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#1
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Newbie question: Vintage pen for everyday use
Hi there,
Apologies if this has been debated to death in oder postings, I did a newsgroups search but could not find an answer. I am a pen user but have always used new pens - Sheafers, Parkers, Pelikans mostly. I now want to buy a vintage Conway Stewart, but I want to be able to use it on a daily basis - it's not for displaying. So, my question is: are vintage Conway-Stewarts (at least those sold in "very good" or "excellent" condition) good for everyday use? If so, which models would you suggest? which period? I have been told that the model 27,28, 58 and 60 are better quality then the rest? Is that so? Your expertise and opinions will be greatly appreciated, Thanks for your help, SEG |
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#2
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"seg" wrote:
Hi there, snip I now want to buy a vintage Conway Stewart, but I want to be able to use it on a daily basis - it's not for displaying. So, my question is: are vintage Conway-Stewarts (at least those sold in "very good" or "excellent" condition) good for everyday use? If so, which models would you suggest? which period? I have been told that the model 27,28, 58 and 60 are better quality then the rest? Is that so? snip Conway Stewart made *a lot* of pens dating back to about 1919. They're known particularly for their beautiful plastics. The pens you mentioned would make great everyday users, but so would many other CSs. Do you live near a vintage pen shop or city that hosts a pen show? If so, I'd suggest you shop around and choose one that in your opinion looks good, feels good, and writes well. --- Bernadette |
#3
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Yes, they were a good medium quality pen but if you want the experience of
writing with a vintage pen as opposed to a modern one, the vintage pen should have a nib which writes differently to modern ones. In my experience most Conway Stewarts had relatively stiff nibs. A bit like most modern pens. Newbies and non-aficionados don't quite 'get' this. They think that the point is to find a nib which will write smoothly. After about 1940 when nibs had to use less gold or more cheap metal, smoothness had to be emphasised in advertising because the manufacturers couldn't make pens with flexible nibs. Also after about the mid 20s when the lifetime warranty came in, they tried to stop people noticing how stiff their nibs were by brainwashing everyone into thinking that smoothness was the requisite parameter. Virtually ANY nib can be made to write smoothly. (and so's not to start a flaming session which people on these boards seem to love, I should add that there are people out there who love vintage pens with stiff nibs, - and you may be one of them) But if you want a different experience and want a Conway, make sure that the nib is flexible. There aren't all that many out there Licensed to Quill "seg" wrote in message ... Hi there, Apologies if this has been debated to death in oder postings, I did a newsgroups search but could not find an answer. I am a pen user but have always used new pens - Sheafers, Parkers, Pelikans mostly. I now want to buy a vintage Conway Stewart, but I want to be able to use it on a daily basis - it's not for displaying. So, my question is: are vintage Conway-Stewarts (at least those sold in "very good" or "excellent" condition) good for everyday use? If so, which models would you suggest? which period? I have been told that the model 27,28, 58 and 60 are better quality then the rest? Is that so? Your expertise and opinions will be greatly appreciated, Thanks for your help, SEG |
#4
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Licensed to Quill wrote:
snip After about 1940 when nibs had to use less gold or more cheap metal, smoothness had to be emphasised in advertising because the manufacturers couldn't make pens with flexible nibs. snip You caught me off guard with that one. After stewing about it a couple of days, I just had to reply, despite the fact that this has been the subject of a number of threads. Just because nibs became less flexible doesn't mean companies "couldn't" make them that way. It just means they *didn't* make them this way, for whatever reason. Also, from previous threads on this subject, I've learned that gold content or "cheapness" of the metal used is not the determining factor for flexibility of nibs, but, rather, the physical properties of the alloy. This jives with what I learned from chemistry and physics and my personal experience. The most flexible nibs in my collection are dip nibs made from "cheap" steel, not even stainless, and my most flexible FP nibs are stainless steel, not gold. Granted, there are undoubtedly gold nibs that are much more flexible than the steel ones in my meager collection, but it serves to demonstrate that gold content is not the determining characteristic for flexibilty. Finally, titanium nibs, definitely not a "cheap" metal, are known to be stiffer than nails. Given your experience and standing as an authority, your statement, above, was very surprising. Frankly, I'm perplexed. Have I misunderstood something? Are you basing your statement on information I'm not familiar with? Please believe me when I say that I'm not trolling. I am intellectually curious about this. Just to be perfectly clear, the smoothness issue is completely immaterial to me. I am only commenting on and interested in the flexibility issue. TIA, Mark Z. |
#5
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Dear MZ (for the benefit of other in this group, I should say that I have
absolutely no problem whatsoever with addressing you as MZ or in taking your obviously serious and earnest question any less seriously or earnestly when I do not know who you a You have asked a perfectly valid question and it deserves a response) You might find that this intriguing point you raise is something to do with what I said in the next sentence: That when lifetime guarantees came in, manufacturers thought that they had to produce stiff nibs (all made of gold of course) so that there was less chance of them coming back at some time. This may be why Sheaffer nibs were the stiffest while that company continued to make their famous white dot product throughout the second and third third of the last Century. I would imagine the same applied to all those wartime pens produced for a few cents each: They put stiff nibs on them because there weren't the facilities for opening huge service stations for companies like Wearever when someone bent their brand new pen's nib and the retailer didn't want to blame the customer? Perhaps even more relevant was the fact pointed out by Zazove that a lot of these pens were produced to wartime contracts and finding a service station in some microscopic speck of land in the Mid-Pacific may have proved a bit of a problem. But I wasnt intentionally trying to make any direct relationship between the use of gold and the stiffness of the nib although as you correctly notice within the limited scope of your collection (it must be the only collection around with non-gold nibs which are predominantly flexible) there usually is one. And certainly not between the cost of the metal and the flexibility of the product. It is just that I have almost never come across any metal nibs which are particularly flexible. And I did once ask Gianluca Malaguti (Omas is one of the few companies which does sometimes produce flexible nibs) why pen companies don't produce flexible nibs any more after he hade told me that their Europeo pen DID have a flexible nib in it and he went into some long involved explanation (which I must confess didn't make a lot of sense to me) as to why flexible nibs are so difficult to produce consistently and easily (I am sure Frank has a better answer for all this) Jonathan "mz" wrote in message magic.net... Licensed to Quill wrote: snip After about 1940 when nibs had to use less gold or more cheap metal, smoothness had to be emphasised in advertising because the manufacturers couldn't make pens with flexible nibs. snip You caught me off guard with that one. After stewing about it a couple of days, I just had to reply, despite the fact that this has been the subject of a number of threads. Just because nibs became less flexible doesn't mean companies "couldn't" make them that way. It just means they *didn't* make them this way, for whatever reason. Also, from previous threads on this subject, I've learned that gold content or "cheapness" of the metal used is not the determining factor for flexibility of nibs, but, rather, the physical properties of the alloy. This jives with what I learned from chemistry and physics and my personal experience. The most flexible nibs in my collection are dip nibs made from "cheap" steel, not even stainless, and my most flexible FP nibs are stainless steel, not gold. Granted, there are undoubtedly gold nibs that are much more flexible than the steel ones in my meager collection, but it serves to demonstrate that gold content is not the determining characteristic for flexibilty. Finally, titanium nibs, definitely not a "cheap" metal, are known to be stiffer than nails. Given your experience and standing as an authority, your statement, above, was very surprising. Frankly, I'm perplexed. Have I misunderstood something? Are you basing your statement on information I'm not familiar with? Please believe me when I say that I'm not trolling. I am intellectually curious about this. Just to be perfectly clear, the smoothness issue is completely immaterial to me. I am only commenting on and interested in the flexibility issue. TIA, Mark Z. |
#6
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So Seg, after all this distracting babble, did you get any insight into
Conway Stewart pens? I like old Sheaffer Balances and a particularly good Parker 51 as daily writers. Maybe some other pen freaks can tell me if the CSs hold up as well as these do in daily use, after 50 to 75 years. Others have lauded Sheaffer Touchdowns and Snorkels, but I find Snorkels too thin in my hand. Ken "seg" wrote in message ... Hi there, Apologies if this has been debated to death in oder postings, I did a newsgroups search but could not find an answer. I am a pen user but have always used new pens - Sheafers, Parkers, Pelikans mostly. I now want to buy a vintage Conway Stewart, but I want to be able to use it on a daily basis - it's not for displaying. So, my question is: are vintage Conway-Stewarts (at least those sold in "very good" or "excellent" condition) good for everyday use? If so, which models would you suggest? which period? I have been told that the model 27,28, 58 and 60 are better quality then the rest? Is that so? Your expertise and opinions will be greatly appreciated, Thanks for your help, SEG |
#7
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Licensed to Quill wrote:
Dear MZ (for the benefit of other in this group, I should say that I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with addressing you as MZ or in taking your obviously serious and earnest question any less seriously or earnestly when I do not know who you a You have asked a perfectly valid question and it deserves a response) Thanks for taking me seriously, Jonathon. So few people do. ;0) Although, you could call me Mark. You might find that this intriguing point you raise is something to do with what I said in the next sentence: That when lifetime guarantees came in, manufacturers thought that they had to produce stiff nibs (all made of gold of course) so that there was less chance of them coming back at some time. This may be why Sheaffer nibs were the stiffest while that company continued to make their famous white dot product throughout the second and third third of the last Century. I would imagine the same applied to all those wartime pens produced for a few cents each: They put stiff nibs on them because there weren't the facilities for opening huge service stations for companies like Wearever when someone bent their brand new pen's nib and the retailer didn't want to blame the customer? Perhaps even more relevant was the fact pointed out by Zazove that a lot of these pens were produced to wartime contracts and finding a service station in some microscopic speck of land in the Mid-Pacific may have proved a bit of a problem. I hadn't thought of this, but it makes sense. If you're offering a lifetime guarantee, you don't want to be nickel-and-dimed into bankruptcy by future repairs. So your product will be as bullet-proof as you can reasonably make it. But I wasnt intentionally trying to make any direct relationship between the use of gold and the stiffness of the nib although as you correctly notice within the limited scope of your collection (it must be the only collection around with non-gold nibs which are predominantly flexible) there usually is one. And certainly not between the cost of the metal and the flexibility of the product. It is just that I have almost never come across any metal nibs which are particularly flexible. snip Thank you, for clearing this up. BTW, of the few flexies in my small collection, there are more gold than non-gold nibs. It's simply that the most flexible nibs are steel. Again, thanks, Mark Z. |
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