News — Vintage Fountain Pen

The Conway Stewart 560 replaced the 550 in 1963.  As I have both versions, in the same colour, I thought a quick comparison of the two might be useful.  In the photographs the 550 is at the top. The 560 is noticeably longer, about 5mm., than the 550.  The cap is also more streamlined.  It may appear that the difference in length is due to the cap length but, as the next photo shows, this is not the case. The barrel and section are both slightly longer on the 560. As the 560 nib is 'semi hooded' and the 550...

The Parker Duofold has been around, in one form or another, for about a hundred years.  It started with the 'Flat top', the most famous of which was the 'Big Red', this was followed by the 'Streamline' version, the button filler, the AF, the Aerometric, and now modern cartridge/converter versions. The so called 'Aerometric', this pen, was introduced in 1953.   It is not a difficult pen to disassemble, as with most pens the difficulty arises when bits that should come apart easily don't, due to them being clogged with the residue of dried ink or the overenthusiastc application of...

Eventually got my hands on a Waterman Man 100 and am most impressed.  Apart from the monster size of the pen the build quality and general feel are exemplary, pen making at its very best. Here it is alongside a Parker 51 to give an idea of the size: The design of the Man 100 is very traditional, reminiscent of a 1920s English lever filler, but it isn't English and it's a cartridge/converter filler.  The classical appearance of this example is enhanced by the colour, Black with Gold filled trim. I have to admit that it is a bit of...

I recently published two Parker 100 Fountain pen posts.  I have now tested each of them thoroughly and can report the results.  One pen is a Smoked Bronze GT pen and the other a Diamond Blue version:       Much has been written about the tendency for the Parker 100 to be a little erratic in performance but I found nothing untoward in either pen, quite the opposite.  Each pen was tested using an ink cartridge and an ink converter, the only difference was that, using the cartridge with a dry pen a little time was needed on the first use to allow...

The Parker 100 is much more than a Parker 51 on steroids!  Clearly Parker intended to hark back a few decades to the 51 by using the same overall shape and hooded nib but the similarity more or less ends there. With it's all metal construction, deep lacquered finish and larger size the 100 is a much heavier and more substantial pen than the 51.  Whether or not this is a good thing is a personal choice but few can doubt that the addition of an 18Ct. gold nib and more opulent use of materials adds something to to the...