Moore L-92

Real Life (TM) has recently intruded on my intrest in fountain pens. Too much work. No time to practise calligraphy, no time to purchase and investigate repair equipment, etcetera. Contributing to this fact is also that I haven’t been able to make any good finds lately. I am not sure if this is because I have had bad luck, if there has been an increase of informed and financially secure people manically bidding on the pens I like, or if I am simply less likely to enter bidding wars lately, having had much else to occupy my time with.

With that said, the other week I lackadaisically bid on a brown (black) hard rubber Moore FP at the Swedish auction site Tradera. Just throwing in a low bid of app 8 dollars to see where it would end up. The two photographs (cap on, cap off) of the pen were a little blurry. Imprint, nib status and such not really clear. A bit of a gamble. To my great surprise, I won the pen. Could have been that the auction ended on a weekend before seven O’clock in the morning… Anyway, I am glad I got ahold of it.

Manufacturer/model: Moore fountain pen, a BCHR L-92. Not by any means the most fancy Moore model, but a classic shape.
Body and Section: Strong imprint: Nice wave-chasing with a tiny bit of symmetric fading at the top of the cap.
Cap: Cap closes firmly with one and a half turns.
Nib and feed: Nib says “The Moore Pen 2” I would call it a medium with good flex. Butter-smooth.

Furniture: No brassing at all! Clip yellowish gold, lever is a more reddish golden hue (maybe not original?). I love how the ball on the clip is folded together, see pic (click to enlarge).
Internal organs: J-bar intact. No sac.
Age: 1910s-20s
Scent: Classic BHR scent, a little metallic, a little burnt.
Verdict: A super nice user for a great price. I am tempted to use this pen in experimenting with recoloring the rubber back to black with the special colors available for this purpose. I do like the look of the old hard rubber pen however. In fact, I appreciate this colour more than black, but there is also tempting to restore a pen to look more like it did when it was brand new.
In other news: I have made one other nice find since starting to prepare this post. A Penol Ambassador, a very nice classic shaped black fine writer. Also from Tradera, from another collector. Post about this pen probably coming up in a while.

More pictures, close-up on back of nib and a writing sample below:

Ink: Noodler’s turquoise. Great shading. I usually do not go for blue inks (in fact my only regular ones are Diamine Prussian Blue and this one). I am not sure why.
Background: a clay plate made by my father.
Link: I had great healp in identifying nib as well as model of Moore from Ross Pens Moore History page.

Last but not least, a close-up of the back of the nib and the feed: