I'm new to Esterbrook pens and decided to put a new sac on my desk pen I purchased a while back. I ordered all my repair kits and two new sacs from pendemonium.com and waited patiently for them to arrive. In the meantime, I've soaked the nib in water (later regretting not adding household ammonia in it) and cleaned the outside a bit.

When the repair kit arrived over the weekend, I was eager to get started and had to postpone some household chores to fix my Estie. So, I followed the procedures from various websites by dismantling the desk pen. I started with the clear lucite tip, then the nib, and even the metal spring inside. Somewhere in the procedure though I had a hard time inserting the sac inside the barrel. I used talcum powder and it still wouldn't go in. I was getting desperate and almost posted a question in this forum on how to insert the sac. Anyways, to cut the story short I found out the critical mistake of what I had done.

I was inserting the sac through the nib holder. Yup, the part where you screw in the interchangeable nib. I even got as far as shellacking the sac onto the end of the nib -- to my horrors later on and trying to insert the darn thing with nib and all into the little hole.

Well, after a little while I figured out that this couldn't be right. There was no way it would go in whatever I did. So I thought that this nib holder has to come off, which it did later on. I pulled it out and saw the old petrified sac remnants still glued to the collar. I was happy but had to act quickly before the shellac on the nib dried. I then had to clean the nib, shorten the sac, and shellac it on the collar. In the end, it all came together except for the fact that my nib still writes inconsistent lines. I'll have to soak it in water and ammonio overnight.

I thought to myself, that was a nice initiation to the world of Esties. Yes, there's just something about these pens I like.

Well, that's quite the story.
Sounds like you adapted quickly though.
Congrats!

This is where I learned how to replace a sac: Richardspens

Nice website. I'll follow that next time. By the way, I have one of those sac spreaders and I tried using it. The hard part is how to remove it once I get the
sac around the nipple. If I pull it out the sac goes with it. Any ideas on how to do that?