Richard’s Pen Collection : Vintage American Fountain Pens

Writing instruments on this page are part of my personal collection and are not for sale. Click the magnifying-glass symbol () next to any pen to view a zoomed image for more detail.

What pens am I carrying today?

David Kahn, a Jewish immigrant, did not set out to make the world’s best fountain pens. Instead, his company sold Wearever pens for those who couldn’t afford the Sheaffers, Parkers, and other higher-priced brands. Wearever pens, being targeted at the low end, naturally used inexpensive designs, and the two least expensive self-filling designs available were the lever and the button. But Kahn was not averse to trying other things, and one such incident of exploration is represented by this rare experimental twist-filling DK-branded pen built on the Wearever Pioneer chassis. The pen fills like a twist filler, but the filler (U.S. Patent Nº 1,966,369) is actually a Rube Goldberg take on the ordinary bulb filler; half of the barrel is the reservoir with a breather tube, and the other half contains a length of sac arranged to be twisted by the aluminum knob at the distal end of the barrel. To prevent inadvertent twisting without covering the knob with a blind cap, and to prevent overtwisting, the spring-loaded knob mechanism includes two pins: one on the knob that fits into a hole in the barrel end so that it’s necessary to pull on the knob before it will turn, and another sunk into the barrel end and spring loaded to rise when the knob is pulled. This second pin serves as a stop for the first pin so that the knob can’t be turned more than one revolution in either direction. The pen is 5³/₆₄" long capped and 6⁷/₆₄" posted, and it features the two-piece “hooded” nib that Kahn used on the Pioneer and the Deluxe 100.

During the early 1920s, the former Wahl Adding Machine Company, having in 1917 purchased the assets of the Boston Fountain Pen Company, was reborn as the Wahl-Eversharp Company, and it rose to become one of the Big Four American pen manufacturers. It made some truly splendid pens, but it also made a potful of more ordinary pens, and this Wahl Pen Nº 73 is one of the latter. It’s relatively large, as the 7 in its number indicates: 5³/₁₆" capped and 6¹³/₁₆" posted. And it’s early, as Wahl-Eversharp soon began extending its catalog numbers to cover various materials and patterns: two-digit numbers became three-digit numbers with letter suffixes; and by 1926 or so, the numbers had grown yet another digit. Despite its size, this pen has a lesser nib, a Nº 3. On the other hand, even a Nº 3 Wahl nib can have lots of nice character, and this sweet fine flexie certainly does have character. The pen’s clip is solid nickel silver; it was once gold plated, but plain silver is better than blotchy gold, so what you see is what I got.

I never met a hard-rubber Sheaffer flexie that I didn’t like, but some are more lovable than others, and this Self-Filler Nº 2 (Model Nº 29S) falls really high up along that scale. The nib is killer, the unchased BHR is deep black and shiny enough to blind you, and the expansive 14K Autograph band is wicked cool, too. It’s a small pen, only 4³/₈" capped and 5¹/₂" posted, but somehow the size just fades into insignificance when the pen is in my hand.

Of course it will! The Wilrite Fountain Pen Corporation, located in New York City, was founded in 1924 as a successor to a silverware manufacturer owned by the brother of one of Wilrite‘s founders. Other than a patent for a cool way to mount the lever in a metal pen, there’s not a lot of fascination in the company, but I have to say that their pens were somewhat better than typical third-tier stuff. But I like off-the-wall companies, and when this metal set jumped out of their original box on a table at a pen show and said, “Buy us, please buy us!” who was I to refuse? For their original $15.00 price tag, these pieces aren’t nearly so solid as a contemporaneous Wahl set would be, but that doesn’t really diminish their charm. The pen has a nice flexible stub and is 4⁷/₈" capped and 6⁷/₃₂" posted, and the pencil is 5³/₃₂" long. (And the pencil is a propel-repel model, which Wahl-Eversharp didn’t yet have in its catalog when this set was made.) The BCHR ringtop floated to the top in one of my parts boxes, and I stuck a WARRANTED nib into it just because it was a Wilrite. It’s 4¹¹/₃₂" capped and 5¹⁹/₆₄" posted, and it turns out to be a pretty nice pen despite not having a Wilrite-branded nib. Oh, and ya just gotta love the Wilrite logo!