THIS PEN HAS BEEN SOLD!
Hello there! Welcome to Inkquiring Minds! My name is Doug and I'm back with another pen Resurrection Sunday. Actually, this is the start of a trilogy of three Pen Resurrection Sundays.
Over the next three Sundays, I'm going to be restoring these three beautiful Parker vacuum attics in three colors; a Burgundy Pearl, a Golden Pearl, and an Azure Pearl. I got these three pens on an eBay auction and all three auctions ended within 5 minutes of each other. So I was really stoked that I actually won all three of these pens. They came from some kind of an estate sale in the United States. Obviously, they were from someone who enjoyed pens because there were over 25 different pens from the 1930s 40s and 50s that were in the auction.
I focused on these three; this is a burgundy Pearl Vacuumatic first generation from 1940, and this one is another first generation from 1936, so it's one of the very early first generation Parker Vacumatics and this one I don't have a date code on the barrel. I have to get the nib off to see what the date is. My guess is mid-1940s - 44 45 46 something like that.
This is a third-generation Vacumatic so we'll do this one first and for the next two pen Resurrection Sundays, we'll do the other two. This might be my favorite of the lot. You notice that between the third generation and the first generation, there are some differences. The clips are different and the clip rings are different. The third generation was a single jewel. This is a double Jewel. Also, the difference in size is not due to the generation. The difference in size is that this one is a standard size and these are Debutants. So the Golden Pearl one as well is a Debutante
The other big difference between Generation 1 and Generation 3 is that Generation One were lockdown fillers. You take the blind cap off and there's the lockdown with the brass top in good shape. Here you give the brass knob a turn and it extends you can press that diaphragm down to pump up ink and then you turn it back again to lock it in place, and put the blind cap back on.
In generation two they replaced the lockdown. So they didn't do that lockdown mechanism anymore. They left the aluminum shaft long and made a longer blind cap. Then in Generation Three, this was around the start of the war in 1939. they went to a celluloid rod to reduce the amount of metal they were using.
THOUGHTS
So what are my thoughts on this Resurrection?
I'm hoping that the next two pens from the same estate auction will be this nice. I was worried that the diaphragm might need replacing and I thought that might be the case when the first fill didn't suck up any ink at all. It makes sense that the reservoir would not fill because I had pushed the breather tube past the blowhole in the feed.
But Professor Doug! What does a breather tube do and more importantly what the hell is a blowhole?
Well, that's a great question and I'll answer it with a diagram. I drew a simple diagram that illustrates the parts of a Vacumatic system.
The plunger rod at the top, the latex diaphragm that moves up and down to create a vacuum, the inside of the barrel of the pen which becomes the ink Reservoir, the breather tube that extends from the feed into the ink Reservoir, the Ebonite feed with the blowhole on top, and the blow hole is just a hole on the top of the feed that allows ink and air to flow through it to the nib.
If the nib and the feed are submerged in the ink and you press down on the plunger, the diaphragm will extend and push air down the breather tube. When the plunger springs back again retracting the diaphragm, it creates a vacuum, and ink is drawn up through the breather tube via the blowhole. Ink pills out into the reservoir, and as the reservoir fills with ink with each subsequent press, once it reaches the top of the breather tube, the pressure is equalized, there's no more vacuum, and the pen is filled.
It is similar to the mechanism that the human body uses to breathe. Our breather tube is our windpipe. The muscle diaphragm in our abdomen moves up and down drawing in fresh air and expelling carbon dioxide with each breath.
You can give your opinion of my diagram and explanation by leaving a comment down below. Remember that opinions are like blowholes! Everybody's got one!
This gorgeous 1940 Parker Vacumatic Debutante in Burgundy Pearl celluloid is fully restored and for sale. This is a small fountain pen. The Debutant was designed for people with smaller hands.
I'm selling this beautiful pen for $200 US plus shipping. If you're interested, email me at inkquiringminds@gmail.com with your name and address so I can get you your shipping quote.
Canada Post is currently on strike, so I'll give you a quote from an alternate shipper.
There you have it! And that just leaves it for me to say thank you for watching, and that's all she wrote!