The Montblanc Miesterstück was the first premium fountain pen I ever heard of. A customer of mine was self-employed and I asked him what he did. Somehow this guy was making a good living buying and selling men’s premium accessories. (No, not online, this was 1986!) I had no idea what he meant by premium accessories, but then he showed me a Rolex watch, ruby and onyx cuff-links, and a Montblanc pen. He let me handle each one, then told me his selling prices. I nearly fell off my chair.
The watch I understood somewhat, and the jewelry can be any price if the stones are special, but I was most surprised by the idea of paying hundreds of dollars for a plastic pen. Whether it made sense to me or not, it did cement into my memory that Montblanc was a premium brand, and the only status symbol pen I knew of. I started noticing them in movies and TV shows where lawyers or CEOs were featured. So when I got hooked on fountain pens, I naturally brought that stereotype of the premium pen with me. Even though I know a lot more about pen brands now, I still have this preternatural desire for a “masterpiece”.
As of today, I have two; the cigar-like No.149 and the reasonably-sized No.144 in the Classique variety. Today I’ll show off the beefy 149. But the first thing you’ll need to know is that I’m not a typical collector, looking for the best of everything. I’m more of a “barn finds” type. So my chunk of German “precious resin” came in non-working condition by way of Japan, par avion, and full of syrupy black ink. Icky and sticky.
As you can see, the nib was coated with old ink and general grime. There was also sticky mess right up to the threads and inside the cap. Some tarnish had formed on the clip, as well. Meanwhile, what you can’t see, is that the plunger was jammed with ink the consistency of something out of a ball point pen and it would only unscrew a few turns. Thankfully, it moved enough to get a wrench to the brass so I could disassemble the plunger guts. After that it was just a matter of warm water running through to free up and clean out the internals.
It took an hour or so to clean out, lube, and get it back together. I spent some extra time on cleaning the brightwork, polishing the resin, and cleaning up the nib before I loaded fresh Midnight Blue MB ink. The 18k 750 nib isn’t quite where it needs to be, yet, but we’ll get it there. As you can see, it writes and it shines.
Today I removed and cleaned the nib and had a look at it with a scope. It has a weird, unbalanced shape and had quite a few scratches in the writing surface. I evened up the tines, cleaned between them. Then I used 8000 grit to remove the scratches and 12000 grit to polish the surface and the edges of the tip. That was enough to smooth out the surface and improve both ink flow and writing feel. It still has issues at some angles, but it is better. I’ll have to look up more info on this specific nib before I try anything else.
This is one of the three pens I plan to work with as I seek my “grail” fountain pen. I haven’t written much with it yet, but it is impressive looking. The nib has play and good potential, so I look forward to getting it smooth and writing with it daily as I work up to the purchase of another potential grail pen, the Pilot Custom 283.