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The pen is mostly appart, the barrel has a lever filler with the metal bits inside. How do you get the metal bits out? They look clean and shiny, but I have had the parts in water and cleaning fluid, and they need to come out and be dried off before they start rusting.
I would never get water inside a pen barrel. Grip the pressure bar with needle nose pliers and pull. It will come out.
The interior of the barrel will need to be absolutely dry, and that isn't easy to achieve. Dry heat is your best bet.
Also
Don't soak a C/S pen in water unless you are 100% certain it's not made from Casein, their swirly coloured pens were.
Obviously it depends when it was was made and which version of C/S made it, V1 might be Casein V2 or V3 probably not Casein.
To my shame I have lost a casein barrel due to water even when it was not soaking in the stuff. The nib was soaking in 0.5 inch of water , not touching the section, next morning the casein barrel had swollen around the threads.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul-H
It's a bit late for this pen, it's been through various treatments to get it disassembled and cleaned. What do more experienced pen restorers use? I thought I was doing the right thing, but simply following directions from a blog I found. The barrel was reasonably clean inside, a bit smelly from the old rubber (worse than inner tubes for bike tires, but similar). The section where the rubber sack was fitted, needed a bit of effort to clean up. The outside of the pen is more worn it might polish up to a nice shine, but has survived. It's a blue marbleised plastic, dull and worn, the lower section covered by the cap is for the most part intact, shine and all. I think I have been lucky though, the parts hasn't been affected as far as I can see.
I know some plastics absorb humidity, give it a day or two to dry up and there's a good change it recovers. I don't know how to identify the various plastics. Going by some info, celluloid nitrate was to a large degree replaced by celluloid acetate by the 1930s. When exactly celluloid nitrate went out of use, I don't know. Melamine was the hardest and most durable of them; invented pretty early on. One of it's first uses was to insulate electrical connections, it's the same subustance used for countertops, made under various names like formica. It's still one of the most resistant plastic materials. I can't tell it appart from casein. I guess I have to aim for a mild cleaning method suitable for most of these materials.
I don't soak things to get them apart. A good heat gun or even a hair dryer will do the job.
If there are scratches to be removed or the pen is very dull, the three-part polish Novus works well. I use a pocket knife to clean up the peg where the sac is fitted. Dental picks are very good for scraping the sac out of the barrel and are cheap on eBay.
As you seem keen on pen restoration I suggest you invest in Jim Marshall and Laurence Oldfield, Pen Repair. It's an excellent work and will show you the tools you need and guide you through the routines for the repair of most pens.