Waterman Clip-Cap notes

Years ago I wrote on the introduction of Waterman's riveted clips, so it is high time to follow up with some information on how they were attached. The earlier Clip-Cap clips had larger rivets, but the basic design remained unchanged throughout, and might best be described as a staple. The resemblance is particularly strong with the later internals with small rivets, as seen below. Some of the staples here are original new old stock, while others were taken from caps after the clips came off.

Earlier clip staples tended to have much wider backplates, though in all cases they are quite thin. Exactly how they were manufactured isn't clear. Some appear to have been made from a single piece of wire, bent and then flattened in the middle; those with larger backplates, some of which extend past the rivets at top and bottom, more likely were cast.

I've not yet been able to test the metal content of these rivets. Just from observation, I suspect that solid gold staples were widely used for gold filled as well as for solid gold clips. Gold was cheap in this era, and Waterman surely soon realized that using rivets that were only gold filled or plated wouldn't hold up to the wear of everyday use -- not to mention the vulnerability of a thin base-metal backplate to corrosion, sandwiched between the inner cap and outer cap where ink was sure to penetrate. An example of an early clip showing rivet head wear-through appears below; you just don't see that sort of exposed base metal on later clips, though, no matter how worn. Silver clips were attached with silver rivets; nickel-plated clips appear to have been mounted with rivets of copper-nickel alloy, possibly monel.

How these clips were originally mounted remains unclear. What is certain is that the rivets of factory-mounted clips have nice cleanly formed heads, indicating use of a specialized tool. Dealers may have been furnished with something more compact. In an old forum discussion, Rob Astyk wrote that Bromfield Pen's George Salustro described the original Waterman rivet tool as being of pliers form. This might have been a variant of the tool described in Crossman's 1910 patent, US955386, primarily intended for use with prong-mounted VV-style clips. The use of such a device is likely when one runs across a clip which was mounted long ago, yet isn't quite straight, or where the rivet heads aren't quite perfectly formed. Note that many modern repairmen never learned how to rivet properly -- their rivet heads too often are a shapeless mess, formed by direct hammering without use of a rivet set.

It's not common, but sometimes one runs across a riveted Waterman clip on another maker's pen. A dealer could have done the installation at a customer's insistence, of course, but there is also documentation that Waterman themselves did this on occasion. This ad references the 1906 Stationers' National Convention, where Clip-Caps were being installed gratis on any attendee's pen. 

There is even a photo of the clip installation setup in front of the Waterman exhibition space. Frustratingly, there is not enough detail to tell us much of anything about the machine being used.

A good 30 years ago I sketched out a rivet tool design, which I only finally got around to prototyping a few years ago using scrap aluminum and mild steel that was sitting around the shop. The ram is double-ended, with recesses for both large and small rivet heads. So is the mandrel, allowing for use with both slender and standard-sized caps.