Featured MONTBLANC WRITERS' EDITION OSCAR WILDE 1994

I won this at auction and picked it up today. I got it "cheap" ('cheap' is relative, when you're talking about Montblanc!), because the pen was broken, and nonfunctional.

Someone (probably the previous owner) had somehow jammed the filling mechanism, so that operating the piston-knob didn't fill the pen, instead, it unscrewed the entire piston-assembly out the back-end of the barrel! Whoops!!

Obviously, the pen was totally non-functional in this condition. After a lot of ultrasonic cleaning to blast out the old ink, I unscrewed the entire piston-assembly, and using two pairs of pliers and some tissues for padding, I managed to wrench the piston-knob free! Two or three solid cranks around and it finally started moving!

Photos below...

The pen as I found it:



As you can see, the whole damn thing just came apart and fell out the ass-end of it.

The pen after repairs and cleaning:



I disassembled the piston-mechanism to check it for damage, and then reassembled it, winding everything back together. Using my piston-wrenches, I cranked everything back into the pen, and screwed it down TIGHT to stop the stupid thing from coming out again, and tested the pen.

Works like new!

 

It looks fantastic! You’re a brave and efficient repairer!

 

Brave!? Definitely. I was absolutely petrified that I would destroy it in using two sets of pliers to crank the piston-mechanism apart. So many things could've gone wrong!

Efficient? Perhaps not. It took me about 2.5 hours to diagnose everything, clean it, finally get it fixed, reassembled, and working!!

 

But it was worth every minute!!

 

Great job and you have lovely handwriting.

 

Fantastic!
Acquiring a Mont Blanc is on my bucket list but I'll probably never find one in my price range. And I would know nothing about repairing one.
Congrats on your find!

 

These kind of Pens are in the same class of fine jewelry as a superb wristwatch.Now you need a 5K suit and 10K watch to go with it . Great restoration job-you've got a fine touch. I'm all thumbs and would have a beautiful broken Mont Blanc,shattered as Oscar was at the end of his life.

 

That pen is like quality jewelry or pottery- You can spot it from across the room. Beautiful pen. I am afraid my handwriting would cause the pen to recoil in terror.

 

Congrats! Love the pen.

Oddly enough, yesterday I found my tiny book containing The Ballad of Reading Gaol. And as usual, it made me cry.

 

-maybe the pen would take control and you would forever on produce perfect Spencerian script.

 

You did a lovely job, Shangas, it's a beauty!

 

It will be, now that I can sell it.

I'm trying my best to improve it.

That depends on what your price-range is. You'd be surprised what you can find at auction when nobody else wants to buy it.

The pens are very simple, so repairing them is not that tricky. It's just a matter of patience, trial and error, and knowing how and why they work / don't work.

I have some pens which are literal silver and gold, so yes, just like jewelry!

I sometimes feel unworthy of my pens because of my handwriting, so I'm constantly trying to improve it.

HAH!! I WISH!!

Thanks. It's a cute pen.

 

Fixing the pen.

I decided that the piston wasn't installed nearly as well as it should be, so now that I got it working, it was easier to fine-tune the mechanism.

I cranked the piston-assembly out of the pen and pulled it apart to its component pieces...



Then I played around with the piston-rod (on the left) the piston-knob and helical rod (on the right) and the piston-collar (middle). The aim was to get the the piston-ROD FULLY drawn-up into the helical rod, once the piston-KNOB hit the base of the piston-collar.

This is a fiddly process, because it's done ENTIRELY by trial-and-error. But if you get it right, the result is a full-draw on the piston, and a nice, tight seal on the piston-knob when the pen is full of ink.

It took about 3-4 attempts, but I finally got it perfectly lined up!

The next step was to shove the entire piston-assembly - collar, rod, knob and all - back into the pen...



...and crank it all back into place, using the piston-wrench.

NOW the pen works perfectly!!