Steel pen

“ Metallic pens, though not unknown in classical times—a bronze pen found at Pompeii is in the Naples Museum—were little used until the 19th century and did not Steel Pens. become common till near the middle of that century. It is recorded that a Birmingham split-ring manufacturer, Samuel Harrison, made a steel pen for Dr Joseph Priestley in 1780. Steel pens made and sold in London by a certain Wise in 1803 were in the form of a tube or barrel, the edges of which met to form the slit, while the sides were cut away as in the case of an ordinary quill. ”

“ The use of the steel pen in drawing single stroke streams is very objectionable. Even soft steel pens are apt to cut the surface of the paper, and in sharp bends it is quite impossible to ensure an even width of line with the best yet made ”

“ If you look closely at the outside of a steel pen just above the nib, you will see that across it run tiny lines. They have a use, for they hold the ink back so that it will not roll down in drops, and they help to make the point more springy and easier to write with.
The pen must be slit up from the point. This is done by a machine, and a most accurate one, for the cut must go exactly through the center of the point and not reach beyond the little hole that was punched. Only one thing is lacking now to make the pen a useful member of society, ready to do its work in the world ”

“ I do not like typewriters: they make fingertips callous in a poor cause. And I do not like fountain-pens which someway seem suitable only for business-letters, forgeries, bookkeeping and crude cursory love-letters. I like a steel pen in a fat glossy green enameled wood penholder with a thick pleasant-feeling rubber sheath at the lower end. ”

“ Mordan, the patentee of the ever-pointed pencils, one room is devoted to some of the processes by which steel pens are manufactured. Six fly-presses are here constantly at work;—in the first a sheet of thin steel is brought by the workman under the die which at each blow cuts out a flat piece of the metal, having the form intended for the pen. Two other workmen are employed in placing these flat pieces under two other presses, in which a steel chisel cuts the slit. ”

“ Look close at this engraving, or take a smaller and simpler one, Turner's Mercury and Argus,—imagine it to be a drawing in pen and ink, and yourself required similarly to produce its parallel! True, the steel point has the one advantage of not blotting, but it has tenfold or twentyfold disadvantage, in that you cannot slur, nor efface, except in a very resolute and laborious way, nor play with it, nor even see what you are doing with it at the moment, far less the effect that is to be. ”

“ The inside edges of the slit are smoothed and polished by the emery wheel; burnishing and hammering produce the proper degree of elasticity."
It is asserted that more steel is used in the manufacture of pens than in all the swords and guns in the world. This fact partly verifies the old saying, "The pen is mightier than the sword."
"Three things bear mighty sway with men,
The Sword, the Sceptre, and the Pen;
Who can the least of these command,
In the first rank of Fame will stand."
CHAPTER XXVII. SUBSTITUTES FOR INK UTENSILS ("LEAD" AND OTHER PENCILS) . ”

“ They are not useful for crayon work because the finest shadings are too easily etched away; and pen work is difficult on them, because the steel pen easily cuts into the stone, fills its point with fine dust, and thus gives no ink flow. ”

“ Steel is undoubtedly the best, and if you use China ink, the most lasting of all inks, it never rusts the pen, but rather preserves it with a kind of varnish, which dries upon it, though you take no care in wiping it."—Though Messrs. Gillott and Sons' Victoria Works, Graham Street, stands first among the pen-making establishments open to the visit of strangers, it is by no means the only manufactory whereat the useful little steel pen is made in large quantities, there being, besides, Mr. ”

“ The reason is an apparently trivial thing, but it has made most artists averse to it. Since stone-printing exists I have found only two persons who could do anything with the steel pen at the first attempt. These were my brother Klemens, and a Herr Porner, who works now in the establishment of Herr Müller in Karlsruhe. All others have had to struggle more or less with this slight trouble, and yet it does not demand more than a few days of patience and study. ”

“ SHE ASKED.
"Probably the best steel pens are made in England, but American gold pens are the best. A great amount of labor is bestowed upon them. Every one is carefully tested before it is put into the market. When a person buys a gold pen he pays a good price for it and expects it to last a long time, and this is the reason that they are so carefully tested. If half the steel pens in your box prove to be worthless, the remainder are still cheap."
"But, mamma, you have not told me why people do not use quill pens nowadays." ”

“ Of course, he should not use any but the best,—even Vierge could not make a good drawing with a bad pen,—but the artistic virtues of a particular instrument are not likely to disclose themselves in the rude scratchings of the beginner. He has to master it, to "break it in," ere he can discover of what excellent service it is capable.
Pens The student will find that most of the steel pens made for artists have but a short period of usefulness. When new they are even more unresponsive than when they are old. ”

“ Yes, I remember using quill pens when I first began to go to school. My father had never used any other and he had a prejudice against steel pens, which had already come into [260] use, and as we kept a flock of geese we always had a supply of quills. It was considered in my father's day one of the necessary qualifications of a schoolteacher that he should be able to make a good quill pen. Such steel pens as we use may be classed among modern inventions. ”

“ This combination consists only of the application of a piece of rubber to one end of the same piece of wood which makes a lead-pencil. It is as if a patent should be granted for an article, or a manufacture as the patentee prefers to term it, consisting of a stick twelve inches long, on one end of which is an ordinary hammer, and on the other end is a screw-driver or a tack-drawer, or, what you will see in use in every retail shop, a lead-pencil, on one end of which is a steel pen. ”

“ Therefore it is necessary to learn how to make these pens, because, apart from their costliness, it is difficult to get a suitable one from a worker in steel. The ordinary steel pens that can be bought ready-made from stationers are fairly available for coarser writing and drawing; but for better work one must have much finer pens. ”

“ A steel pen during use injures, and often greatly, the durability of a writing ink by giving up iron to it.
" 'For your purpose, where extreme permanency is the first requisition, I should not advise the use of an ordinary writing fluid. Many manufacturers cannot obtain sufficient fluidity in their writing fluids without making their inks very dilute, and observing a particular method of manufacture which, although providing more attained color for a time, sacrifices the permanent quality of their color in a great measure. ”

“ Now the pens are ready so far as usefulness goes, but people have preferences in color. Some prefer bronze, some gray, and some black; so off the pens go to the tempering-room, their last trip, and there are heated in a revolving cylinder till the right color appears; then they are chilled and lacquered, put into boxes, labeled, packed, and sold for such low prices that the good folk of a century ago, who paid from twenty-five to fifty cents for a pen, would have opened their eyes in amazement. When the typewriter was invented, some people said, "That will be the death of the steel pen" ”

“ Horn pens, tortoise-shell pens, nibs of diamond or ruby imbedded in tortoise shell, nibs of ruby set in fine gold, nibs of rhodium and of iridium imbedded in gold,— all have been adopted at different times, but most of them have been found too costly for general adoption. Steel is proved to be sufficiently elastic and durable to form very good pens, and the ingenuity of manufacturers has been exerted to give to such pens as many as possible of the good qualities possessed by the quill pen. ”

“ Steel pens, which have almost superseded quill pens, are made in great quantities, and, like needles and pins, can only be produced at a sufficiently low price to meet the requirements of the people, by those who have erected buildings and fitted up machinery so as to make the process sufficiently rapid to be cheap. The steel is first selected of the proper quality, and rolled out into sheets of the thickness required and of breadth sufficient for the length of the pens to be made ”

“ Calligraphy as an art has fallen off in this country, and this has influenced pen manufacture. The most delicately made pens are manufactured for foreign use. There are, perhaps, not so many pen works now as there were in 1865, but the productive power has vastly increased. The present weekly average of pens manufactured is about 160,000 grosses, requiring from 16 to 18 tons of steel, of which only 8 tons appears in the article, the rest being loss or waste. ”

“ The first coat may be of shellac and lampblack alone.
To Clean Steel Pens.
Potato is used to clean steel pens, and generally act as a pen-wiper. It removes all ink crust, and gives a peculiarly smooth flow to the ink. Pass new pens two or three times through a gas flame, and then the ink will flow freely.
Stationers’ Windows.
It is important that strangers should get a good impression with a tasty window, or a polite reception when entering the store. Remember that first impressions go a great way, and when once formed, good or bad, are very hard to get rid of. ”

“ Yet you cannot suppose it is in reality easier to draw a line with a cutting point, not seeing the effect at all, or, if any effect, seeing a gleam of light instead of darkness, than to draw your black line at once on the white paper? You cannot really think [Y] that there is something complacent, sympathetic, and helpful in the nature of steel; so that while a pen-and-ink sketch may always be considered an achievement proving cleverness in the sketcher, a sketch on steel comes out by mere favor of the indulgent metal ”

“ PRICE 25 CENTS.
JOHN F. HENRY, Sole Proprietor, No. 8 College Place, New York.
HARRISON BRADFORD & CO.'S
STEEL PENS.
These pens are of a finer quality, more durable, and cheaper than any other Pen in the market. Special attention is called to the following grades, as being better suited for business purposes than any Pen manufactured. The
"505," "22," and the "Anti-Corrosive." ”

“ Perhaps the most perfect and durable, although the most expensive, are those in which the pen is made of gold, with a nib of osmium and iridium. The total quantity of steel annually employed in the manufacture of pens has been estimated at 120 tons, from which upwards of 200,000,000 pens are produced. ”

“ And because, in such material, effects may be produced which no penmanship could rival, most people, I fancy, think that a steel plate half engraves itself; that the workman has no trouble with it, compared to that of a pen draughtsman. ”

“ For this purpose, the stone is coated completely with chemical ink on the places where this style is to be used. As soon as it is dry, the lights are drawn into it with a steel engraving-needle that is ground to a sharp or broad point according to requirement. Those parts that are to be very white, with fine lines and specks, are best drawn in with the pen. Thus the wood-cut style differs from the ordinary pen design chiefly in character and in the treatment of the darker parts. Its practice is much easier on the stone than on wood, and it can be combined with crayon work. ”

“ Pen steel is still produced in Sheffield, the best being made from Swedish iron. The number of girls and women employed is from 3,200 to 3,600, whilst the number of men employed as tool makers, rollers, engineers, stokers, &c., hardly exceeds 500. The increase in make since 1865, of quite 60 per cent. is mainly due to the export trade. No new pen manufactories have been established since 1865, except in the United States, where there are now four pen works, but of these, only one is of importance. ”

“ He sat down again at the little table, fitted a stub pen into his penholder, lighted a match, and held the steel point in the blaze, to burn off the oil and take out the temper, making it soft and flexible and easy to write with. He uncorked the ink, wiped out the neck of the bottle with a blotter, and dipped his pen in. ”

“ About 1830 he turned his attention to the manufacture of steel pens by machinery, and in 1831 patented a process for placing elongated points on the nibs of pens. Subsequently he invented other improvements, getting rid of the hardness and lack of flexibility, which had been a serious defect in nibs, by cutting, in addition to the centre slit, side slits, and cross grinding the points. By 1859 he had built up a very large business. ”

“ The mark should be exposed to the light for some time, to become black.
688. Permanent Red Ink for marking Linen.—This useful preparation, which was contrived by Dr. Smellie, of Edinburgh, who was originally a printer in that city, may be used either with types, a hair pencil, or even with a pen: Take half an ounce of vermillion, and a drachm of salt of steel; let them be finely levigated with linseed oil, to the thickness or limpidity required for the occasion. ”

“ A large stiff needle may be forced in a pen handle to make an excellent marking awl or a common steel knitting needle may be used if the [33] point is sufficiently sharp. Metal workers always scratch their dimension lines in the surface of the metal as pencil lines are easily rubbed away by the hands when working with the metal. ”