What if your grail leaked?

Reg­u­lar read­ers of Mono­chro­mat­ic Out­look may recall men­tion of the Water­man Edson Dia­mond Black foun­tain pen. It was the pen I want­ed dear­ly but thought I would nev­er own because it was indeed too dear. At a MSRP of an even thou­sand dol­lars, its love­ly plat­inum trim and inset nib seemed out of my reach.

I had a chance to write with one at the Flax pen fair, and its smooth writ­ing cement­ed its place as the pen that I real­ly must have. Pen col­lec­tors have a name for such a desir­able and unat­tain­able item: they call it one’s «grail» pen.

Back in 2007 I must have been mak­ing more mon­ey than I am now because I was able to secure one. It was pur­chased at a sig­nif­i­cant dis­count, but it still remained my most expen­sive pen until… well, I’ll talk about that pen anoth­er time.

The Edson arrived and I found that 1,233 peo­ple had ordered one before me, as I had got­ten ser­i­al num­ber 001234, a num­ber I thought aus­pi­cious. I was very excit­ed to have this pen and the writ­ing did not dis­ap­point. The Edson proves that a nib need not be flex­i­ble to pro­vide a plea­sur­able writ­ing expe­ri­ence. The Edson is large and much heav­ier than most pens. Its fine point is ultra-smooth and the pen is gen­er­al­ly impressive.

Pic­tures (at least my pic­tures) fail to do jus­tice to the beau­ty of the Edson Dia­mond Black. The shape of the clip is mir­rored in the inlay just behind the nib, mak­ing it very tempt­ing to use with the cap post­ed. It’s bold but under­stat­ed (despite those attrib­ut­es being seem­ing antonyms) and ele­gant while being mas­cu­line. The Edson with its sil­ver cap and black acrylic-over-brass body reminds me of the white jack­et over black pants tux Sean Con­nery wore in Goldfin­ger. How’s that for high praise?

How­ev­er, a cou­ple of days after the Edson arrived, my thumb—not my thumbnail—caught a rough edge on the side of the clip on the cap. I rubbed my thumb gen­tly back over the area to see what the mat­ter was and found plat­inum plat­ing flak­ing off on my thumb. So after just a few days with the pen I had to send it to be serviced.

Water­man’s ser­vice depart­ment did not replate the cap or do any­thing to pre­serve my ser­i­al num­ber. When the pen came back to me, I no longer had num­ber 001234 but instead 001659. I rec­on­ciled myself to the fact that it is bet­ter to have a dif­fer­ent num­ber than a peel­ing pen, but it was still dis­ap­point­ing to be reas­signed to a high­er and less-desir­able number.

In Octo­ber or Novem­ber of 2009 I had the pen sent for ser­vice because the pen was seep­ing ink out of the spring-loaded cams that hold the cap on when the pen is capped.

The pen was returned to me with a piece of paper indi­cat­ing that the sec­tion had been replaced, but func­tion­al­ly noth­ing had changed. I was under­stand­ably dis­ap­point­ed that the leak con­tin­ued and was imme­di­ate­ly notice­able. This indi­cates to me that Water­man Ser­vice had not even test­ed the pen to see if there was a leak. Dis­gust­ed, I put the pen on the shelf and tried not to remem­ber that it existed.

On May 25^th of 2010 I sent an email to the Water­man ser­vice cen­ter explain­ing that the pen was still leak­ing and ask­ing what they were will­ing to do to cor­rect the sit­u­a­tion. I wait­ed for a reply that nev­er came and the Edson con­tin­ued to sit on the shelf unused.

This is a ter­ri­ble fall: from my favorite pen to not even being used. I don’t even like think­ing about the fact that I own the pen. I can’t even sell it in good con­science with the leak­ing clutch cams. But last week I remem­bered that the sit­u­a­tion was nev­er resolved and fur­ther­more I nev­er received a reply to my polite but under­stand­ably upset email of May 25^th 2010.

Water­man’s ser­vice page indi­cates that Water­man can be con­tact­ed for ser­vice only by email, so once again I wrote an email and sent it to Water­man’s Ser­vice depart­ment on 10 March of 2011. As of this writ­ing (15 March) I have yet to receive a reply.

I would love to report that the Edson is the amaz­ing pen that it should be. How­ev­er, I can­not in good con­science rec­om­mend any­one buy prod­ucts from a com­pa­ny whose stan­dards of work­man­ship and ser­vice have fall­en as low as Water­man’s under the wings of their par­ent cor­po­ra­tion, Newell Rub­ber­maid. They took a pen I was pre­dis­posed to love and turned it into a painful memory.

So leads to the sad occa­sion that I write a post that ends up both in the Writ­ing Instru­ments and Caveat ven­di­tor cat­e­gories. I’d hoped this day would­n’t come. Buy­ers of fine pens, beware both Water­man and Park­er, as these pen­mak­ers are not their for­mer selves. They have been reduced to brands bought and sold by a cor­po­ra­tion best known for plas­tic food containers.

Of course, this is not the end of the sto­ry. If I can­not get sat­is­fac­tion from Water­man, I will send the pen to Richard Binder at Richard’s Pens. He can fix just about any­thing that holds ink. It will end up cost­ing a lit­tle bit of mon­ey, but I’ll know that when it comes back to me, it will behave the way it should. Then per­haps it will once again be my grail pen.

Water­man Edson Dia­mond Black: 42 grams.