I'm a (Sheaffer) girl...

 Anyone else remember the song Barbie Girl by Aqua?  (There I go, dating myself.)  I can't stand the song.  That's what makes it so funny it's in my head right now.

Anyone remember Sheaffer Pen Company of Fort Madison, Iowa?

I'm a Sheaffer girl... in a Sheaffer world.....

My first fountain pen was a Sheaffer No Nonsense, bought at M&R Drugs.  I still remember that day.  I was 12, it was 1987, and I still don't know why I knew what a fountain pen was or why I wanted one.  I had a choice of two -- red or green translucent, and I chose red.  I also remember there being jars of ink, but I didn't bring one home.  Wish I had, now.

That pen didn't survive the move to Richmond 4 years later.  I'm not sure why.   Neither did my two No Nonsense ballpoints, pale yellow and the Christmas one.   But by then, I had gotten a Parker Vector calligraphy set from Arbor Drugs.  Those were the days when little towns had real drug stores where all sorts of things could be purchased without needing to travel to large centers.  

In 1996, I  remember drooling over the ads for the Christmas pen Sheaffer put out.  That was way too expensive for my pocketbook at that point.  And then..... nothing.  No more pen ads.  I was in college and busy and no longer came across fountain pens anywhere.

When my grandpa died in 2012, I had a little break from the dying people in my family.  I started writing again and listening to music, and memories of the fountain pen came back to me.  For fun I started looking them up just to see if they still existed, and I found that there was a world beyond my dreams... 

Not long after I rediscovered there were still fountain pens, I found a pen that reminded me of that first red one.  But the memories of the first one haunted me... but what was it?  A lot of leg work and hours and I found something similar thanks to PenHero.  I was sure that the picture he had up wasn't quite right for what I remembered.  However, it gave me a place to start and I haunted used pens until I found it.....

Exactly as I remembered.  It even had a dried cartridge of Sheaffer Jet Black in it.

And then the rabbit hole appeared, as everyone knows in the sewing machine world.  At least these are smaller than sewing machines.  I am NOT trying to collect all the colors.  (I am NOT going to collect all the colors....I am not going to.... oh, that Bicentennial No Nonsense looks cool... )  Some of those have fine nibs, which I had no idea they came with.  And the blue one is the latest variant of the No Nonsense, meaning ca 2000.  That one has an italic nib.

I just recently added the two ballpoints, in memory of the Christmas ballpoint No Nonsense and the pale yellow one I wish I still had (it had the lanyard, not the clip.)

This is my whole Sheaffer family of pens.  

Top Row, L to R:  2 Sheaffer Imperial II Deluxe, Sheaffer 440, Sheaffer Stylist 444, Sheaffer Craftsman (non-working but cool), Sheaffer Vailiant Touchdown, Sheaffer Cartridge pen early 1960s.  

Bottom Row: 9 No Nonsense fountain pens, 2 No Nonsense ballpoints, and the rest are Sheaffer cartridge pens (aka unofficially "school" pens).  

 

The red and black No Nonsense pens belong to this kit:

Parker makes good pens, and I'm very fond of my Edisons .... but I keep coming back to my Sheaffers.

House drama, part 2 -- success

 My life lately seems to feel like it is one failure after another, which is anything but the truth.  Life can be like that.  One is on a beautiful road, but you only see the potholes which threaten to eat your tires.

That said, it has been long enough I can post about this success.  I'm going right to the best picture first:

Look at that!!!  I don't think it has ever looked that nice, not in the 23+ years I have lived here.  It was a process.  For anyone who comes across this and wants to know what I did, here are the gory details:

Mix peroxide and baking soda into a paste.  I wish I had learned this years ago.  It works well to take iron off of tile and tub.  You just use your hand and fingers to rub it.  No other tools necessary, and it washes off with water.  I will say, after a while you have to just walk away.  I don't know if the peroxide continues to work or if the brain holds the old memory.  When I think it doesn't look like it's working, I walk away for an hour and come back.  Peroxide and baking soda got me to this point below.  Did I mention that there was no finish left on the tub in places?

So I slept on it.  Something triggered in my memory, and I mixed up some iron out and made my own spray.  If you do that, WAIT to put in in the spray bottle until it is done foaming.  I killed a spray bottle by not waiting.  Another word of warning here: DO NOT MIX ANYTHING WITH IRON OUT.  I sprayed and walked away a few times.  

Once that was finished, then it was time for Porc-a-fix.  If one is a perfectionist, trying to match color is the difficult step.  I didn't care enough to try harder, because seriously, a 1976 bathtub is going to be hard to match.  I suppose had I really wanted to get creative, I could have picked another color and made polka dots.   Husband and I tag-teamed the patching.  He'd see a spot I missed.  I found one he missed.  I decided that since there was no finish at all around the drain I was just going to paint it like crazy.  

After the Porc-a-fix was set, then we used a tile and grout sealer (smallest bottle I could get from Home Depot) to seal it.  Bill did that part.  Two coats, and water actually *beads* now.  That has never happened in 23 years.  

It's not a new bathroom, but it sure looks better.  I hope this inspires someone.