Sonora, California is also known as the “Mother Lode” when gold was discovered in this small mountain area shortly after 1846. Long abandoned gold mines still exist in the area and remain as a major tourist attraction. However, with a 150 year history of settlement and the gold rush over, this area still remains fertile for striking gold.

Parkers

Lex Villines is a prospector of fountain pens, and has been mining this area for the last 15 years or so. By trade Lex is a stationary engineer, working on very large mechanical and heavy industrial equipment that measures in the tons. Working on this large equipment, it only seems logical that his interest would also include the micro-mechanics of pocket watches, the extreme opposite of equipment that literally blocks out the sun. If he can make a steam engine tick like a clock, and intricate pocket watches function accurately how difficult would it be to work on fountain pens.

Danish Pens

Lex has always been interested in watches, his interest in fountain pens secondary. Soon he was collecting lower priced vintage pens such as Packard, Esterbrooks and occasional Vacumatics. About five years ago, being curious as to what made pens tick, he started to contact friends who also collected pens. He researched the internet and finally found David Nishimura’s web site. Much of his repairs and work on pens was self taught through trial and error.

Eventually he found the repair book written by Frank Dubiel, which allowed him to more confidently start to dissect his fountain pen acquisitions. His interest is really a fascination with the simple mechanics of pens, and an inventive curiosity to someday design and build a new and novel filling system.

Lex has discovered Pentrace and has developed a trading association with a few of the readers which greatly expanded his scope on vintage writing instruments. He now trades with friends in Europe and elsewhere as easily as some one next door. Italian celluloids such as Astra, Omas, Aurora and Columbus are among his favorite pens, favoring piston and button fillers. Among American pens he is partial to the Sheaffer Balance and now Wahl Eversharp. .

Other pens that are on his target list are obscure pens such as Penol, which was a sales agency for Parker in Denmark, Williamson, an Italian pen company originally American and started by a former Parker Pen Co. employee in the early 1900’s, and also Big Ben.

Lex can often be found in his garage fountain pen workshop, which now takes up about one third of it’s space. I’d say this pen guy is starting to get serious on his focus. Soon he convinced himself he needed a small lathe, another definite sign of a serious pen mechanic on a mission. Recently he was messing about his pens and converted a current model Filcao to a button filler and another to a blow filler. Another Frankenpen target was his Bexley which he converted to a bulb filler.

Modern Celluloid

Mont Blanc

Conklins

Lex now has about 120 pens in his collection, with about 20 that are well inked and on his usual rotation at any one time. Lex has shown some very interesting before and after images of his repairs and creations on Pentrace.

A big “Thank You” to Lex for sharing his collection and creative work with Pentrace. Someday we may see a new pen on the market with that new fangled filler called the Villines Filler.

Visit Lex’s hometown Sonora, California :