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

"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

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

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.

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.

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

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.