Yo también tenía la idea de que las plumas de ebonita sí se podían limpiar con agua, aunque no dejarlas bañándose 3 días
... tal vez nos confundamos con las de caseina ...
En cualquier caso oigamos la voz de los más expertos, que seguro que refrescamos conocimientos y aprendemos cosas en este hilo
Saludos
Lo de poder mojarse o no es como todo, relativo. Dependiendo de la composición química y del estado de conservación, es un factor que puede agravar el proceso de decoloración, aumento de porosidad, mateado, etc. de la ebonita. No es el caso grave, grave de la caseina, pero cuanto más contacto con el agua o la humedad, más riesgo. Lo cual no quiere decir que vaya a pasar necesariamente, pero cuando se trata de aconsejar, cuanto más lejos mejor. Todo esto lo explica muy bien un forero del FPN aquí:
This is the very problem with vintage pens. They are all made using variable formulas and the material is far from uniform. So generally, water is bad for hard rubber. Washing a HR cap in water for a couple of minutes to clean the inner cap will fade it - I did that about two weeks ago. Does this happen on every HR pen - no. But be very warned that it can and will do so often.
To say HR has been used for decades without problems belies the very fact that it was abandoned as the main pen material in the mid 1920's. I love HR pens but, they got problems a plenty. I have some 250+ vintage HR Sheaffer's and Boston's but I rarely actually use one of them. The risk of cleaning them today is not one I wish to take. It appears based on manufacturing numbers that we know that extremely few hard rubber pens exist today. This is due obviously to two factors, breakage and obsolescance when plastic pens were introduced. We know from Walter A. Sheaffer's testimony in 1915 that Boston Fountain pen was one of his major competitors. Sheaffer was making over 100,000 pens a year so we will extrapolate that Boston was doing the same. Discounting Boston as having made few pens from 1904-1908 ramping up during 1909-1912 and head to head with Sheaffer 1913-1916 (they sold January 1917) I would think a guess of 500,000 pens made over their history would not be unreasonable. A database of the 6 largest collection of Bostons known contains only 219 examples. So I don't think you can tell me that hard rubber is not delicate! 72% or the database is hard rubber with mottled contributing only 8% to that number.
The other point of examples that we have today are pens that in many cases were the best ones that were made and that is why they survived. To say they can be indescrimanently cleaned with semichrome or rinsed out with water shows a lack of understanding of the material. Can you get by doing these things, sure but, you sure as hell should not be advocating such things to others.
Roger W.
Muy en resumen viene a decir que la ebonita cayó en desuso desde los años 20 porque era un material muy delicado y la prueba son las pocas unidades que han llegado hasta nuestros días (que además, serán las que tenían una composición química que las hacía más duraderas). No creáis que no hay debate sobre esto allí también, pero parece sensato reducir el contacto con el agua a lo indispensable.
Perdón por el rollo. Un saludo