Gold Seal was a quality designation given to Wahl Eversharp’s top-of-the-line pens. Each Gold Seal pen included a small gold emblem with double checkmarks (as shown at right) and were warranted for the lifetime of the pen.

Drilled seals:
It’s not uncommon to find a pen with a small hole drilled into the Gold Seal. At the end of a styles production run, the remaining pens were sold off at steep discounts and without the lifetime warranty. So to differentiate from the warranted pen, a hole was drilled through the emblem on the unwarranted pens.

About Wahl Eversharp:

If you’re not familiar with Wahl Eversharp name, it was the name of the pen company. The company originally began as Eversharp in 1913, but then was renamed in 1916 to Wahl-Eversharp after Eversharp was purchased by the Wahl Adding Machine Company. If you want to read more about the pen companies history you can find it on Wikipedia.org.

The request for this project was to recreate TWO Wahl Eversharp Gold Seal fountain desk pens. The customer supplied the original vintage green pen shown in the above photo’s and ask if I could make some new ones. I made a pair of Eversharp ballpoint desk pens before, but those weren’t as complicated. They didn’t have the bands, or the pinned lever. So these were more of a challenge.

As for the material, the customer choose to use the same materials as the original. The main barrel being made out of some vintage red cellulose acetate acrylic, then black ebonite for the section and top/tip. See below for additional information on the material.

The first (and most obvious) task in making new pens was to study the original pen’s construction and think about how they may have been made. Then whether I could make mine in the same manner.

As with most desk pens, the Eversharp consists of three basic parts: section, barrel and top/tip. The section and top/tip are simple parts to make. The center though, with the placement of the double bands in the center and split for the lever would be more challenging. But eventually I was able to figure out a way to make them and I couldn’t have been more pleased with the results.

The BLACK used with the red Ceblox is German ebonite. Ebonite is a hard rubber material. If you want to lean more about ebonite, you can check it out at Wikipedia.org. (The black I used for the all-black sample pen is common acrylic acetate. The same material I use for all my sample pens.)

The RED material however is some very special material. It’s a vintage cellulose acetate acrylic that was once sold under the name of ‘Ceblox‘. While the material may just look like any run-of-the-mill acrylic, it’s actually a very high-end acrylic. Cellulose acetate is an early form of acrylic and Ceblox was a brand manufactured by Mazzucchelli in France.

This Ceblox was manufactured in the early 1980’s, and is no longer manufactured. As a result, there isn’t much of it around anymore. And the combination of being a high-end acrylic and scarce means it’s expensive. As an example the black acrylic is common acrylic acetate and sells for about 75 cents and inch. This red Cebox is almost $8.00 an inch!

Besides the scarcity and high price, another reason you won’t see it used much by home shop pen makers is due to it’s reputation. Cellulose acetate has a lower melting point that most other acrylics, so it said that it can actually catch fire while your turning it if it gets too hot. I’ve never had a problem with it, nether the less that reputation follows it.

Green Ceblox: I also have some green Ceblox with the same pattern as the red. The green blanks though are darker than the green in the original pen. It could be the same material and it has just faded and become lighter over time.

I wanted to point out the lever filler system and specifically the lever installation. I used an older pin system for the lever instead of a modern spring clip. It’s possible I may have been able to use the spring clip method, but I wanted the pens to be as authentic as possible.

About spring-clip levers:

These days most levers are installed using a round spring clip on the inside of the pen rather than a pin. With this method the spring clip is first fed though the holes on either side of the lever. Then you insert the spring into the lever slot, and twist until it seats into a groove cut on the inside of the barrel.

This mounting method has several advantages. First, you only see the lever on the outside of the pen. Second, you can easily remove the lever if necessary.

About pinned levers:

Some vintage pens, such as these Gold Seal desk pens, had their levers installed with a short pin. This method requires drilling a small hole slightly smaller than the diameter of the pin though the material on either side of the lever slot that’s inline with the hole in the lever. Then you push the pin into the hole on one side through the holes in the lever, then into the hole in the material on the other side of the lever.

As you can imagine, this install method is much harder to implement. It requires that you drill the holes exactly perpendicular to the slot and inline with the lever hole. If it’s too high or too low the lever won’t seat correctly. If it’s off, the lever will sit crooked in the slot.

While you can remove the pin, it can be a stressful operation. The hole is very close to the surface, so too much force and you could crack or break the acrylic trying to force it out. And the pin is very thin, so you need a smaller diameter pin to push it out so you don’t enlarge the hole.

The pens have a total length of 8.45″.
The length of each part is: section .625″; center barrel 3.25″; and top/tip 3.62″.
The maximum diameter is .472″ (12mm) at center bands, and the rear band is .375″.

Hardware: 18k Gold.
Filling System: Lever.
Nibs: 18k gold #6 Jowo.