Eversharp Doric Airliner(2nd Generation)

Production of the 2nd Generation Doric started in 1936. This one, in the “silver green shell” colour, is a vacuum filler with an adjustable flex nib and a “working” shutoff valve (the small metal tab under the feeder). I say “working” because this idea never worked well. In theory, the tab is pressed down by the inner cap which should stop the flow of ink. In practice, as Richard Binder writes on his page about the Doric:

Sadly, the device worked as designed but was found not to live up to its inflated advertising claims. When the pen was capped, although the shut-off did block leakage from the reservoir, it left ink in the feed, and that ink could — and did, under certain conditions — end up all over the inside of the cap and, subsequently, on the user’s hands. On June 27, 1939, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission served Wahl with an order to cease and desist from advertising the Safety Ink Shut-Off. Unable to advertise it, the company voluntarily withdrew the device from production.

Over the years, the rubber washer/gasket in this one disintegrated, so I cut a new one from a bicycle inner tube (about 1 mm thick). This pen has an 8.8 mm inner diameter, so the washer should be about 9.2 mm in diameter. I used a 9 mm punch and a 2 mm punch for the hole, with plenty of silicone grease on the inner walls of the barrel and the plunger rod, which is working well.

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