a steel-nibbed PFM?

I think I have come across a steel-nibbed PFM.

It has a silver colored nib, but without the PdAg marking of
Sheaffer's palladium silver nibs. And the cap-lip
bears the inscription "Sheaffer's-R.D. 1960-MADE IN CANADA"

Someone once suggested that the "R.D." imprint indicated that this was
from the Sheaffer's research department, and therefore a prototype. It is an
amazing coincidence, because I do not have that many PFMs and I have two
like this. I have a feeling that more were produced than have been
documented.

Does anyone have any further light to shed on this?

By the way, the tines are a little separated. I have been pressing them
together with my fingertips, and with a round-nosed pliers, but haven't been
able to close the gap very much. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to
do this better?

Bob

Ingemar Johanson wrote:

I think I have come across a steel-nibbed PFM.

It has a silver colored nib, but without the PdAg marking of
Sheaffer's palladium silver nibs. And the cap-lip
bears the inscription "Sheaffer's-R.D. 1960-MADE IN CANADA"

Someone once suggested that the "R.D." imprint indicated that this was
from the Sheaffer's research department, and therefore a prototype. It is an
amazing coincidence, because I do not have that many PFMs and I have two
like this. I have a feeling that more were produced than have been
documented.

Does anyone have any further light to shed on this?

By the way, the tines are a little separated. I have been pressing them
together with my fingertips, and with a round-nosed pliers, but haven't been
able to close the gap very much. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to
do this better?

Not sure anything is unusual about steel nibbed PFMs. Sheaffer never
marked all their paladium nibs as such. Some were marked. Other were
not. I have never checked each and every PFM nib to see if its steel or
not and I'm not even sure there is any way to do it outside of extensive
lab testing. After all the high grade stainless steel looks the same as
paladium and will not be attracted by a magnet. Its also seems RD has
been stamped on millions of Sheaffer pens from Canada for whatever
reason.

As for the nib not much elese you can do except perhaps some side
burnish as illustrated in Da Book on pg 37 which might work. Beyond
that the nib has to be removed and thats no easy task on a PFM for
obvious reasons. Frank

Frank, thanks for the advice. I mashed the tines together pretty good, as a
last resort. The result looks grim, because the tines are pretty scuffed
up, and you would have hated to see what happened, because one tine went
over the other. But the result is a nice write. The tines are very nicely
aligned and spaced about right. It writes a nice smooth line. And it's
pretty wet. i think I've still got a little polishing up to do, and it'll
never look great, but it writes as nicely as can be.

Thanks again.

Nathan, I still don't now why there's no marking on the nib, and what the R.
D means, but I don't mind one bit if it's Palladium silver. I was just
passing along the question and the answer I'd previously received.

Bob

On Sat, 12 Jul 2003,09:03:06, wrote

After all the high grade stainless steel looks the same as
paladium and will not be attracted by a magnet.


As a matter of interest, why isn't high-grade steel magnetic? Isn't
there any iron content at all? I thought all steel had *some* iron in
it, even if there were other elements. Just interested.

Regards

Tony
--
******* email sent to this address is automatically discarded *******
************************ Please reply to the group ******************