Dr. Manhattan’s Other Job

Hey, said YouTube to me recently. You want to see someone that fixes old luxury items?

“That’s not me fixing a pen… right?” I became nervous that I was creating content somnambulistically.

Oh, no. You’re nothing like this ambitious.

I mean, I’d like to do that, but the stuff I do that strikes me as fiddly and wee is the upper end of the fiddly-wee spectrum in that video. Also, how the dickens does one remember which bit goes where?

Today’s pen: Retro 51 Tornado
Today’s ink: Skrip Black

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Tick Tock

There is substantial overlap between people who like pens and people who like timepieces. I include myself in this– were I more well-heeled, I’d probably have an assortment of neat watches as well as the heap of delightful pens I currently revel in. For good or ill, though, I’ve had to be content with looking at neat watches and clocks.

This new world of 3D printing which we find ourselves in, though… well, now I can lament a lack of funds, equipment, and specific skills. What lies below is an advert, but it’s also very cool to watch.

I would want to keep something with that many exposed gears under a bell-jar, which I think would be the right sort of fussy Victoriana to shove it into “Steampunk aesthetic”.

Today’s strangely complicated pen: Platinum Curidas (page underway, picture only)
Today’s ink: Platinum blue-black

Addictions, Managable and Dangerous

Yesterday, my watch stopped running.  It’s an undistinguished item, not bottom-rung in value but it certainly wouldn’t get badly hurt if it slipped off the ladder, and yet I paid enough for it that I feel it’s worth getting a new battery installed.  Like pens, I do not believe in disposeable watches.

There is a jewellery shop which does this sort of work convenient to my usual lunch march, and I have just returned from there.  I am going to have to go back in the near future to retrieve it.  This may be a problem.

Others have commented on a high correlation of pen fancying and watch fascination.  It’s probably something to do with appreciation of craftsmanship on a very fine scale.  This is something I have noted in myself, and I have to date suppressed it.  The situation was not improved by the presence of a small card saying “20% off” between a pair of really pretty Bulova self-winding mechanical… but I’m on the way to digression.

The problem with allowing this interest in watches to get any real traction is that watches are expensive.  The casual reader may say, “This from a guy who thinks a $50 pen is a good deal?” and that is a fair comment, but there’s an order of magnitude in difference, especially when one cannot perform one’s own repairs.

The path of consideration I really don’t want to wander down is the one flanked by the knowledge that I took up pen repair to feed that particular back-clinging monkey and the awareness that the local environs are not exactly swarming with watch repair shops.  That’s a bad line of thought, not the least reason for which is the awareness of how angry I sometimes get at Snorkels and expanding that to the repacking of an unspooled main-springs.

Today’s pen: Sheaffer Admiral
Today’s ink: Camel royal blue