Monday, July 27, 2020

Newest Acquisitions (Virtual "Show & Tell") ~ part 50

And now for a couple of nice vintage fountain pens recently acquired by René - his Sheaffer 'Craftsman and 'Admiral' Thin-Model Touchdown-filling fountain pens...

(all photos courtesy of René ~ please click on images to enlarge)

René:"Sheaffer was always an innovator in terms of filling mechanisms and was the first to introduce the lever-filling system that was very common among vintage pens into the 60s, and one of the first to re-introduce the cartridge pen later on."

"The "Touchdown" filler first appeared in 1949, and was a new take on the pneumatic filler system that usually only takes one or two pumpings (pull the plunger out, put the tip into the ink, push the plunger back in, wait for half a minute, and you're done) to fill."

"In the early 1950s they used the Touchdown system in a new line of pens, made of mold-injected plastics, that they called the Thin Models (TM). These are two from this line."

"The green ("evergreen green") pen is the Craftsman, the lowest end of the TM series, but by no means a poor model. It is a simple, but elegant cigar-shaped design with a subtly beautiful gold-tone metal ring at the rim of the cap. Like the other TM models it has a spiral-cut no-slip grip section with a visulated part. The nib is 14-karat gold, marked with a "33" on it, which is a mark of the Craftsman model. This one has a medium nib and is, like most Sheaffer nibs, a wonderful, smooth writer."

"The burgundy pen is an Admiral, the next step up from the Craftsman in the TM tree. Appropriately, it has a bit more "bling" to it, with a wider gold band and a fine, elegant two-tone nib, with the markings, "Feathertouch" and "5" - the latter is a mark of the TM Admiral model. I haven't inked this one yet, but I expect that it would be an excellent writer as well. There is a barely-noticeable hairline crack in the cap, but it's quite stable, thanks to the cap ring."


Many thanks to René for the photos and historical background on these two classic vintage Sheaffers!

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