relatively crackable cheaper plastics, so . . . who knows.
On the other hand, it is a pretty pen, and for $6.50 it was a fun exercise. I'm going to try a bit of crazy glue on the section to seal that crack. I may give it to my daughter to play with when she's older. Or I guess that I can find another really cheap vintage pen with a decent nib and try to do a nib swap . . . vintage nibs are all #2, right? Or I could try a Noodler's Nib Creaper flex nib . . . this is assuming that I can get the current nib and feed out (which I doubt but haven't tried).
So . . . anyone have a spare Wearever end cap (pink or otherwise)?
