There is an interesting cultural change in America that equates immediate attention, in-and-out and efficiency with the quality of goods or services. In a cookie-cutter world, maybe the only way to differentiate between similar products is instant gratification. Since there is not much choice between essentially the same product, how quickly one can achieve gratification becomes a hallmark of quality. This is surely an ironic condition in the world of fountain pens. I may be on the wrong tack, but my sense is that fountain pen users want to physically craft their own words, much as the world had done since the beginning of writing. To sense those strokes that make up a word and to see the flow of ink on paper. To enjoy writing means creating the time to do something that is rewarding. In a similar fashion, the reason I enjoy restoring pens is to have the time to work on each pen, knowing that each pen I work on is different from the one I just finished and the work I need to do for the next pen is also going to be different from the last one.
Of course one Vac is pretty much the same as another one. But how a Vac was used by its original owner(s), whether it has been repaired before and even what kind of ink was used in it, will create minor and sometimes major differences. For some weeks I have tried to take the aluminum jewel off a first year Vac cap. Aluminum corrodes and binds itself to other metals. This bond can be very strong. I need to take the jewel out in order to get to some dents in the sterling silver cap. I have tried four or five different ways of getting the jewel loose. But it refuses to budge. The reason for my determination is quite simple: aluminum jeweled caps are scarce and there will always be repair to do on these caps. Now is as good as any time to figure out every possible way to remove these aluminum jewels. I finally managed to remove the jewel, but in the process made a tool just for that purpose.
There is an unpredictable dynamic as to when and how many pens arrive for restoration/repair. Think of a gas station that averages ten cars per hour for a fill-up. This means that a car will arrive every six minutes, enough time that there will never be a line at a gas station. In the real world cars do not arrive at gas stations at six minute intervals. During any hour, four cars drive in and at another hour, thirty cars drive in. So it is with pens. We can be down to a ten-day turnaround period in our work. Then a couple of dealers send in large lots of repairs and in one day our turnaround time changes from a short one to a much longer one. A pen show can easily add 40-50 customers and 70-100 pens.
Our turnaround with work on hand is usually 3 weeks. That's of course my perception of work on hand. From the time a package is sent to our mail service (Washington St. address where someone records every package), to our pickup and then recording each order in our log, can vary from 3-4 days to 7-10 days. There was the time when a pen ended up in the property room of a police station. This was the result of a mail van heist. That package took three months to get to us. Roger and I each have our own preferences as to those writing instruments we like to work on. It turns out we complement each other exceedingly well. Although it can take 3-4 days before a job gets to me. Then the process is repeated at the other end when the job is completed. A pen can be in transit anywhere from 2-3 weeks. About once a month there is a pen show and this can be very busy because Roger is packing up and a few times a year I go with him. So there is a backup during these periods. This translates annually into a couple of busy seasons. The LA, Atlanta, Boston and Chicago show from early February through the middle of May can backup a lot of work. The Washington show in August can also jam up things. Right now the smoothest turnaround time is summer and the Christmas season.
The time it takes to repair a pen depends on parts and procedures. We try to maintain a large inventory of parts pens. But it is impossible and in any case financially absurd to maintain parts for all vintage pens. I will save the story of pen parts for another occasion. Mechanical procedures are generally straightforward. But adhesive procedures and chemical procedures in general often take a significant amount of time. Take for example a cap lip crack. After some initial work, the crack is first bounded together and it takes three days for the adhesive to set. Then a strengthening layer is added to the cap and once set, a second layer and sometimes a third layer. Each layer takes three days to set. Two weeks to repair a crack is about the minimum amount of time to get the work done. If the cap requires other work such as a clip replacement and clip plating, or the piston filler requires a different size cork, or there is some machining to be done, then this pen could stay on the work bench for a month before its ready to be polished and send to the customer.
AND a few words about pen collectors and pen accumulators. The distinction often comes with the idea of focus and direction. The collector selects one manufacturer and more often than not, some limited period of production and collects one model of pens. The accumulator picks a pen that happens to strike their fancy at that time and over time finds that he has acquired many pens. For both the thrill of the find is at least as important as the acquisition of the pens. Since the sensation of the find is pleasurable, it is desirable to repeat that feeling again and again. It is possible for an accumulator to find pens as frequently as possible within his/her budget. The pen collector defers this pleasure. He probably did not start with this in mind, although as the collection expands, the frequency of finding a pen for the collection becomes less and less. It is a way of deferring the pleasure and with the result that when the find occurs, there is a heightened sense of pleasure.
For a long time, I thought of myself as an accumulator. Although I understood that in a collection the whole is more important that the constituent parts, it took a long time for me to understand that a collection also told a story. It's a complex and intricate story, in which each of the pens, some in mint condition and others almost as parts, together provided a narrative not only of a model or a manufacturer, but an insight of the culture and its time in history. As a historian, I should have realized this much sooner. My interest is in the mechanism and materials of fountain pens, has led to a collection of piston pens. The story of corks, seals, piston rods and screw mechanisms is coming along quite nicely.
I do not think of my self as being anti-technology. Indeed, much of the work that I do on pens would not be possible without modern technology. Just the improvements in the world of adhesives during the past fifty years give us a whole range of products that were not available to an earlier generation of pen repairers. Yet the work that Roger and I do on pens belongs to another era. We think of ourselves as a restorers and this translates to the idea of dedication to a particular craft. Restoring a pen to its original function and beauty. And I cannot think of anything else I rather be doing.
