Waterman’s Nurse’s Pen

Nurse’s pens were not only produced by Esterbrook. The following post discusses the restoration of an Esterbrook Nurses Pen ~

Esterbrook Nurses Pen – August 5, 2011

This week’s restoration is a Nurses Pen produced by Waterman (US). You can see the exploded view of the pen below.  Note the hardened sac, and discoloration around the lever.

I did  a thorough lever fill restoration.  I started by cleaning the pen completely.  The section needed to have the old sac removed and the feed needed to be cleaned and have the channels scraped of old dried ink.  I polished the Waterman nib in an ultrasonic cleaner and with a jewelers cloth.  The lever was gently cleaned with a jewelers cloth.  I dumped the cap into the ultrasonic cleaner as the build up of blue ink was deep and caked on and under the inner cap.  Once the entire pen was cleaned, I attached a size 16 silicone sac (see below) after it was trimmed for size.  I decided on silicone due to the light color of the pen and my desire to keep it as white as possible.

The completed pen measures 4 7/16 inches closed and 5 7/16 inches posted.

Here is the nib, an unremarkable Ideal 14K.

Waterman made these pens and often sold them in sets.  Some contained a matching pencil and thermometer holder.  Others had a matching pen with a red cap top, to match the black one seen on my pen.  Supposedly the red pen was to be used by the nurse with red ink for night hospital charts and the black pen used with black ink on day patient charts.  Apparently the previous owner of this pen had no black ink and used blue..

Below is an advertisement from a May 1942 Saturday Evening Post, found in my collection.  This is one of the few advertisements I have seen for this pen.  It was included in a larger promotion for the war time Commando.  I have isolated the Nurses Pen section in the second photo.

Waterman also made these pens in Canada, and the ones that I have seen have red and black jewels on the cap top, instead of the bands seen in these US pens.

I probably will not use this pen to preserve the white color.   It does, however, make a nice partner to the Esterbrook Nurses Pen, and another interesting corner of fountain pen history.

Waterman’s (top) / Esterbrook (bottom) Nurses Pens