Another home made ebonite eyedropper

[Glen]

A red and black hard rubber eyedropper with an overfeed in the style of Paul Wirt. I used a 14k vintage nib from a 20's Ingersoll pen. Fun.

 

[Jim15]

Great work.

 

[Sataro]

Very nice looking pen!

 

[Penultimate]

That's very nice. Is the cap a friction fit and what is an overfeed?
Thanks

 

[Glen]

Thank you for the comments I appreciate it. Fountain pen history is a rabbit hole I've been going down( still am!) . The really early pens ( Paul Wirt starting in about 1888) were made of hard rubber like this or black. Screw cap pens didn't show up very often until about 1910. Early models more like this pen, with the front being of smaller diameter than the barrel abruptly were typical. Later most eyedropper pen caps slid over a smoothly tapered pen front. In the teens most pens had threaded caps, often 4 start that rotated on quickly like one turn only. Without threads caps were friction fit which works well with hard rubber like this. ( Now many examples are cracked unfortunately).
Feeds are a subject in themselves, but in an overfeed the feed lies over the back of the nib only, over-under feeds like Swan eyedroppers had both sides of the nib with a ebonite feed, and later pens like now only had a feed on the underside. The feed design was a highly competitive field in the early years.
Ebonite for a pen material continued into the mid 1920's when celluloid plastics became available. Metal decorations, rings, overlays, or pens entirely made of metal also were made quite early on.

I have been very lucky to get examples of quite a few early pens and millions probably were made prior to threaded caps becoming the norm.