Update on My Pen Restoration Progress

[Steve Kelley]

Well first of all Happy New Year and thanks to everyone who has given me guidance here on learning to repair fountain pens.

I think I am doing reasonably well for a beginner. I have taken approximately 8 or 10 old pens and gotten them to work well. Mostly they have been lever fills, a nice Waterman, several Eversharps and a few brand X's. I have found that once I solve the problem of taking the pens apart most of the difficulties are behind. The business of replacing ink sacs and even J bars has gone well after a few mistakes from which I learned a thing or two.

There is one problem however which has occurred in several, but not all ,the lever actions. I get them fully repaired (I think) after disassembly, flushing with an ammonia solution and a new ink sac and they work beautifully. That is, until I set them aside for a few days, and then discover they do not want to write even though they still have ink in them. My guess is there is something I need to do to the feed which I have not been doing and since the problem has occurred several times it must be an error I am committing on a regular basis.

If anyone has any clues as to what I am overlooking, I would be most grateful for some guidance.

Thanks very much!

Steve

[Chuck Naill]

Could the feed be clogged? It's only happened one time and it was a very old flat feed 2556 Esterbrook. I used a small mandolin strings to unclog. You probably know this, but with the sac filled, a gentle lifting of the lever will cause a bit in ink to be expelled. This will tell you if the feed is clear.

[FredRydr]

If you removed each nib, you must ensure proper contact and alignment between nib and feed when you reassemble each pen in order to ensure ink flow to the tip.

[Steve Kelley]

Thanks Fred.

Actually when I say disassembly, it means I removed the section from the barrel and then with a squeezy bulb flushed it out well with ammonia and water and then rinsed it with just straight water. So far I have lacked the courage to remove the nib and feed from the section. Maybe I should give that a try on future projects?

Thanks

Steve

[amk]

I wonder whether what's happening is that you've managed to get shellac into the ink channel in the feed. Then when you dip the pen, it works, but the sac doesn't actually take in ink, so once the ink in the feed has gone, the pen stops writing.

I managed to do that on one recent restoration even though I'd restored dozens of pens successfully before that. It really annoyed me till I worked out what I'd done. Used heat to remove the sac, picked the channel open with a cocktail stick, flushed, and resacked making really really sure I didn't block the channel this time!

[arrow]

With some pens I have noticed the grooves in the feed have been stuck with grime or dust. It didn't come off until the nib and feed was out and I could scrape the grooves gently with a tooth pick. To get the grime out, it sort of needed a bit of help, flushing wasn't enough. That said, these pens were 60 and 90 years old and I have no idea how they had been treated by the previous owner. The pens were in rather nice condition, just in need of cleaning and a few new wear parts. Some pens have been fine with out a full disassembly, but it is a bit of a guess work until everything works as it should.

I'm not an expert at all, and relatively new to pen repairs.

[Ron Z]

With some pens I have noticed the grooves in the feed have been stuck with grime or dust.

That would be dried ink. Some of the older inks are especially difficult to remove, so chasing the slits with a piece of shim stock or the corner of a razor blade helps. An ultrasonic filled with your cleaning solution, or Rapido-Eze works better. Do the nib and clean out the inside of the section while you have it apart.