Why I Think What I Do

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A couple weeks ago I divided the evolution of Parker’s pencil manufacturing into three epochs, “Ignore them,” “Oh crap” and “Screw it.”  If there’s die-hard Parker fans still reading this blog, God love you for having a good sense of humor about that!

Parker’s decision to outsource production of pencil mechanisms to Cross in the mid-1930s, I opined, signified the beginning of the “Screw it” period, after which Parker didn’t really show much interest in what went inside their pencils, as long as the outsides of them looked like their pens (the Liquid Lead pencils, I said didn’t count since they were just ballpoint pens using graphite paste rather than ink).

Over on Facebook, Mike Crawford asked a good question: so what about the Parker Vacumatic cap-actuated repeating pencils, like these?

All of these sport Made in U.S.A. imprints, all of which have date codes of 8 (the top three) or 9 (the bottom four), for 1938 and 1939:

Most cap-actuated repeating Vacumatics, if I remember correctly, were made in Canada.  My collection isn’t the best straw poll for that statement, since I steer away from Canadian models – not that I have anything against them, but since I don’t actively collect Vacumatics, it’s easier for me to keep fast to my “I only collect American pencil” excuse when someone tries to sell me one.  Not that I haven’t fallen off the wagon . . . at least once . . .

So what of my comment, that this is “what the insides of Parker Vacumatics look like after the “Screw it” era began”?

OK, you got me.  That’s what the twist-action Vacs look like.  But while the cap-actuated repeaters were totally different deal inside, they were exactly the same deal when it came to Parker’s attitude towards pencils.  I think Parker was still outsourcing mechanisms in 1938 when the Vacumatic was dressed up in cap-actuated trim . . . I just think it was coming from a different source:

Here’s that 1938 burgundy Vacumatic alongside a contemporaneous Esterbrook pencil.  Both cap actuated, and under the hood they are far too similar to be coincidental:

In both, the mechanism is secured to the barrel by a threaded bushing, which travels up and down between two protruding ribs on the mechanism’s outer tube.  The only difference between the Parker and Esterbrook is the location of the spring – on the Parker, the spring rests against that washer inside the front of the barrel, while the Esterbrook has the spring mounted behind a self-contained plug.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know all that much about Parker, and since Parker continued cap-actuated pencils well into the Parker 51 era, it’s possible that Parker actually did make these mechanisms themselves – maybe from the outset, or maybe after outsourcing them from someone else for a while.

Suffice to say that if it wasn't Esterbrook making these Vac mechanisms, whoever did was copying Esterbrook.