RIP Waterman fountain pen

You might know the story from here, but if you don't, here's a quick summary. A little over 10 years ago, my wife bought be a nice Waterman fountain pen. It wasn't the most expensive pen, nor was it the cheapest. It was the first "real" fountain pen I bought; prior to this, my father had purchased me a Sheaffer pen from Staples (or equivalent). The funny part of all of this was that the pen happened to be a woman's pen, that is, marketed and created especially for a female market.

While I was marking some papers on Saturday, my pen ran out of ink. As I unscrewed the barrel from the nib section, I saw that the threads in the nib section were "messed up." I must have overtightened it at some point, but I wasn't sure when. Looking more closely, I noticed that the threads section had cracked almost all the way around the pen. I removed the bladder (where the ink is held if one does not want to use a cartridge) and noticed the damage. I screwed the nib section back into the barrel without the bladder, and the whole pen seemed to bend, as the two sections were basically held by a small piece of yet-to-be-cracked plastic. Needless to say, I was not impressed. There is no way to fix such a thing, I don't think. And in case some might think otherwise, Waterman pens come with a 3-year warranty, so that passed around 7 years ago.

Thankfully, I still have my father's Sheaffer, a Parker pen from the late 1950s that I bought as my 5-year gift at Providence (my go-to pen, except that its nib is a bit bigger than I would like), and an old Sheaffer I found at a local crafts store for free. I would love to buy a TWSBI, a Chinese pen that has been lauded by most.