(Page 2)

	The Eagle came from the same shop as the above ring-top. It’s small, it’s chrome-plated, and the 1920s vintage feed can get a little cranky when the ink runs low. Yet it’s earned a place in my collection as the nimble little traveler that went with me to New Orleans for a two-week trip and served well as my journal writer.

	Three of these pens have found their way into my collection, and I’m not close to done yet. The Duofolds write smooth, they look sharp, and the button-fill mechanism is aesthetically pleasing. I’ve horned in on the Juniors because they’re cheaper, more plentiful, and to my hand, a very comfortable size for an everyday writer. The first one I got was the black one with two cap bands, a reclamation project. But John Mottishaw retipped the nib broad, and another collector/dealer sold me a clip, my father-in-law put in a new sac, and I have applied coat after coat after coat of black wax polish to bring it from faded-olive back to something resembling black. This is the pen with which I wrote the cursive titles on this site. The other two Duofolds are just as nice, a "Little Red" and the black one with the single cap band. All have brassing, and the imprint on each is just OK, but they’re just great pens, some of my favorites.

	Wahl-Eversharp Doric

	Perhaps the coolest-looking American pen. Just one has passed into my collection, this gorgeous Garnet Marble short-model Franken-pen with a Sheaffer nib. Like a bass fisherman, I did the catch-and-release thing and set it free on eBay to a more worthy collector. More will come, soon.

	A work of space-age engineering, the Parker 51 appears at first to a collector as plain, ordinary, and designed at a time when design was no longer interesting. Yet it’s a classic that balances in the hand wonderfully, and writes smooth as a Hovercraft. The nib is on a smooth par with my Delta Nautilus, and the aerometric filler must hold at least a gallon of ink. The sturdy design means no rotted sacs, and fewer nib-wrecking accidents. This pen represents perhaps Parker’s finest hour. I have two so far, the longer model with the Lustraloy cap I picked up in New Orleans, and another recently acquired in box in Newburyport, Mass.

	<back		more>