# Vintage Waterman Eyedropper



## apple320 (May 6, 2010)

I had this nice Waterman section that I built a new pen around.












Chris


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## jskeen (May 8, 2010)

Chris;  I'm very interested in the concept of building pens around vintage sections.  It just seems like a cool idea, but I'm a long way from having a threading lathe right now.  However , I'm curious if the 14k nib on this one is really kinda dull looking, or is that just a photo problem.  If it is really kinda dull and scratched, would you want to clean it up somehow, or is that verboten, because it would kill the value as a vintage part?  I'm just not sure if a vintage fp nib is like a vintage bailey plane, you only do the absolute minimum amount of cleaning to it to restore it to working condition?  How much is "too much" on a vintage nib, as opposed to say, restoring a complete vintage pen to working condition?

Just curious as to your opinion on the matter.

James


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## apple320 (May 11, 2010)

jskeen said:


> Chris;  I'm very interested in the concept of building pens around vintage sections.  It just seems like a cool idea, but I'm a long way from having a threading lathe right now.  However , I'm curious if the 14k nib on this one is really kinda dull looking, or is that just a photo problem.  If it is really kinda dull and scratched, would you want to clean it up somehow, or is that verboten, because it would kill the value as a vintage part?  I'm just not sure if a vintage fp nib is like a vintage bailey plane, you only do the absolute minimum amount of cleaning to it to restore it to working condition?  How much is "too much" on a vintage nib, as opposed to say, restoring a complete vintage pen to working condition?
> 
> Just curious as to your opinion on the matter.
> 
> James



I don't do a lot of polishing on old nibs as I am afraid of wrecking them.  If I had a customer that wanted it all done up then I would get my nib guy to polish it all up but most of them seem to be fine as they are.

Chris


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