The Service/Repair of an Australian Sheaffer TD Cadet 23
I bought this Sheaffer TD Cadet 23 recently mainly because I wanted to try and service one. I had heard about how to do this from one of my penpals, who wrote about how she spent some time with the O-ring on one of these, and I couldn't help but wonder it would be like.
This one came up at a reasonable price, while I had an ebay money off voucher to spend, so on an impulse I thought I would give it a go.
When I received it I saw that the nib is 14ct gold, and looked in reasonably good condition. There are no cracks to the barrel or cap. I spotted some rubbing to the gold plated trim and the clip was loose. I thought it was a decent condition pen. At the time I knew absolutely nothing about Sheaffer clips....
After some soaking in warm soapy water, I unscrewed the barrel from the section and after a bit more soaking, managed to unscrew the nib unit from the section. I unscrewed the blind cap off of the end of the barrel, noting there was a good condition rubber washer present. Then removed the plunger from the barrel. The nib unit, section and barrel went in the ultrasonic for 5 minutes.
The sac cover wiggled off quite easily, and at this point I made the mistake of thinking all seemed to be going really well so far. That was until I noticed there was only the rim of the original sac left on the section nipple. I wondered if someone had already removed the sac, but then remembered there had been shellac on the section threads. So decided that was unlikely. Not much was visible when I looked inside the sac protector.
I poked a slim tool inside the top of the sac protector and about half a solid plastic sac dropped out the other end. Mystery solved. There was a sac. Here began my first problem. The sac had dried to solid, hard plastic, that had welded itself to the inside of the sac protector. The brush that fit inside perfectly did nothing. Poking about with a tool also did nothing. I have various dental pick type tools, so at this stage I broke out a couple more and started prodding around inside the sac protector. Nada.. The main problem was that I couldn't see anything in there, and I even started to believe there might only be half a sac. No - not possible really.
So I kept on prodding about with various tools and eventually Eureka.Some bits of plastic fell out. Once it had broken, more prodding eventually made the other half detach and drop out. Phew! At last I had an almost clean sac protector. The brush now worked to clean the inside of it properly. Phase one complete.
Then I knew I had an old O-ring to remove from the barrel. OMG! This greeny white looking, flat object, that sat completely flush inside the O-ring channel was an O-ring??? I was almost at the stage of getting the Dremel out when I finally managed to break through it, so that I could lever it out in pieces! I don't know exactly what year this pen was made, but that was the original O-ring! Fossilised! I put the barrel back into the ultrasonic after removing it. Just to clean out the channel that was now empty.
At this point I had gone as far as I could without the new sac and O-ring kit, from The Pendragons, that I had ordered when I received the pen. So I turned my attention to the cap and it's loose clip. Thank God I had the Repair Manual to refer to at this point. Otherwise I could easily have gone wrong. It told me that the clip couldn't be removed, and maybe a brass shim could be added in case there was a missing clip spring.
Of course, there was a missing clip spring. Why wouldn't there be? If there wasn't, that would be too easy, right? So I got out my little light and saw that the back of the clip makes a sort of channel inside the cap, where the spring should be. The repair book said I could put a brass shim in there. The rest of my day was spent, having cut a piece of brass to what looked like approximately the right width, trying to poke about enough to shove it between the two sides of the clip inside the cap. Eventually I even managed it!!!I came up with a piece of aluminium from the top of a can. I know, it's a bit "out there," but I'm full of strange ideas. They may work and they may not - but I'm full of them! After getting OH to dig out an empty soup can lid from the recycling box, I set about cutting a tiny strip that was about 10mm long by 2mm wide from the lid. Actually, compared with the rest of this job, that wasn't the most difficult task!
That happened at about 7am this morning. I've just had a glass of wine after finally getting that tiny aluminium strip between the two slides of the clip inside the cap. I had to sand it down and hammer it flat many times. So be warned: this is not an easy job! Get a cap with a decent clip before you undertake this sort of a repair. The clip on this pen now feels almost as good as the day it was made. Even if I say so myself!
My sac and O-ring kit might arrive tomorrow or Tuesday. Everything else should be straight forward. Right? Look out for part 2.
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Originally Posted by Paddler
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