Onoto restoration

The Pensmith™
Onoto Restoration

We started this customer's repair with a capless, seized, ink-encrusted, badly faded Onoto 3000 with a cracked barrel, the owners father's prized gold band and a request to "make it work, make it a cap - and make it write well"!
Making the new cap on the lathe from solid hard rubber material of a similar age to the barrel of the pen. Hard rubber turns relatively easily.	Continuing to shape the new cap in the lathe.	The new cap finally taking shape in the lathe and lightly polished. Next, the cap needs to be turned down to accept the gold band and then drilled and bored to fit the section.
The new cap formed still attached to the hard rubber rod from which it was fabricated. At this stage, the cap is polished.	The cap is then turned down to accept the gold band.	Prior to drilling and boring, the cap is fitted with gold band. New cork plunger seals, hard backing washer and plunger seals were fitted to the filling system.
After cleaning, the internals were in surprisingly good condition and suitable again for use in the pen. If the plunger rod had have been cracked or scored, a new unit would have been fabricated from brass.	Barrel, section and plunger knob were restored to virtual black colour after two weeks of dark storage using a "secret English remedy" which involves no application of colour. It is a very effective method of re-blackening hard rubber.	The cap is drilled and bored to the precise dimensions of the section and handpiece after making allowance for nib length, cutting an internal shoulder for the tip of the section to rest on, and ease of fit and removal.
And, it wrote well!