Big Ben

I restored this pen for a friend. It’s a Danish-made Big Ben (I’ve written more about the Big Ben brand on some of my other postings).

This one is a piston filler that needed some serious work. However, the end result turned out to be better than expected… I needed to make a new cork gasket following this procedure, which necessitated this procedure first…

The nib has a nice flex with a fine / extra-fine line and a responsive spring. It has a little bit of feedback, but the owner prefers this, so I didn’t smooth it.

The ink window, after cleaning, is more translucent than transparent, as can be seen in the photo above, showing the piston and a nice view of the nib.

One of the very nice features of this pen from a repair perspective is that the portion of the piston mechanism that is threaded for the blind cap has been flattened on two sides. This meant that I didn’t need any special tools to unscrew the piston from the barrel – just an adjustable wrench, some heat, and a LOT of patience.