So I recently acquired another vintage Mabie Todd self-filler. It’s a 1940’s “austerity” pen from the Swan line. Model 6241 (model 62/colourway 41 – Green-pearl: dark green and black marble). It’s a near identical material to a Wyvern Perfect Pen No 81 lever filler I have from the same era.
Because of wartime restrictions and that Mabie Todd’s factories were in “red” zones (London, Birmingham, Liverpool), production was cut to only 15% of 1940’s output levels, massively impacting Mabie Todd’s access to their customers. Only if they subcontracted or moved manufacturing into “green” zones could they add another 10% to their production limit.
Several of my friends in the fountain pen community refer to their Pelikan collections as their “flock”. I only own a couple of student-grade Pelikanos, so don’t consider myself part of the collective in that regard.
Today though, I learnt that as well as the generic “flock”, a collective noun for swans is a “bevy”! I now have 4 Swans and a brace of Blackbirds from the Mabie Todd stable – and they’re all a joy, and a real bevy of beauties.
By all accounts this is one of the most secure letterlocking methods out there. Not going to lie… it’s as fiddly as all get out to create! So many things have to be just right.
I sort of cheated and folded the whole thing, made most of the holes, etc. before I even wrote on the paper. Primarily to make sure I wouldn’t write in the areas getting most of the punctures.
I’d asked our local library to purchase a copy of the excellent “Letterlocking; The Hidden History of the Letter” by Jana Dambrogio & Daniel Starza Smith, and it gives step by step diagrams of how to recreate this complex lock. There’s also an excellent YouTube video, which I include below.
It’s an expensive book, but if you can borrow a copy through your library system, I recommend giving it a read. Both the book and letterlocking.org have lots of other examples of letterlocking too, as well as the YouTube resources they have created to accompany the research.
This particular letterlock is extra sneaky. The letter is folder in four columns, then folded up into three. It not only has the obvious “lock” of surounding thread (in my case waxed thread used for leatherwork) which pierces the letter multiple times due to the folds and is fixed in place by a wax seal, but if you were careful enough to somehow remove the wax and thread (with a view to retying/wax sealing it once you’d read the contents), you’d discover as you unfolded the outer thirds that inside is a paper booby-trap which will almost certainly be torn by the unfolding. You may be an expert in rethreading twine and duplicating wax seals, but it is unlikely you’d be able to “untear” paper so the final recipient wasn’t aware it had been previously opened.
If you try this at home kids – I’d suggest making the dagger longer than indicated in the diagrams. In my case, I only just had enough left to create a flap big enough for the thread to pierce (hidden by the outer wax seal).
Anyone keeping up will remember that I posted my experiments with trying to recreate traditional sealing wax colours using AI and Crayola crayons.
I also posted about trying to recreate traditional “Bank of England” sealing wax with high gloss and a brittle final result, as well as trying to maintain that high gloss with modern (mail sorting machine friendly) ingredients, and comparing the final results.
In all the excitement I realise I didn’t really show the resulting sticks of coloured wax (4 on the right) and the final sealing wax (3 on the left).
The green sealing wax is high gloss and made with traditional ingredients – particularly shellac. The other two sticks were made with various experimental proportions of EVA glue and produce a much more pliable seal.
In use, the high gloss shellac wax is harder to pour but produces unrivalled “snap” and high gloss. Here it is in use on one of my recent letterlocked missives.
It’s been a regular haunt of the family pretty much since we arrived in BC 25 years ago, but I swear I always seem to discover a new track I’ve never walked on, every time I visit.
I was particularly taken with two views up into the trees. Within metres of each other, I could look up and see, harsh against the clear fristy frosty sky a group of trees still mourning the passing of the old year and the lingering cold weather (we’ve been fortunate to have no snow or significant freezes here in the lower mainland as yet), and then just a few paces down the path another group looking all hopeful and expectant for what the coming year might bring. (Yes, yes, I know all about deciduous and evergreen trees, I don’t need anyone to explain that, thank-you).
There’s a lot of shit going on in the world right now but maybe take an hour or so and go for a walk in nature. There’s nothing quite like it to recalibrate what’s important and how we fit into things.
Feeling quite pleased with myself, I then blew it all by pigging out at C-Lovers when we got home: treating myself to haddock and chips, with a pint and some onion rings to start, and a buttered bread bun, so I could cap it off with a chip butty. Glorious!
A fancy bun-based chip butty, as enjoyed at C-Lovers. Image source: The Guardian
So I occasionally enjoy online content from Elle Cordova, mainly because she’s smart and erudite, but also because she often talks about fonts and grammar. A fellow nerd, one might say. (Or not, if one doesn’t consider oneself that way inclined.)
Anyway, I recently came across an old posting of hers where she covers Peggy Seeger’s I’m Gonna be an Engineer.
It appealed because of its firm feminist message, if a little sad at recounting the oft-wasted talents of our fairer sex. I assumed both Mss (plural Ms?) Cordova and Seeger were Americans, so suddenly sat upright when I heard the British engineering company of Vickers mentioned (in a typically misogynistic scene, as one might expect).
Being who I am, I felt the irresistible urge to investigate, and discovered that Ms Seeger did indeed spend a significant chunk of time in the UK until 1994, and she felt the urge to return to pretty Oxford in 2010. I confess I’d never previously heard of her, but I’m glad that Ms Cordova had, and introduced me to this sadly timeless indictment of how little we’ve moved forward in recognising the value and skills of 50% of our species!
For the record, when I was studying Computing & Electronics at Durham University back in the early 80s (it was a new thing, and few universities even offered courses specifically in computing back then), there was only one female on the course. Actually, I think there were only 8 or so of us on the entire course, so I suppose statistically speaking that was actually pretty good for the times we were in! The more general Engineering course (acknowledged as one of the toughest around, at the time) had, I believe, 5 females in the cohort – a much lower percentage given the popularity of the course. Several years later when I was working at a software/electronics company we had only a single female engineer in the whole company.
To my personal knowledge these few women have had successful careers in engineering areas as diverse as the North Sea oil fields and designing the future of electrically powered light aircraft.
We’re mad to undervalue (or even completely ignore) the potential contributions of half our population simply because of prejudice and biology. I have two daughters, both brought up to not take shit from anyone – especially men. And yes: they’re both way smarter than me.
OK, so right up front, I should confess that the title is a gross simplification, and though there are indeed three contenders I shall be talking about, none of them was perfect. Or Clint Eastwood, for that matter.
Recent readers will recall that I was on a quest to recreate (within reason) traditional “Bank of England” style sealing wax. The particular qualities of this wax are that it is glossy when cool and that it snaps with a satisfying crack when tampered with. If you don’t recall the journey or just want to see the final recipe I used, check here.
The result, I must boast, was A-MAZING!
The photo does it no justice at all, but let me assure you it is as shiny as glazed porcelain and very hard to the touch. It also snaps delightfully when one tries to manipulate it (i.e. bend it to open a letter).
But nothing is perfect…
It was a complete pain to use! It turns out that the traditional recipe I used (heavy on the shellac and colophony) results in maximum viscosity close to the melting temperature. Basically this means that if you’re using a typical wax melting spoon/stove then the molten wax is like toffee and quite hard to manipulate. It sticks to anything you may be using to stir it with; it even sticks to the original wax stick making it hard to separate and melt a quantity of wax off the end in the first place. If you can overcome this though, the resulting pour and seal are beautiful.
So I read up on how to improve the molten characteristics… and discovered they were entirely as predicted! This is indeed how traditional sealing wax behaved back in the day. Staying traditional, it seems the behaviour can be much improved without impacting gloss or hardness by the addition of Venice Turpentine (not actually turpentine but another resin – this time from the larch [Monty Python reference unintended!]). It turns out it’s also used by horse owners to improve the quality of their hooves. Those of the horses, not the owners, just to be clear. I may acquire some at a future date, but for now I’ll just put up with the pulled-nougart experience if I use it in a spoon (it melts fine straight from the stick but this can cause sootiness in the pour).
Not one to leave an avenue entirely unexplored though, I asked my new not-entirely-trustworthy friend ChatGPT what might be possible using “modern style” sealing wax recipes in order to obtain a similar result – at least visually. It furnished me with the following recipe, which I used in conjunction with the previously explored “British Racing Green” wax recipe.
So I opted for the “Ultra-gloss” version, and I have to admit… it looked pretty damned good! Not THAT easy to pour, to be honest, but most definitely more syruppy and less like toffee. Once set though, it looked very glossy.
I think you can see from the photo that the result has a very high gloss, though the poor lighting doesn’t really do the lovely deep dark green justice. In terms of pure visual impact, this is probably just as good as the “genuine” BoE wax in the first example. The difference quickly becomes obvious once you touch the seal though. It has a distinctly rubbery feel and is quite flexible when you bend it. Totally fine for most modern uses I would think, but not really what I need for my letterlocking projects.
I haven’t tried it yet, but I would imagine that adding ~30% shellac to standard modern wax beads may very well produce a similar gloss finish.
Just to complete the comparison I melted a standard modern sealing wax stick just to see how glossy it was in comparison.
Oddly, I would say the default commercial modern wax was MORE glossy in the stamped area, but very matte in the surounding unstamped area. Entirely the inverse of the previous one! I can only surmise that the pressure of the brass stamp while the wax was still molten was enough to “polish” the surface. You can see quite clearly in the top photo though that this is the only wax that doesn’t have any gloss in the unstamped regions.
I may try some further experimenting with adding shellac to off the shelf modern waxes to see if I can emulate the look of Bank of England wax, but for my own longer term needs, “the real deal” will more fully meet my needs, as the crack of the seal as my correspondents open their locked letters is a key part of my intended experience for them.
Another? Well, yes! In trying to find any information on my Mentmore Diploma (it’s etched in the barrel, so I know that’s what it is! 🙂 ), I came across a post from a decade or so ago on GoodWritersPens with pretty much the same pen and a lengthy discussion in the comments about whether it was a one-off/Frankenpen/trial…
The thing is the barrel is almost clear. Not a demonstrator as such – there is some “cracked ice” pattern in the celluloid, but most of it is see-through. The cap though is a solid blue/black cracked ice pattern – the cap of the one featured on GoodWritersPens seems more pale green/grey paired with the black. The celluloid has obviously become discoloured through aging (it’s likely a 1930s/1940s pen), but I’m not sure if it was ever totally clear, or perhaps was manufactured with some sort of tint.
It’s a button filler with a lovely 14CT gold nib. Very easy to write with. Other than that – I really don’t know much about it, other than what’s already at the link above.
Mentmore Diploma: button filler, 14CT gold nibAn unusual little thingMentmore Diploma; Made in EnglandMentmore; OSMIRIDIUM; 14CT GOLD
So yesterday my order of shellac arrived. Today I made my first ever stick of “real” Bank of England style sealing wax, made (mostly) in the traditional way. Everything was cooked in one glass yoghurt pot at low “simmer” temperatures. Everything melts at less than 100°C, so keep things low and steady. Avoid bubbles and scorching by trying to speed things up with higher temperatures.
“Bank of England” sealing wax (late 18th–early 19th c.) was typically:
Shellac – primary hard, glossy binder
Colophony (rosin) – increases brittleness and flow
Minimal wax – just enough to prevent crumbling
Mineral filler (often chalk) – opacity and snap
Pigment – vermilion, lampblack, Prussian blue, etc.
I was using modern paraffin wax crayon for wax/pigment. I’d pre-melted/mixed and cooled it into a bar so I didn’t have to try hitting a target colour with small shavings of crayon during the blending of the resins and potentially adding too much wax overall, or ending up with an unexpected colour.
The recommended “core recipe” was as follows. This produces a very hard, brittle, glossy wax that snaps cleanly and takes a sharp impression. The ChatGPT session then offered some minor tweaks to target specific behaviours.
Base formula (20 g batch)
Ingredient
Mass (g)
Function
Shellac flakes (orange or blonde)
8 g
Hard glossy binder
Colophony (rosin)
7 g
Brittleness, melt flow
Beeswax
2 g
Processability only
Calcium carbonate (chalk)
2 g
Snap, opacity, tooth
Crayon pigment
1 g
Colour
Total: 20 g
Why this ratio works
Shellac ≥ 40% → glassy, shiny fracture
Rosin nearly equal → sharp snap, low elasticity
Beeswax capped at 10% → avoids bending
Chalk ≈ 10% → authentic brittleness and matte fracture interior
This composition is much closer to archival recipes than modern EVA wax beads.
Optional adjustments (whilst staying authentic)
Increase brittleness (very “bank note” snap)
+1 g colophony
−1 g beeswax
⚠️ Do not drop beeswax below 1 g per 20 g or it may crumble while cooling.
Increase gloss (for show seals)
+1 g shellac
−1 g calcium carbonate
Slightly easier melting (still traditional)
+1 g beeswax
−1 g colophony
This is about the maximum wax you should use.
Colouring with crayons (safe & accurate)
Crayons are mainly paraffin + pigment, so treat them as wax + colour, not pure pigment.
General rule
1 g crayon ≈ 0.7 g wax + 0.3 g pigment
Compensate by reducing beeswax slightly if using >1 g crayon
What I actually used…
8g colophony (melt first – it can take a while)
8g shellac flakes
2g calcium carbonate (finely ground powder as used in paper making and other crafts)
2g wax crayon for colour – I used some of the purple I’d blended from earlier experiments
The resulting mixture becomes very hard to work with as soon as it cools even slightly, so it was quite hard to pour and form into the mould, and left an annoyingly high amount in the glass jar afterwards. This did not go well with my Yorkshire “waste not, want not” genes, so I added a bit more crayon and half an EVA glue stick just to bulk it up and have enough for a “half pour”. This was still hard to incorporate into the leftovers, as the mix was very stretchy and hard to release from the bamboo skewer I was using to stir things with. Hopefully the shellac/colophony will make this a bit more shiny than typical modern glue/crayon mixes. At least there’s less to clean out of the jar!
Note how glossy the cooled bar is. It has that satisfying glassy sound when you tap it on something hard. I have very high hopes it will form brittle seals once I give it a go. You can see near the top of the photo the more muted tone from the dregs I added EVA and more crayon to. A very different result, with an almost rubbery flexibility compared to the high rigidity of the Bank of England style bar.
My local pusher had done a deal with his London cartel contacts at the end of last year, and shown me a lovely selection of Mabie Todd Swan and Blackbird pens he’d come into possession of. Being a decent sort, and knowing my penchant for such finery, he’d offered me first refusal and the time to scrape together the necessary funds.
Today we met for coffee, and rather like a more refined and far less sleazy wartime spiv, he unzipped his pen case and displayed his wares. Amongst the various Mabie Todds were three or four colourways of the model SM205 Self-filler.
According to Stephen Hull’s impressive “The Swan Pen”, the SM205/83 was made in 1939/1940. I swear I have no connection with Stephen Hull, but I notice that this particular pen is featured on the front cover of his book, just as my BT200/81 was featured on the back!
The SM100 series had the same snake skin finish but silver trim and no band on the cap. The filler lever is made of ebonite and this example has stayed a lovely matte black. A matching “Fyne Poynt” propelling pencil was also available at the time. The pen was available in a range of other colours and finishes, including:
/59 Italian Marble
/60 Black (chased)
/84 Jade Snake Skin
/85 Ruby Snake Skin
/86 Grey Snake Skin
Mabie Todd Swan Self-filler Model 205/83
Nib says: SWAN; 3; H; 14C-585; ENGLAND Model SM205/83, showing blue coloured snake skin pattern
Unfortunately poor lighting makes the pen look greenish in some of the photos, but it is in fact a lovely blue tone.
For those not born with all the lyrics to every Beatles song ingrained already in their neocortex, my chosen blog title is the second line of “Blackbird“, and I though it quite apt for my musings on the eventual return of my Mabie Todd Blackbird BT200/81 (green/gold/black celluloid).
Regular readers may recall it was gifted to me in 2023 by dear, long-suffering Mrs E, but that I only got around to having it locally serviced back in May 2025. Well… that turned into a saga, and it was quickly made obvious why Mrs E.’s earlier attempt to get it fixed in the UK had come to naught.
As I’d mentioned in the earlier blog entry, the factory was bombed during the war, and later builds of the pen used a small bulb filler under the blind cap as opposed to the earlier plunger filler. However, there was also an earlier modification whereby the threaded seating for the spring and plunger was replaced by a glued-in plug for the plunger to slide through.
What I’d assumed was a simple cleaning job and replacing the long-gone rubber sheath over the spring (which creates the vacuum to suck ink into the barrel of the pen), was actually much more involved. The seating of the spring had a crack which meant replacing the rubber would be fruitless as no vacuum was possible without it being replaced. It’s not even shown in the disassembly photo from the repairer, as it was destroyed on removal. Of course, my pen was of the slightly later version that had a glued-in plug and so the damaged part could not be screwed out, but needed carefully boring out. The repairer then needed to procure a lathe and fashion a new gasket from ebonite in order to undertake the repair. It’s not like one can still buy spare parts for 1930’s pens…
All that just to say it took a lot longer than anyone expected, but the result is a fine looking pen with a less common colourway and a barrel that is still clear, despite being yellowed by time.
Looking forward to inking it up and checking out that lovely soft nib…
Quieter Elephant 
