Paul Wirt style homemade eyedropper

[Glen]

I'd been wanting to make a pen in this early (1890's) style pen, and was interested to see if I could make an overfeed and if it would work. It's all made of hard rubber rod (ebonite). the threads were made using a tap and die, similar to the diameter of the original, but I found I didn't drill deep enough into the barrel to take full potential of room for ink, but will still write a few pages before running out, if I do another one will maybe make slightly bigger diameter threads and drill a bit more to improve on that. I used an antique gold dip pen nib. I think the critical factor in the pen not leaking or blobbing is having the section internal diameter the same as a Wirt, and I have a couple to compare to. This was really a fun one to do since I'm partial to the era and to Paul Wirt pens.

 

[Penultimate]

Nice work!

 

[Glen]

Thanks! This was a fun one. I had been thinking about the section for a long while, the nib stays in place by grooves cut for it in the inside of the section and the larger Wirt nibs (for the overfeed pens) were narrowed at the unexposed part to keep the inside of that part of the section the same size opening for different size pens, I think if the opening was larger it would drip below the nib since these feed systems rely on surface tension to work. Originally, I'm sure it was trial and error 150 years ago as these guys were playing with their lathes in their shops just like we do!