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Post Info TOPIC: Minor "antique" store score


Rawr.

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Minor "antique" store score
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This evening my wife and I headed out to our favorite pizza place, Filippi's Pizza Grotto, forgetting that it was Friday night, and "Cruise Night," the officially-sanctioned weekly event that has taken the place of the unregulated (and much more fun!) "cruising" my friends and I were doing here thirty years ago.

Because of this, the wait for a table was to be about 1:15 hours, so we went for a walk to admire the cars and the occasional interesting dog. One the return portion of our mile lap of beautiful downtown Escondido, we found a small hole-in-the-wall shop full of assorted junk priced as antiques, and figured we'd pop in to get away from the crowds for a few minutes.

In a tray inside an open glass case were several penlike items, tow of which were s Scripto mechanical pencil and a Windsor MP, plus one Garland ballpoint. The rest was nothing but throwaway plastic.

Since everything in the shop was half-price for the evening, I got the two MPs and the BP for a whoppin $3 plus tax.

Hone now after dinner, I found that the BP, an $8 Garland #390 Hefty Twist Pen according to their Web site, and still in production, was damaged beyiond repair, the threaded bit of the Cross-style refill advance mechanism being sheared off from the rest. The refill works, though, so it wasn't a total loss.

The tip-actuated Windsor MP works smoothly, and even has a still-pliable eraser and a piece of 1.2 mm lead in it.

The Scripto also works smoothly, had a piece of lead in the storage beneath the mangled and petrified eraser (which I discovered after fitting a new piece of .9 mm lead in it), but has been dinged right at the tip, so the lead won't feed out through it. I'll have to see if I have a 1/32" drill bit I can ream the tip out with, but I think I got my money's worth. smile.gif



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Rawr.

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A photo might help; Garland at the top, Scripto (actually a two-tone blue-grey) in the middle, and the black Windsor at the bottom.

Img_1367a.jpg



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Rawr.

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I found erasers that fit the Scripto, one size in the cap and a small one beneath it, and managed to gently round out the tip with a paper piercer (a needle with a handle) so that it's now fully functional. smile.gif

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Vintage

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The scripto looks interesting. I was just looking at a vintage metal mechanical pencil online but decided against pursuing it -- one addiction at a time. blankstare



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Rawr.

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Here's the Scripto, working, with the erasers and in better light. The discoloration on the barrel is some tape adhesive I haven't removed yet.

Img_1372a.jpg

Img_1373a.jpg



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Vintage

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How old would you say that is? Maybe 1960s? Does it detach somewhere to reveal the secret stash of spare lead? I think it's pretty neat find at a good price (and for another pencil & ball point). The pencil I was looking at costs a little over $10 including shipping. It seems quite old but I'm saving my money for more pens :p

The last time I used a mechanical pencil was in college. I gave them up because the leads were a bit too fragile for me. I liked that they had erasers and extra lead though. I use a Rotring 200 which holds thicker lead and which I bought 10-20 years ago. I can't remember. We called them clutch pencils then.

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Rawr.

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60s or 70s; the history of Scripto pencils doesn't seem to be readily available or comprehensive, alas. The inner eraser pulls out to reveal lead storage, and the thing will take full length leads.

I have a couple of older "vintage" pencils, but most of what I have were made in the last 30 or 40 years. I have just one 2 mm clutch pencil, actually a drafting leadholder, and a couple of the rotary desktop lead pointers for them. The two I reach for most often, though, are a 0.3 mm Pentel Sharp, and a 0.5 mm Uni Kuru Toga.

Now if I could just come up with a 5.6 mm clutch pencil (not difficult) I have a set of colored leads for it. I also need one for some 1/2 inch x 12 inch "leads" I have here.



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Mike Hungerford
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Vintage

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5.6 mm - WOW - that's really thick lead, w/c I've never seen here. So "clutch" pencil is the correct term? I thought my classmates were just throwing words around. 

Now that we're talking about them, I keep thinking about the mechanical pencil I've been refusing to buy. hmm



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Rawr.

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Drafting leadholders are clutch pencils; they use expanding fingers to "clutch" the lead at the business end of the pencil. Some clutch pencils, usually the ones for larger diameter leads (like my 5.6 mm leads) are usually called "artists' pencils," "sketch pencils," or sometimes "shop pencils." Lamy makes, or made, something called a Scribble that uses 3.15 mm leads, and is considered a sketch pencil. Jetpens carries them in their drafting pencils section.

They also have Pilot clutch-point pencils in 0.5 mm, but I think the term is used to mean something else there.



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Rawr.

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As it turns out, my Scripto is a model P360 Thin Lead pencil, 60s/70s vintage as we thought.

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Vintage

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For drafting here, mostly what I've seen are Rotring, Staedler, and Faber Castell. But if they do have artists pencils, that sounds pretty convenient.

The pencil I was looking at seems like it was refitted w/ a more contemporary cone cap bottom. Really, now I'm looking at pencils online.  And again, the vintage ones are really interesting.



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Vintage

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I found this among my father's things:

scriptolead.jpg



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Rawr.

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Here is the majority of my mechanical pencils, the ones that aren't meant to be disposable. For some I have duplicates as well.

Img_1375a.jpg

Pentel 0.3 mm Sharp; unknown square Chinese 0.5 mm, Pentel 0.5 mm Slim Sliding Sleeve, Pentel 0.5 mm Sharp, Pentel 0.5 mm Graphgear 1000, Zebra 0.5 mm M-402, Pentel 0.7 mm Sharp, Pentel 0.9 mm Sharp, Pentel 0.9 mm Sharp with custom stainless steel barrel, Cross 0.9 mm Cardinal, Scripto 0.9 mm Thin Lead, Windsor 1.2 mm, Staedtler 2 mm leadholder, Zebra 0.5 mm mini, Waterman's 1.2 mm, Carter's 1.2 mm.



-- Edited by Chthulhu on Saturday 4th of June 2011 09:59:18 AM



-- Edited by Chthulhu on Saturday 4th of June 2011 09:59:37 AM



-- Edited by Chthulhu on Saturday 4th of June 2011 10:08:05 AM

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Mike Hungerford
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Vintage

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I used to have the same Staedler and Pentel (3rd pen from the left). The Windsor and Waterman are beautiful; and the Pentel (5th from the left).

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Rawr.

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The Stadtler is a modern Chinese one; the Sliding Sleeve Pentel I found somewhere, can't remember where, but it had a big ding in the aluminum barrel that I was able to work out with a piece of steel rod with a rounded end. The Windsor is a really cheap-feeling thing with a molded plastic barrel and a flimsy metal cap. It *is* actually as bent as it appears in the photo.

The Waterman is half of a vest-pocket set with a matching fountain pen of the same size, but I think the blue Carter's is prettier; that one came from a friend in Québec, and it belonged to his mother. The GraphGear is an exceptionally well-made pencil; the sleeve extends with the lead by pressing the button, and the whole thing retracts by pressing the clip. It's all very solid, and the knurled grip rotates, with a window to select which lead type you have in it.

Both the Carter's and the Waterman's pencils are about 90 years old, by the way, and work just fine.



-- Edited by Chthulhu on Sunday 5th of June 2011 11:16:33 AM

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Mike Hungerford
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Vintage

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I didn't notice the windsor was bent! I thought it was just leaning to one side. I think I have a bias for vintage Waterman anything because Waterman is how I got back to fountain pens. And maybe my preference for vintage pens has to do w/ the fact that they're so old and still work. Some of them work better than newer pens, too. 90 years is amazing.  



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Rawr.

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I think what happened to it, and to the Scripto to a lesser degree, was that the pencils were bundled together, probably with other pencils and/or pens, with a rubber band for a long period of time. The part of the Windsor that is bent is the one-piece plastic barrel. I *might* try warming it in hot water some time to see if I can straighten it out again.

The pen of the Waterman's set obviously got a lot more use: the tipping is severely worn down on the nib, and it's cracked from the heart-shaped hole halfway to one side. It's also missing its ring. :-/



-- Edited by Chthulhu on Sunday 5th of June 2011 01:33:51 PM

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Mike Hungerford
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Vintage

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Here's one of the pencils I was looking at:

http://cgi.ebay.ph/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320706438200&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT#ht_500wt_1031



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Rawr.

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Very nice!

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Rawr.

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Wonder of wonders! Whilst digging through a couple of boxes of accumulated "stuff" I found an eraser, loose amonsgt everything else in that box, looking unused (though pretty much petrified), and with the metal clip still attached.

It fits the Scripto.

No idea where it came from.

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