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Welcome back to Inkquiring Minds, my name is Doug, and thanks for joining me for another Pen Resurrection Sunday video.
Today’s pen is not really a resurrection because it was never dead.
The resurrection today is me.
I’ve been fighting Covid for the last 10 days and I’m starting to come back from the dead.
So I’ve not been able to do a full resurrection of a very dead fountain pen for this week’s video, but I’ve decided to look at a reclamation instead.
This is a Waterman Hemisphere from the late 1990s to the early 2000s.
I bought it for around $30 at an antique store about a year ago.
This is the exact shape it came in and I’ve done nothing to the pen.
There is nothing wrong with it at all.
The steel nib is in good shape, the lacquer over the brass cap and barrel has some normal wear, and the gold-plated hardware shows signs of age and use - minor scratches and the like.
So no resurrection is needed here. Just a good clean and polish and it will be like new.
Let’s take a look at this pen.
The Waterman Hemisphere has a slim lacquer over brass, tapering shape with an angled top finial and a flat bottom finial in gold-plated metal.
Here is is next to my Waterman Carene black seas. It is smaller, thinner, and lighter than the Carene by about 10 grams.
It didn’t have a converter with it, but I’ve added a Waterman standard international converter.
THE PEN AND PEN HISTORY
This Hemisphere doesn’t differ from the current Waterman Hemisphere model other than the modern one has a thicker band at the top of the barrel.
Let’s pull the nib and feed and see the construction.
The nib and feed are friction fit into the section and pull out easily.
The nib fits on the feed with a small lip that lines up the tail of the nib precisely.
The nib has the Waterman W logo, Paris, and M for medium engraved on it.
I put these items in the ultrasonic with pen flush which is 9 parts distilled water and one part ammonia for a few minutes to get all the old ink out.
POLISHING THE CAP AND BARREL
Since lacquer over brass isn’t that much different than the finish on a car, I’m going to use my Meguiar’s Mirror Glaze Swirl Remover 2.0 on the cap and barrel to get out all the micro-abrasions and get it as close to new as possible.
POLISHING
Now I’m going to use my jeweler’s cloth to polish up the gold-plated hardware.
It is always important to test how thick or thin the gold plating is before going after it with vigor.
You can go through the plating very quickly with some cheaper finishes.
I know this Waterman plating is rather sturdy but I still tested the underside of the clip first to see if I could go through it. But it is good.
COMPARISONS
Here is the Hemisphere with a few other Watermans I happen to own.
Here is it with my Black Seas Carene and my Amber Carene.
Here is a late 90’s Waterman Phileas.
And a 1940’s Waterman Stalwart
And finally a very vintage Waterman, a 1944 Waterman 100-year pen.
WRITING
Let’s fill this Hemisphere with some Waterman’s Inspired Blue and do some writing.
THOUGHTS
Sometimes all a pen needs is a little TLC to make it shine again.
For a lacquer over brass, slim, fountain pen, there isn’t anything extraordinary about this Waterman Hemisphere.
It looks like a lot of other middle-of-the-road black and gold metal fountain pens you see in gift sets all over the place.
But this pen is different from your run-of-the-mill Cross ATX, Sheaffer VFM, or Parker IM.
The nib may be small and steel, but this nib is just beautiful, smooth, and wet.
So for $30 and a little TLC, this Hemisphere rivals pens two and three times the price.
You just have to know what you’re looking at when you go to an antique shop.
And there you have it.
I’ll be back next week with a very dead pen that needs more than just TLC!
Until then, thanks for watching,
And that’s all she wrote!
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