...is sometimes just so much claptrap. The popular mantra, “Montblancs suck,” is one such instance.
A while back I wrote about today’s Montblanc and why I think it’s not the ogre that Montblanc haters make it out to be. I do have to admit that I’m probably not going to acquire more modern Montblancs, but the more vintage ones I work on the better I like them. This week I worked on four, all of which are pretty nice pens — and they are proof positive that Montblanc pens do not suck, unless it’s ink we’re talking about.
The first two came from a single client. A 139 and a 138, they seemed to be in poor shape: hard rubber oxidized, pistons no longer sealing, and — worst of all — snowcaps shrunken and distorted and fallen loose from the caps. It turned out that the pens were really in good condition after all, and they came up very well under restoration.
Wherever possible I restored the hard rubber by buffing away the micro-thin oxidized layer; where I couldn’t do that (because of imprints or other textured areas), I used G-10. New corks solved the piston problems, and I fabricated new snowcaps for both pens. Here’s a quick snap of the 139’s cap crown after restoration.
These were wicked fun to restore, but they’re too big for me, even the 138. I was ready for something smaller, and a longtime client’s 262 was it.
The piston seal was leaking, but that turned out to be due to s scale of dried ink in the barrel, and a good cleanout solved it. The nib was bent downward, requiring me to heat-reset the feed and straighten the nib. Now the pen holds in k and writes well, and I know my client will be pleased.
The fourth in this clutch of snowcaps was attached to a vintage 142 belonging to an older couple we met at the Atlanta show. It’s a family piece, and they were pretty dubious about its future as a writing instrument.
It was in excellent condition except for the nib, which had been seriously crumpled. The tip was bent to one side, and half of the iridium was broken off each tine. And the feed had been chewed by the same metal-eating tool that had done such a fine job on the nib.
The easy part was the feed. Hard rubber has a remarkable shape memory when it’s heated gently, and this feed returned to its original shape almost perfectly. (This doesn’t happen if the part has been gouged, but if the damage is all crush-and-crimp stuff it’s just magic.)
The nib spent a fair amount of time on the block: inner curve, outer curve, untwist. Basically, this sort of work is like shampooing your hair: lather, rinse, and repeat — more than once if needed. After I got the nib back into its proper shape and dealt with the scratches and other cosmetic issues, I reground the tip to a nice medium. This is another one that I think is going to make someone very happy.
Life is a song, best sung in the key of “Gee!”
