Soaking the fresh scribblers

[Mark9117]

Received 2 new acquisitions in 2 separate shipments.

I've discussed one of these pens in this forum and here it is with the other pen I received:



The filling mechanisms are both totally locked up, so they are beginning a nice long soak. I plan to keep them under water for at least a week. What you see in that picture is the third water change in about 30 minutes. I think it is going to be a long haul.

Once they are sufficiently bathed in universal solvent I plan to soak them for a couple of hours in a water/amonia/detergent solution, then gently attempt to free up the pistons. Failing that, I'm going to polish them and find some reputable technician to send them to.

I'm not in a huge hurry. I am willing to wait and pay a reasonable price for restoration.

Any tips or feedback is welcome.

Mark

[mhosea]

Experts don't recommend immersing the caps, as water that wicks in behind the inner cap may cause corrosion of the inner clip parts over a long period of time (longer than you are soaking). If it were me, I'd take out the caps, wrap them each in a paper towel, and shake out the water as best I could. Then I would swab them inside the cap with moistened Q-tips and twisted up paper towels until clean.

For that matter, I've never soaked any pen for more than hours. In this case, I'd be working on getting the sections off using the usual method. If the blind caps will unscrew far enough to access the retaining rings, I'd also have those off in short order. Once the blind caps are off and the sections are removed, the plungers can be pushed out. Then you can flush the ink out of barrel, swab it out, or what not, and the sections can be flushed with a bulb syringe. It shouldn't take more than a 30 minutes to have them clean and disassembled once the sections are off.

[Mark9117]

I'll pull and dry those caps when I get home.

I'll also try to pull those plungers. They were absolutely not moving this morning.

I also put a little torque on the section of the most troubled looking one (which is bleeding the most ink) and it seemed stuck fast. I didn't want to get too rough with it; these things seem fragile.

More as it develops.

Thanks Moose.

[mhosea]

You have to use heat, like a hair dryer, to remove a pen section. The threads probably have a rosin-based sealant on them. Also those old plastics are often flammable and can deform under too much heat, so you have to use the right amount. A hair dryer, embossing gun, or heat gun should do the trick if you keep your fingers in the mix. As long as your fingers don't burn, the pen shouldn't melt, much less burst into flames. Even then, it can take several tries. I often set it aside after several failures and try again the next day. You'll probably need something to grip it. Some folks use "section pliers", which they usually make with pliers (with the teeth ground completely off) and chunky rubber hose, like an automotive heater hose (looks ridiculous, feels unwieldy, but you need a lot of rubber padding to protect the pen). I try to avoid the pliers if I can, because if you're going to break the barrel by over-torquing, it's probably going to be the pliers that let you do it. I normally just use sections of a butyl bicycle innertube, But sometimes I end up using the pliers because, after several days of trying, I'm out of options.

You'll need a suitable spanner wrench to get the blind caps off the plunger rods. I made one from one the handles of a small-size binder clip.

[Mark9117]

I've seen this all done and anticipate applying the hair dryer. I understand what you're saying about keeping the fingers in mix.

I was planning on using a reclaimed piece of innertube for a gripper, but I can't see me getting all husky with the pliers.

If it gives me more trouble than I'm comfortable with, I'll have to trust it to a trained professional.

Assuming I can get a pen apart and get the plunger to move, I might just see if I can use a pair of angled tweezers to serve as a spanner to get the knob off.

And if I can get that far, I'm practically home free. But we'll see how it goes. Should have time to wrestle with it Monday.

Much thanks for the guidance and tips.

Mark

[lowjax]

Good info here. I was just thinking about the soaking process and what I should actually do. I have an old Eversharp used by my wife's Grandfather before he passed away quite a few years ago.

[mhosea]

Lever fillers should not be soaked. You can soak the nib and section area. The easiest way is to use a plastic cup filled only to that level. If water gets inside the barrel and is not contained in the sac, the metal bar that presses the sac and the support ring for the lever may rust/corrode if they get wet and can't be dried out momentarily. Usually with lever fillers there isn't much incentive to soak before trying to remove the section (with heat as described above), but if there was leakage into the barrel from a failed sack, the ink could have wicked in and when dried can sort of glue it together, so sometimes soaking will help, but just to that joint area.

[tandaina]

Yeah I do not soak pens for restoration. Apply water as needed, not just randomly, I'd worry about parts of these pens coming apart that you don't want coming apart. Really gentle heat and patience will solve most problems all by themselves.