My new-to-me W-E Gold Seal needs fixing and I am not sure what to do. It will write fine for a few days and then it just starts to leak. A drop of ink forms on the bottom side of the nib and then drips onto the page as I write. Based on the ink which gets into the cap and all over the nib / section it seems the ink also just leaks out if the pen isn't kept cap up such that gravity keeps the ink in the sac.
The pen was old and abused when I bought it. I took it apart and removed a petrified ink sac. I replaced it, flushed the pen, inked it up and it wrote. I tested first with Parker Quink Blue-Black. It wrote well at first and then started this leak / drip phenomenon. Next I removed the threaded nib unit from the section and put some silicone grease on the threads, thinking the ink was leaking out of the sac and around the threaded unit. It still leaked. Thinking perhaps the nib and feed were clogged up and the ink / air weren't moving through the expected channels I knocked the feed out and cleaned everything. I scrubbed old ink residue out off the underside of the nib. I used a soft brush to clean the ink channel on the feed. I reassembled everything and it was good for a few days. Then it started leaking again. I tried a different ink (Sailor Kusatsu Green) and it still leaks. I'm not sure what to try next.
Does this sound like a familiar phenomenon to anyone who repairs and/or restores vintage pens? Is there an ideal depth to which these Wahl-Eversharp nib units are to be threaded in? Is it good or bad to put silicone grease on the nib unit threads? I had a similar issue with a Pelikan 400nn 2 years ago, but never managed to solve that one either.
Ink droplet formed on the underside of the nib
Ink droplet transferring to page
It's a rather significant volume of ink as I turned the post-it note on end and let the droplet flow down the page
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