Some time ago, purely on a whim, I bought some old pens advertised for
repair or parts. The lot comprised of 6 fountain and 2 roller ball pens.
Last week when I received them, I thought I'd have a project for this
weekend but what I got was quite a surprise. The 4 pens that I had
specifically looked forward to weren't really parts pens at all. The
simply looked made, and then for some reason, forgotten. The were
unused, and the internal parts were 'dusty', for want of a better word.
There was no residue of ink, not even when I pulled out the nib and feed
to wash them. These were button fillers and only one pen lacked the
blind cap.
So
I cleaned up the pens with water and a stiff brush and assembled the
feed and nib in each of the pens. I found that the spares from my
Imperial pens purchase had a blind cap that fit the pen that was missing
one.
The
real surprise though was the nib. It was marked DOM 1st QUAL and 94
inside a box. It turned out to be the most soft and juicy steel flex nib
I have used. The nib flexes without any conscious effort and reminds me
of vintage dip nibs I have used. The feed that came with the pen seems
to keep up with the flow no matter how fast I do the figures of eight. I
have not experienced any railroading at all in the course of several
pages of scribbling and testing.
I thought theses were made of celluloid but I'm told that these are more likely Bakelite. The pens themselves seem
to be cheaply made and the only reason they seem to be in such good
condition is because they have most likely never been used.
Since
the pens themselves have no markings on them whatsoever I tried to find
info on the nibs, marked DOM. I did not find any information on this
particular brand online anywhere at all. I finally came across a tiny
bit of history attached to the description on a sale post on an auction
site. The pen for sale was advertised as a DOM pen and below is part of
the description:
"...vintage DOM fountain pen from Germany. DOM were a small German affair from the town of Cologne concerned in the manufacture of fountain pens. More widely known local manufacturers such as Soennecken located in nearby Bonn crowded out the likes of DOM, who were forced to finally close shop by the end of WW2."
If
the nibs I have are from the same company described above, it's a pity
they went out of business. I don't know if these are DOM pens or not,
but I'm glad they turned out to be more than parts' pens!
Please click on images for larger version.
