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Restoring a vintage fountain pen often requires a good deal of gentle scraping and general 'scrunging' in hard to reach places such as inside a pen barrel or cap.  Dental picks are made for just this type of task, albeit in a very different environment.  they are easily obtained and relatively cheap.  With use the points may become become worn or bent so may need replacing.  Perhaps replacing is the wrong word as you never know when you may actually need a blunt point so I keep the old ones anyway.  

Many of the tools used in the restoration of vintage fountain pens are not at all 'specialist' items. A sharp penknife is always handy for many little tasks, such as removing the remnants of an old ink sac from its nipple before replacing the sac.  I now have a very special knife.  It was made for me, and I mean every component was hand made, by my brother, a skilled craftsman. It is very sharp and perfectly suited to the job.  It is also a very tactile item and a real pleasure to handle.

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 bought a Noodler's 'Nib Creaper' in Black about three years ago, out of interest really.  At under £15 I didn't expect much but was very pleasantly surprised and I've used it hundreds of times since. My preferred 'Daily writer' is a Parker 51 but I have found myself turning to this pen more often of late.  There are two main reasons.  Firstly, although my handwriting is still dire I am trying to improve it and the flex offered by the Nib Creaper gives more encouragement.  Secondly the pen cost so little that I can treat it accordingly.  That is...

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...