The work completed,\u00a0 I was looking at the pen quite closely, trying to decide what the pen was worth in such a nicely restored condition. \u00a0 Maybe $150, maybe more?\u00a0\u00a0 The imprint was crisp, the trim clean, the nib wrote quite nicely…\u00a0\u00a0 It was a rather nice<\/em> pen, and I was\u00a0 quite tempted to keep it.\u00a0 The only thing was,\u00a0 the cap didn’t want to click onto the pen the way it was supposed to, and I was fiddling with it (gently) trying to figure out why,\u00a0 when snap!!<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 The barrel broke right in half…\u00a0 Right through the lever box, right through the imprint.\u00a0 I knew that even if I could solvent weld the barrel back together there would always be a visible reminder that it was repaired, and I would lose at least part of the imprint.\u00a0 Whatever value that glorious looking barrel had, was now lost.<\/p>\n I sat there for a minute, looking at it in disgust.\u00a0\u00a0 There was only one thing to do. \u00a0 I very carefully separated the lever box and lever with the pressure bar intact (parts is parts!), took the section out, gently laid the two pieces of the barrel on the bench, and then beat the snot out of them with a ball-peen hammer.<\/p>\n ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/p>\n For those of you who have never\u00a0 seen a Taperite Citation, this is a black one.\u00a0 I replaced the end on it as well.<\/p>\n You get some idea how nice these pens can be when restored.\u00a0 But the burgundy in question was much nicer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is a true story.\u00a0 Even professional pen mechanics have their limits…… ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I had just finished the restoration of a burgundy Waterman Taperite Citation, a pen that I planned to sell. This is the Taperiate with the transparent end, much like the Waterman Hundred Year Pens. Burgundy gets an amber end, and it turned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pen-repair"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mainstreetpens.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mainstreetpens.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mainstreetpens.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mainstreetpens.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mainstreetpens.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/mainstreetpens.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100,"href":"http:\/\/mainstreetpens.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions\/100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mainstreetpens.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mainstreetpens.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mainstreetpens.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"http:\/\/www.mainstreetpens.com\/pix\/taperite_small.jpg\")
<\/p>\n