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 of the rivet assembly 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. In some cases the backplates were thinned even further after installation to ensure internal clearance, probably with a round file.

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 the heads of rivets that were only gold filled or plated would end up prematurely brassed -- 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, while 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.

Waterman’s “J” Pens: A Mystery Solved

For over 35 years Waterman collectors have puzzled over an extraordinarily rare model typically described as a slip-cap safety pen, with an end knob of distinctive form imprinted 1XJ (“X” denoting the nib size). Some have guessed that it was some sort of prototype or experiment. Few have given full consideration to how nonsensical a slip-cap safety pen would be.

Although the J-series pens do not appear in any known Waterman catalog, they are mentioned in both company and retailer advertisements and – most helpfully – in a Canadian instruction sheet that I found several years ago. The “J” stands for “jointless” and while the nib retraction mechanism is the same as that found on early Waterman safeties, the nib is only intended to be retracted for filling. Once the pen is filled the nib is extended and left that way until refilling is necessary. 

The first ads that mention Waterman’s Jointless date to the last quarter of 1909. The first that I could find appeared in September with all of the rest appearing in December. Many more followed in the first half of 1910 with only sporadic sightings thereafter. The last Waterman ad that I could find that mentions the Jointless is in the May 29, 1913 Geyer’s Stationer – though it does get a passing mention in 1915 in a published transcript of a Waterman executive’s lecture on sales. There it appears only at the tail end of a recounting of miscellaneous models outside of Waterman’s “active line”, suggesting that it was by then out of production but still in inventory or available on demand (American Stationer, vol. 77, May 22, 1915, p. 30).

Abraham & Strauss ad, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 18 Oct 1909, p. 8; perhaps a soft launch – a limited test release – as no further mentions are to be found until regular mentions begin two months later.

Bookseller and Stationer (Canada), May 1910, p. 4

Ads and instructions only mention three sizes: 12J, 14J, and 15J. Examples of all three sizes are known, all in black hard rubber – though reportedly at least one in red hard rubber is extant. All examples that I have examined have the early internal mechanism with helical grooves cut into the barrel which make the nib carrier twist as it is extended and retracted. 

This mechanism was adopted by Waterman for their safety pens in 1908 to avoid infringing Peck & O’Meara’s patent 523,234, then held by the Modern Pen Company (A. A. Waterman), and appears to have been used only until that patent’s expiration in July 1911. Whether Jointless production continued after that date is an open question. Perhaps it did, for our instruction sheet also has a spare parts page where for both safety and jointless models “Interior Spirals” are listed – a term that could in no way be applied to the straight-track equivalents used in their  earlier versions.

So what was Waterman thinking? The goal was surely to compete with arch-rival Parker, whose own Jointless had been on the market since c. 1898. Parker’s version required the nib assembly to be pulled out manually from the front of the barrel, a process just as messy as dealing with ink residue at the joint of a conventional dropper-filled pen. Waterman’s version obviated that issue, but at the cost of making the pen as complicated as a safety without the benefits of a safety. And this right at the same time that Waterman brought out its sleeve-filler, a simple design which made filling yet cleaner and more convenient. Perhaps no surprise that the Waterman Jointless was so quickly forgotten.

NOTE: Some extant Jointless pens have unusual protrusions on top of their caps, which in at least some cases are made to be inserted into a matching recess in the turning knob (similar to certain Caw's safety models). I have yet to see any mention or illustration of this feature in contemporary advertisements, however.

NOTE: The Canadian instruction sheet that solved this mystery came into my possession way back in 2008. In 2014 George Kovalenko noted the existence of a short-lived Waterman jointless model in a blog post but without recognizing the connection with the so-called slip-cap safeties (whose existence but not correct identity was first noted in print as far back as 1987 in Bob Tefft's Waterman syllabus, with another example shown in Fischler and Schneider's 1994 "Brown Book"). Most of my followup research in digitized periodicals was done in 2017 and the writeup and all photography was done by 2023.

A Waterman prototype surprise

Many years ago I acquired a group of prototype Waterman Hundred Year pens, all of first year design but most in colors that never made it into production. Recently I finally got around to cleaning them up for proper photographic documentation, and inside the pen shown above there was an interesting surprise.

There was actually a bit of a clue beforehand -- "LEW" and "X" and "I" scratched into the bottom of the feed. Plus of course the pen's completely nonstandard color, an opaque metallic blue.

Nonetheless, there was no anticipating this. Incidentally, several of the pens in this prototype group came with #7 keyhole-vent nibs. As pre-production examples, they might well have been put together before nibs with the Hundred Year imprint had become available.

And here is a more complete view of the feed. At some point I'll have to look to see if a patent application was filed. 

While some of the pens in this group are pristine, such as the light green metallic example shown above, most had been carried and used, including the blue pen. It was undoubtedly a working prototype and not just a material trial.

Waterman desk set discovery

Inkwells are not a collecting focus for me, particularly those from the 20th century. When this one popped up on eBay, however, I made sure to put in a bid -- and to save photos from the listing, just in case. As things turned out it now resides at my shop. But why my interest in this one?

In large part because it retains its original label, identifying it as the product of the Jennings Brothers Manufacturing Company ("Artware of Distinction") of Bridgeport, Connecticut. 

In larger part, however, because of its clear affiliation with the desk base shown below -- a piece that I don't recall seeing in a catalog or ad, though they are not so rare that I haven't seen a few over the years.

It is widely known that fountain pen makers outsourced all sorts of components, with desk set bases being one of the most obvious examples. Yet we don't always know who actually made what, so this is a particularly fortuitous discovery. Note that the construction is of base metal with a thick gilt bronze surface layer -- well preserved in the inkwell, but with much peeling and losses on the desk base version. The base came with a matching rocker blotter and a set of corner squares to be attached to a desk pad. There surely were other accessories available, though it has been so long since I've seen other ensembles, I no longer recall what other pieces they comprised.

Jennings Brothers also produced a wide range of figurines, often found as bookends. It will be instructive to see how many also appear on catalogued Waterman bases without attribution.

Waterman pens with emblems

  

Back in the later 1990s I bought a collection of Waterman pens with emblems that had been assembled by Jim Krause, an eminent watch, clock, and pen dealer. Most have long since been sold and though I photographed all of them, most of the images were not kept in high resolution form. They are nonetheless a valuable visual record and I am sharing them here, along with some better photos of other Waterman emblems that have passed through my hands more recently.

 

 

 

 

 

Waterman 1919 catalog, p. 49.

1925 Waterman catalog: Reference Library: Waterman – Pen Collectors of America