Filling system

Vacumatic pens

Parker's Vacumatic arrived in 1933 and filled the early Parker 51 until 1948. There's no sac. Ink sits in the barrel itself, sealed off by a rubber diaphragm at the back, and you fill it by unscrewing the blind cap and pumping the plunger with the nib in the bottle. That's why the striped celluloid Vacumatics show their ink level when you hold them to the light. The diaphragm is the weak point. Rubber that's eighty years old has usually gone hard or split, so treat an unrestored Vacumatic as a pen that needs a new diaphragm unless the seller says it's been done. A restorer can replace it, and a restored Vacumatic fills as well as it did new.

3 pens we cover.