A Forest of Tree Trunks

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You won’t see a picture like this anytime soon again:

That’s because as rare as these are, you’re not likely to see three of them together, and Joe Nemecek and I would like to get a head count to see just how many of these things are acutally out there.  These are Eversharps with custom caps made by the same unknown maker who turned out the Waterman “tree trunk” overlay pens - right down to the mold seams on the caps showing they were made using a three-part mold.

I’ve written about these before (at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/01/it-pays-to-chat.html and http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-red-herring.html), but after I found a second example, I asked Joe Nemecek to bring his along to the Ohio Show so that we could compare them.

I have some new observations to report.

This started when I bought my second example online from Stephen Overbury; I bought it because, with as few of these as are out there, every little clue we can pull out of them might help finally identify who made these – and likely who made similar tree trunk pens on Waterman’s chassis.

Stephen’s example turned out to be identical in every respect to mine:

With the cap removed (and the mechanism still screwed into it), they are more obviously Eversharps:

The caps were made around an ordinary Eversharp cap, with a Wahl Eversharp clip riveted to the outside of the new cap and further secured with a layer of metal poured around it:

Completely disassembled, here’s a tree trunk pencil shown next to the parts from a “normal” Eversharp:

Both of mine have identical imprints:

“Wahl Eversharp / Triple Plated Pat. Made in USA”

That prompted an email to Joe Nemecek, to find out what imprint his has and his answer?  None.  None?  Joe reminded me that I found no imprint the last time I had it apart, but when I couldn’t find whatever pictures I took at the time, I asked him to bring it with him to the Ohio Show so that I could take another look and we could compare.  Sure enough, Joe’s has no imprint whatsoever, but I think I know why:

The barrel is shorter, and from the way the top on Joe’s has been countersunk, it would appear that his has been trimmed off, right through where the imprint would have been:

The barrel is a bit shorter, but the cap on Joe’s is just a little bit longer, maybe to compensate for the barrel being shortened?  Seems odd, since the cap telescopes down over the barrel and seats.  The extra length of the cap does nothing to make up the overall length of the pencil:

A thought occurred to me, and maybe this is another direction in which we can focus our research.  I’ve seen one other Eversharp pencil, with the imprint obliterated and non-Eversharp features added:

This pencil features a George T. Byers patented snake clip.  You’ve seen it here before at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-one-that-kept-me-awake-at-night.html, in which I concluded that it was probably was not made by Byers, who had given up his shenanigans by 1918 and was a respectable partner in Byers & Hayes.  Likely someone else had set up a nice business customizing Eversharps.  Could the same craftsman have made the Eversharp tree trunk pencils?