Hi,

I picked up a Sheaffer snorkel, the Admiral I think, from an antique shop recently. Never had one of these before, and I'm not sure whether the gaskets need work or I'm not doing the right thing... :-)

The sac seemed in decent shape, so I flushed it and filled it with ink, no problems -- wrote it out (it writes nicely), then before flushing it I took it apart and looked for any signs of ink leaks in the barrel; nope - perfectly clean.

However, when I flush it with water, I do end up getting water up in the barrel, enough to drip out the back end of the barrel slightly when I push the plunger down. Taking it apart again, there are water droplets on the spring and sac protector and piston and so on.

Am I maybe flushing it out too aggressively (I'm not being too hard on it, I don't think), or is there a gasket that leaks where it shouldn't, or is this normal for this pen? (Hopefully not normal, since that means I have to dry it carefully every time I rinse it or worry about rust...)

Thanks!

How are you flushing out the pen? Are you dipping the nib into the ink or water as you are pulling out the touchdown piston?

If, so then it is possilbe to suck ink up the snorkel tube channel instead of into the snorkel and this water will get into the internals fo the pen.

If you do not know the restoration history of hte pen, then the gaskets shoudl be overhauled, but this is probably not the cause of the

Hmm, not deliberately, but I wasn't consciously trying to avoid doing so either, so I'd say it's very likely that's what I did. Thanks!

-C