Moore Tuscan And A Yankee

What a lucky week I had in terms of restoring pens.  As a result of Fountain Pen Restoration, I received an email from a reader who noticed the post titled “A Yankee In Michigan“.  He is a pen enthusiast and collector, and had found two pens that belonged to a grandparent.  We should all be so lucky…  he sent them to me for repair and I was pleasantly surprised when I opened up the box.

The pens are below and were photographed after I took them apart.

The top pen is the Moore Tuscan, a full sized model.  The second photo below is the Yankee, a Kraker product from Grand Haven, Michigan.  I will write more about it next week as I gather some additional information.  For this week, I will focus on the Moore.

As you can see from the first photo, this is a standard lever filler.  The nib was severely discolored and the pressure bar was entirely missing.  The pen had definitely been used and at some point, someone had removed the section and taken the old sac and bar out.  I proceeded to clean the pen, inside and out, paying special attention to completely scraping the old sac remnants from the section.   The Moore is a plastic pen, so the parts can be easily cleaned and polished.  Also, the furniture is gold and polishing cleans it up well.  You can see that the heavily tarnished nib completely recovered its golden shine.

I used a size 18 sac and reattached it to the section / feed / nib assembly.  Insertion of the completed assembly into the barrel was simple and these are friction fit.

Below are photos of the completed pen, posted and closed.

Here is the imprint on the Tuscan.

LEVER SELF FILLING

THE MOORE PEN CO

BOSTON MASS U S A

The barrel end identifies this as an L-93 model.

The Moore Clip

The Moore Maniflex Nib ~ I tested this and it is an extra fine, with lots of flexibility.

Below is an advertisement from 1925 that appears at Fountain Pen Network (click here for direct link to publisher), showing the Tuscan line of pens and their prices.  I believe that this is the second from the top, with a $7.00 price tag.  This pen is celluloid, probably dating it after 1925 and closer to 1927 or 1928.   I am not a Moore Pen Company expert, but do know that this pen was a contemporary of the Parker Duofold and Sheaffer Flat Tops.  It is very attractive, but did not fare as well as those lines.  Moore continued in the pen business for quite some time.  Additional Moore information can be found here.

I have always wanted to own a Tuscan, though they do not appear as often as I would like.  The next best thing is to be able to bring one back to life and gaze at it for a while.  Now, it is on its way back to the owner, and I hope it brings years of enjoyment.

Next week, I will write about the Yankee Pen, which has a surprise nib….