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jor412 · Vintage

stuck sections

jor412 · Vintage

I figured it out. I was using pliers, the teeth of which, I had ground off. I have a spare set of pliers, unused. I used those with the teeth, plus warm water soaking of the pens, and then a drier. The Sheaffer is fine. I'm giving the other one more time. :)

jor412 · Vintage

The other pen has a slightly tapered roundish section. It's more conical than The usually section that has tapers then widens out towards the end where the feed and nib are. So this one is taking a long time. Someone told me it took him 2 weeks of soaking to get one section to pop off so I'm still not giving up.

I just can't understand what people do with these pens though. There's so much repair material to read online, with so many warnings and how-tos. It's not hard to follow instructions. Now from the very, very few pens I've had to play with and learn from, I've already encountered two glued-in sections, one too long sac, two ill-fitted feeds, several wrong re-insertions of feed & nib.

Chthulhu · Rawr.

Some of those repairs may have been made before those resources existed. And even now, I think the majority of people can't be bothered to do the research.

jor412 · Vintage

I get the part about pre-resource. But not bothering about the research is really too bad. Oh well, before it was my pen, it was theirs to mess up. :P

Chthulhu · Rawr.

And now you have even more fun than you would have had if someone hadn't "fixed" it previously.

-- Edited by Chthulhu on Saturday 16th of July 2011 09:44:12 AM

jor412 · Vintage

LOL yeah. i'm learning things little by little here�

jor412 · Vintage

The stuck section has so far remained stuck. I try it once a day then soak it again.

It's a major PTA because it's harder to get a good grip on it since the section is rounded and tapered toward the nib.

What if I pull the nib and feed, soak the section, push the feed back in, and then attempt to remove the section w/ the feed back inside it?�

This is what the section looks like:

�

jor412 · Vintage

I started this thread three weeks ago, so maybe I now hold the record for being unable to remove a stuck section.

But I eventually did it. I pulled out the nib and feed, and soaked the section up to where it meets the barrel. The water didn't work. The next I did was use ammonia solution and every day, there was some new dissolved gunk in the solution. I finally attempted to heat the section (3 days after the first ammonia soak) and pull it off today. And it worked.

I can't tell what was keeping the section stuck because if there had been shellac there, there are no traces of it now. But the sac inside had become a semi-congealed mess so that might have been it.

Sem · Newbie

Congratulations on getting the section out.

There's all kinds of reasons for stuck sections. Sometimes it's a glued repair, but often it's plastic shrinkage. Eversharps often suffer from that, as do lizard and snakeskin Swans. In the 1940s Waterman made a habit of gluing in sections with some mighty glue of their own devising, which can be a trial to loosen.

I find that patience, persistence and dry heat (repeated as necessary) works every time. I stopped soaking because it wasn't particularly successful, and many of the pens I work on have black hard rubber sections. I don't need the extra work of restoring a faded section.

jor412 · Vintage

Hi Sem,

I couldn't find any trace of adhesive but after cleaning the inside of the barrel, I'm pretty sure it was a considerable amount of dried ink mixed up with congealed sac bits. Also, when I examined the section, the part where the barrel and section meet was filled with very evenly spaced, thin diagonal grooves along the whole diameter. The old ink must have dried up and hardened in between the grooves.