Parker Button Fill Striped Duofold

Last night I worked on a set. I usually do not come across sets, but it seems I have stumbled on a few lately. The matching pencils make a nice contrast to the fountain pens, if they are salvageable.

This is a Striped Duofold Button Filler. I have previously covered two restorations of Striped Duofolds ~

1941 Blue Striped Duofold – November 11, 2008
Striped Duofold – September 10, 2008

The above two linked posts covered Vacumatic Duofolds, one Blue Striped and one Dusty Red.  This pen is the third Striped option, Gold and Green.

The picture below shows the internals, including petrified sac and still usable two part pressure bar.  It is nice to find one of these pressure bars  in solid condition as they have a ridge that sits on the cap-hole perfectly, and no trimming and smoothing of a new bar are necessary.  Also note that the section is friction fit, not a screw in.

As usual, the gold cap band, clip, button, and nib are quite tarnished.  The only new part needed to restore this pen is a size 16 sac.  I gave the section, feed, button, and nib a bath in the ultrasonic cleaner and the nib and button an extra scrub with metal polish and a dremel.  The cap band has an engraving (J.W.B) and is very dirty.  Continual cleaning with metal polish ( I am now using Pentiques’) brought it back to a nice shine with a small amount of staining.  The clip polished up nicely and is as good as new.

The cap was cleaned on the inside to remove all of the old ink residue.  Then the section was scraped to remove all of the old sac remnants.  The nib and feed were fit back into the section and the size 16 sac was trimmed to fit just below the cap end button hole.  After the sac was cemented to the section/feed/nib with sac cement it was allowed to dry.  Then it was fit back into the barrel.  The original pressure bar was fit into the barrel and seated against top of the button hole.  The polished button was then placed over the pressure bar in the button hole.  Testing of the bar by pressing on the button revealed a perfect fit.  The button pressed down and came back up when released.  Water testing revealed a nice flow of water after the sac was filled and released.    Finally, I cleaned the blind cap threads and put a bit of silicon grease on them to assure a smooth  twist.

I did not post a photo of the pencil prior to restoration as it was clean and relatively unused.  I polished the barrel and cap at the same time I polished the pen barrel and cap and that was all that was necessary.  The lead was still in the pencil as well.  The mechanism is a twist of the cap to release the lead.

The finished product(s) are below.  The date code on the pen is the first quarter of 1941, in Janesville, Wisconsin.  Striped Duofolds were produced by Parker from 1940 to 1948.  They were produced in both Vacumatic Filler and Button Filler options.  The two major cosmetic differences between the two are the black blind cap and visulated section (seen in the bottom picture below).

As I have mentioned before, these Striped Duofolds are not as widely collected as Parker Vacumatics, or early Duofolds, but are very well built pens that are a nice addition to any collection.

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