Back On Its Feet

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John Harrison and I got to talking at the DC Show - hard to tell how we got on the subject, but he’s a LeBoeuf fan, and he mentioned he had a LeBoeuf barrel laying about in need of repair.  Over scotch and cigars, he presented it to me for an opinion:

It didn’t need repair . . . it needed the entire insides.  Long story short, it made sense for me to buy the barrel rather than supply replacement innards.  Back at home, I went through my parts and didn’t find anything that would work: even though the LeBoeuf and Cross Alwrite are built on the same chassis (both by Cross), I didn’t have anything that could finish this one.  However, as nice as the color was, I went through my intact examples to see if I could live with parting any of them out.  I had two that are nearly identical to each other:

The color variation probably isn’t enough to suggest these were intended to be two different colors – the plainer of the two only looks so because the other is SOOOO spectacular.  I figured the plainer one could at least share custody of its innards, so with a simple twist of the tip . . .

The entire mechanism just pulls out from the back, and presto . . .

John’s pencil is complete and enjoying a comfortable retirement alongside its ringtop counterpart.