Parker Blue Striped Duofold Vac Fill Restoration

[Jeph]

I while back I mentioned that I had the blue striped duofold vac fill that needed restored.

It looks like it is in pretty good shape. But it would NOT come apart.

After a lot of patience I finally got it apart. These are the major pieces of the sac that I could dig out. I did have to remove the section to get the rest of the mechanism out. There are even bits of blue sac residue stuck in the feed slot. This one was not a good choice for my first Parker vac fill restoration. But now that the easy part is finished I am going to press on and try to finish.

Does anyone know of a source for the rosin based section sealant besides Ron Zorn? I tried e-mailing Ron but it looks like he is very busy as usual.

Parker Striped Duofold Blue.jpgParker Striped Duofold Original Sac.jpg

[Ernst Bitterman]

Flounder has a recipe for it... hm, I know its on the FPN Repair forum, but I don't know that I've seen it here. But it probably is as well. It should be, he said suggestively, if it isn't.

[Farmboy]

Just place an order with Ron and it will magically appear.

[Flounder]

Beautiful striped Duovac. Love it!
Rosin sealant is something I couldn't find in Europe, hence going down the hassle-y path of cooking some up. I know Tryphon used to do it, along with plenty of other stuff I would have found really useful. If Ron made up some sort of "Euro" kit for us lot across the pond it would be smashing; microgloss is ridiculously expensive here too.

Here's a link to the original rosin thread here on FPG. Members from both forums were very helpful describing the properties of this stuff (compare the first batch with the others to see how helpful). Here's the condensed version of 'my' recipe, it doesn't actually take that long to make:

I wrote 5 short blogposts on this subject a while ago:
http://flounders-mindthots.blogspot....n-sealant.html
http://flounders-mindthots.blogspot....sealant_8.html
http://flounders-mindthots.blogspot....lorations.html
http://flounders-mindthots.blogspot....ty-second.html
http://flounders-mindthots.blogspot....ant-final.html

You don't really need to read all the text, it's the embedded youtube clips that are the most useful. When your stuff matches the stringiness of the sealant made after my duff first batch, then you've done at least as well as I did in trying to match the characteristics described to me by those in the know at FPN & FPG.

I was given the dark AB rosin, it's also fairly inexpensive (£3 @ the violinstringshop) and ubiquitous online here in the UK. I wish I could give you an exact ratio of castor oil to rosin, but based on my (limited!) experience, I've a suspicion it varies by rosin type.

Don't sweat it though! Just start off by being stingy with the castor oil. Say you're making enough to fill a wee 3.5cm diameter pot as featured in the youtube clips.

1. Break off some chips of rosin, and heat until it liquifies.
2. Add droplets of castor oil (to begin with, about 8). Mix it up, and allow it all to cool to room temperature.
3. Give it a prod. If it's still a solid, heat until it liquifies, and add more drops of castor oil (I was adding three per cycle). Let it cool to room temperature, and give it another prod. When it's a stringy, sticky goo at room temp, that's you finished!


Tips:
*Don't fill the pot right to the top, or you'll have trouble opening it in future.
*By varying the amount of oil you use, you can vary how strong the sealant is and how much heat it will take to release.
*Those miniature jams you get in the supermarket are handy for storing the sealant in.

The dark AB rosin I have used to seal a plunger filler Kaigelu's section. I'm happy to report no ink seepage or leakage at all. The amber Theodore based batch, made with more oil, is less powerful. I've used that for Parker 51 cap jewels, out of consideration for their delicacy. The Hidersine batch is basically the same strength as the AB, and helped cure the loose fit between an old celluloid Summit barrel and it's BHR section.

[Jeph]

Thanks Flounder, you rock.

[Jeph]

After working up my courage I finally finished this pen. This is definitely not a restoration for the faint of heart. But it was worth it.

Special thanks to the information on Richard Binder’s site (“How to Replace a Vacumatic Diaphram”) and the information and tools from
Pentooling.com plus some section sealant from Ron Zorn and Flounder’s section sealant recipe (although I was too lazy to use it) to get this done.

It still took a lot of patience to succeed. The amount of gunk seemingly welded onto the barrel and internal parts was daunting. There was heavy blue staining in the barrel. After two days in water and a test tube brush did not make any headway I tried overnight in pen flush and the test tube brush. That got rid of most of it but not all. I gave it another overnight soak in pen flush but it did not improve. I broke down and tried the test tube brush wetted with a 10% bleach and distilled water mixture. There was no improvement. Then I soaked the barrel in the 10% bleach solution for 5 minutes and brushed again. There was no change. Then I soaked the barrel in the 10% bleach solution for 20 minutes and brushed it again. I had planned on 30 minutes, but the thin layer of bubbles on the surface of the mixture scared me too much to leave it in there any longer. I rinsed it in tap water and brushed it again. The deeper ambering on the mechanism end of the barrel got better but there was still a ring of blue where the bottom of the rotten sac used to be. I declared my results good enough and stopped.

Another complication was that the sac pellet cup came off the end of the plunger during disassembly. That was not good. The split end of the plunger where the spring is gripped was also bent. I used osme heat to bend that back as straight as I dared but did not push my luck. I got it from nearly 45 degrees down to around 20 degrees and called that a functional success. My testing of the mechanism felt anemic to me and that resulted in this thread How Much Does My Pen Suck?.

After the pellet cup came off I made myself a fixture to hold the tapered collar and spring down and let the shellac cure overnight and so far it is holding tight. I also noticed that I had nicked the sac while pressing the pellet into the pellet cup. I was using a 3/32” brass tube as a pellet pusher. So it was a good thing that the pellet pocket came loose in the long run. I had called myself sanding the edges off of the tube but clearly I did not do a good enough job. I did a zealous sanding of the edges of the end of the tube and (I hope) that there should be no more issues with that. In the end it still takes 10 pumps to fill to the top of the breather tube but it is not like it is difficult work for such a large ink capacity. I did remove the breather tube and soak it overnight in pen flush after running some .020” safety wire through it a few times when I was cleaning the other parts.

The nib is a surprisingly smooth, soft fine with enough spring that some might call it semi-flex. I did not do any work on the nib myself other than cleaning and alignment.
Edit: I measured it and now I have to call it semi-flex myself. The line is .4mm with no pressure and 1.0mm with pressure using Pelikan Edelstein Sapphire on Rhodia.

So in the end I have a beautiful blue striped Duofold vac like I have lusted after for a while that is also a joy to write with that I can say that I did myself, even if I did have plenty of help from my fountain pen friends.

Parker Bue Duovac Parts.jpg Parker Striped Duofold Blue.jpg

[RuiFromUK]

Hi Jeph,

Great job. Congratulations on finishing another beautiful pen.

btw the last attachments are not working at the moment.

[Jeph]

should be fixed now

[jar]

After all this, what is the date for the pen? I have one like that from first quarter 1943.

[Jeph]

The imprint is clear but no date. The nib had a tiny "o" hidden in the section. No other marks.

[david i]

Gents, just for the record, there is no actual "Duovac" made by Parker.

regards

David

[Flounder]

Looks great Jeph, it must have taken tremendous patience to get the barrel & filler so clean, judging by the fossilised old diaphragm. I'm also impressed by your thoroughly methodical approach to repair problems!

Can I ask what you've coated the filler threads with in the 'disassembled' photos? It looks to have done a grand job of protecting the black anodising during removal.

I really need to see about hunting one of these down, the stripes are very appealing.
For a soft pellet pusher, I tend to use a cotton bud with one end snipped off.

[Jeph]

...Can I ask what you've coated the filler threads with in the 'disassembled' photos? It looks to have done a grand job of protecting the black anodising during removal....

That is easy. Just put the removal tool on but don't squeeze hard enough and *poof* you shave that silly anodize right off. As a bonus some of the thread surface comes off as well. I probably should not have left out about the learning curve of using the puller. The only thing that I found to be 100% effective was to get it almost to the right size where you can just barely thread the unit into the tool with slight drag until bottomed. And then squeeze like you mean it and don't be shy about the pressure. And then turn the barrel and not the tool.

By trying very hard to not hurt anything I ripped the anodize right off. It took more than a little effort to get the threads back into useable shape. I had to hand re-form each thread with a jeweler's file to take out the burrs and then used the puller as a thread chaser. The major diameter has been significantly reduced but the cap threads on smoothly and securely. Next time I will know. I am glad that this was only a user grade beater.

Edit: I just noticed that I used the wrong "after" picture. That is why the threads still look perfect.
Edit 2: Threads smoothed and redefined pic added.Parker Threads.jpg

[Flounder]

Lol @ myself - I thought that was heatsink paste or something. Glad the threads still works fine - and you only see them for the briefest minute as you fill the pen in any case.

Perhaps this is one area of advantage to the C ring tools Dr. Oldfield sells. Unlike the more sophisticated loggerhead type (which he also makes) and all the others that distribute a uniform clamping pressure over the entire circumference of the filler, you can easily check through the C ring gap that the filler is not slipping inside.

[sharmon202]

This may be a very dumb question but could you explain what is meant by "Duofold"? How do I know it when I see it?

[david i]

Parker issued pens it named Duofold. For most series with that name, the name in fact is stamped on the barrel of the pens. In the USA, oiginal Duofold ran 1921-1935 though really that range included two major clusters, the first "flat top" pens and the slightly end-tapered "streamlined" pens introduced in 1929. The original Duofold was the premier series in Parker's line, Parker of course being one of the Big Five pen makers during the popular-with-collectors 1920's-1950's.

Vacumatic replaced Duofold in 1933 as Parker's dominant line. The Duofold name returned to play in 1939 as a second tier (but still high quality) pen featuring a geometric pattern that evokes the toothbrush, hence the collector name "Toothbrush" Duofold.

Original and Toothbrush DF were button fill.

1940-1948 in the USA saw the "striped" Duofold, a pen borrowing heavily from the Vacumatic, featuring Parker's "laidtone" (sp?) celluloid pattern, offering lower priced button-fill and higher priced Vacumatic-fill models.

Duofold went bye-bye in the USA until being resurrected in the - iirc- mid 1980's as the modern Duofold, (no barrel imprint though iirc), paralleling original Duofold by offering first flat-top then streamlined pens. These are cartridge/converter pens.

Duofold is among the most collectible pens out there.

Note that vintage English Duofold followed a somewhat different course, but that is a chat for another post/day.

I invite you to look at Duofolds at Vacumania, covering all the eras just discussed, as I happen to have trays of pens right now clustered by era (though flat-top and streamlined original DF's are mixed together)

Link-Original, Striped, Modern Duofolds at Vacumnia-link

regards

David

[Ernst Bitterman]

Of course, that leaves "what is meant" up in the air. If I can get the sound effects guys to introduce some reverb and a background of eerie theramin music:

No one knows, for sure, what Duofold means....

Speculation includes:
- the two-tone colour pattern of the original model
- the possibility of having it as a desk or pocket pen, since the conversion hinged mainly on the shape of the blind cap covering the filler button
- the point was capable of leaving an impression through carbon paper
- the pen could be converted to eyedropper filling in case of mechanism failure
- named after George Parker’s favourite aircraft of the time
- "duo-" was big in marketing then, as "-matic", "-tronic", "-izer", or "-2000" would be in succeeding decades.

[sharmon202]

Both responses are very informative thanks to you both. I was just looking for a way to ID, like the pelican clip or other specific Icons I have learned about other pens. Thanks so much for sharing it was helpful.

[RayCornett]

Beautiful striped Duovac. Love it!
Rosin sealant is something I couldn't find in Europe, hence going down the hassle-y path of cooking some up. I know Tryphon used to do it, along with plenty of other stuff I would have found really useful. If Ron made up some sort of "Euro" kit for us lot across the pond it would be smashing; microgloss is ridiculously expensive here too.

Here's a link to the original rosin thread here on FPG. Members from both forums were very helpful describing the properties of this stuff (compare the first batch with the others to see how helpful). Here's the condensed version of 'my' recipe, it doesn't actually take that long to make:

I wrote 5 short blogposts on this subject a while ago:
http://flounders-mindthots.blogspot....n-sealant.html
http://flounders-mindthots.blogspot....sealant_8.html
http://flounders-mindthots.blogspot....lorations.html
http://flounders-mindthots.blogspot....ty-second.html
http://flounders-mindthots.blogspot....ant-final.html

You don't really need to read all the text, it's the embedded youtube clips that are the most useful. When your stuff matches the stringiness of the sealant made after my duff first batch, then you've done at least as well as I did in trying to match the characteristics described to me by those in the know at FPN & FPG.

I was given the dark AB rosin, it's also fairly inexpensive (£3 @ the violinstringshop) and ubiquitous online here in the UK. I wish I could give you an exact ratio of castor oil to rosin, but based on my (limited!) experience, I've a suspicion it varies by rosin type.

Don't sweat it though! Just start off by being stingy with the castor oil. Say you're making enough to fill a wee 3.5cm diameter pot as featured in the youtube clips.

1. Break off some chips of rosin, and heat until it liquifies.
2. Add droplets of castor oil (to begin with, about 8). Mix it up, and allow it all to cool to room temperature.
3. Give it a prod. If it's still a solid, heat until it liquifies, and add more drops of castor oil (I was adding three per cycle). Let it cool to room temperature, and give it another prod. When it's a stringy, sticky goo at room temp, that's you finished!


Tips:
*Don't fill the pot right to the top, or you'll have trouble opening it in future.
*By varying the amount of oil you use, you can vary how strong the sealant is and how much heat it will take to release.
*Those miniature jams you get in the supermarket are handy for storing the sealant in.

The dark AB rosin I have used to seal a plunger filler Kaigelu's section. I'm happy to report no ink seepage or leakage at all. The amber Theodore based batch, made with more oil, is less powerful. I've used that for Parker 51 cap jewels, out of consideration for their delicacy. The Hidersine batch is basically the same strength as the AB, and helped cure the loose fit between an old celluloid Summit barrel and it's BHR section.

I believe we talked about this on FPN.

I will personally vouche for this. I got my mix of rosin and castor oil just right and this makes an excellent sealant. Mine does not require heat but create a string seal. You have to put some pretty good torgue into whatever you are trying to unscrew but once you add enough torque the sealant gives way for easy opening. I use it on all my pens where sealant is normally applied.

A little goes a very long way. I made mine with a full cake of rosin so I had a lot. I was able to trade some off for a nice pen

[GAtkins]

Gents, just for the record, there is no actual "Duovac" made by Parker.

regards

David

Geeks,

I know I'm a little late to this thread but I found this statement by David intriguing. I was under the impression that Parker did make one. I have a blue striped DuoVac with a Vacumatic clip, a Vacumatic nib, and the barrel is marked Vacumatic. It also has a stacked-coin cap band and a "2" date code. Also, on pages 188 and 189 of Shepherd's Parker Vacumatic book there is a reference to such a pen.

I will never even to pretend to know as much about Vacumatics as David does, but would you mind elaborating a little for those of us still learning the ropes?

Thanks in advance.

Glenn