I recently bought a Sheaffer snorkel. When it first arrived, I filled it with water to make sure the filling system was OK and flush out the remains of the previous owner's (fairly fresh) ink. It seemed to work fine, and was able to squirt water several feet. I flushed all the pigment from the previous ink out and let it dry, then filled it up with Waterman blue-black as per the various snorkel instructions out there. (Extend snorkel, pull back on blind cap with snorkel out of ink, submerge snorkel, push blind cap back in, count 10, close everything back up.)

That brought me to the first problem. The little guy did not want to start writing after I filled it. First time I thought maybe I hadn't filled it correctly and tried again, but ink squirted out the snorkel when I pulled back on the blind cap. He finally started writing after about the fourth try, when I filled him with the nib as well as the snorkel in the ink. I don't know if that's the cause or just coincidence.
Is this hard starting with new ink normal after being empty normal for a snorkel? Is there something I need to do to get it started when it's been empty for a while?

He does start writing fine when I refill him with the same ink without flushing and drying him out.

Second problem, which may or may not be related, is that the nib dries out pretty quickly. If I don't use it every day, it doesn't want to start -- at all. I think there may be a small air leak in the cap. When I blow into it, I can feel air escaping around when the clip joins. Would that alone cause the problem, or could something else be wrong?

The nib is clogged up with dried ink. The feed to the nib is through a fairly narrow slit in the hard rubber from the thin slit in the snorkel tube, so any obstruction there will prevent good flow.

A snork should write immediately after being filled, even if dry or full of water (although it will be pale if full of water for a bit).

I would soak the nib and feed in cool water for a while, just enough in a glass to cover the nib, not the section or higher. This should dissolve the old ink and get you going.

Peter

As well as the slit spoken about here(secondary feed?), the Snork may fill, but the passage from this feed to the nib, also has to be clear. This is a very small slit on the metal Snork and slit in the primary? feed have to be clear of old ink. I have had the problems you are talking about with these pens, strangely not with a PFM which writes very wet.
et

I have had to "floss" Sheaffer nibs before to get them working, and also had to clear the space between the nib and feed.

I don't recommend you do this at home UNLESS you have a proper magnification setup (minimum 15X) AND some 0.001" shim stock, preferably brass. It is quite easy to damage the nib slit, causing endless further trouble.

A sonicating bath is fairly inexpensive, and has other uses, too. A three minute cycle in clear water will almost always remove fountain pen ink from and nib and feed. Residue from things like calligraphy ink or acrylic dip pen ink are more problematic, and would normally require a trip to a restorer.

Peter

It sounds to me like the feed inside the snorkel tube isn't lined up correctly. the snorkel feed is two long, slender pieces of hard rubber that have to aligned such that they deliver ink to the secondary feed. Basically, that means that they need to be aligned veritically, so that the slit between them runs north/south and create an open channel for ink to fill the secondary feed. If this is not done correctly, the snorkel will fill and expel ink but the pen won't write. When you fill the pen with the nib submerged, you are priming the secondary feed, but it dries out when that ink is exhausted and it's not getting more ink from the snorkel feed.

Just a couple of cents worth of opinion.

Mike

The instruction sheet I got with one of my snorks suggests that a tip-dipping on the initial filling was normal as a way of priming the system. So, that at least is not a big issue.

Is this a triumph point or an open (traditional style) one? If it's the latter, with a flat-nosed filler, the alignment problem that's been mentioned can be fairly subtle to detect. Also, the bath, sonic or not, is likely a very good idea. I'm shocked at how much ink is left under the point of a snork after flushing the filler with water. After taking it out of the water, hold the point in a moist paper towel for a little bit, and I'll wager a little more colour emerges.

The cap problem does appear to be a real problem. I've just distended my cheeks blowing down the caps of several examples from the correct period, and none give up any air, even the Cadet with little stress-cracks around the clip.

Update:
I've been working on soaking it and I have been getting ink out, but I'm not quite there yet. I tried this morning, and he still wasn't starting easily.

It's a flat style nib (not the Triumph) with the flat-ended tube, and when you look down on the pen with the nib on top, the tube slit is on top. I think that's the correct orientation?

I'm pretty sure that once I get it going the first time, it was pulling ink like it should. The sac was empty when he ran out; nothing came out when I pulled the blind cap back to fill it again.

I do have an ultrasonic cleaner, but I'm not sure I feel comfortable separating it to put the section in. I'm very much a noob to pen repairs, and snorkel guts are pretty intimidating.

Update #2:
Problem 1 solved! I got whatever was gunking it up out, and was able to fill it with the snorkel and start writing normally right away.
It'll take a few days to see if that has helped the nib drying out while capped as well.

Air shouldn't be able to pass through the cap. There should be a metal inner cap that fits closely into the cap. When you look into the cap, do you see it -- a plain, thin-walled metal cylinder in the top of the cap -- or do you see the clip's mounting? If the inner cap is there, is it damaged?

-- Brian

The inner cap is there, but there's a hole in it, about 120 degrees counterclockwise from the clip.

That's a new one on me. Does it look like corrosion, or artificially punched? I wonder whether someone put it there in order to drag out the inner cap during a clip repair. Well, I guess some sort of sealer or patch is in order, unless you want to hunt down a replacement.

-- Brian

It looks probably punched. There's a circle scratched around the top of the inner cap, and hole is punched along that circle. It's not perfectly round, but it doesn't look rough like corrosion either. For a second I thought maybe the tip of the nib had done it, but I measured and there should be several mm of clearance, so that's probably not the case unless there was a repair to get more clearance sometime in the past.

What would be a good thing to try to patch that?

That's a good question. Sort of off the top of my head, maybe (working with the top of the cap pointing up, so nothing falls through the hole) you could rubber cement a bit of 400-600 grit silicon carbide sandpaper to the end of a thin wood dowel, rough up the area around the hole, dampen a Q-Tip with alcohol or something and use that to clean the area, then roll up a ball of epoxy putty a little larger in diameter than the hole and use some sort of flat-ended plastic rod to tamp the epoxy in place. I guess -- I haven't had to do this before.

-- Brian

Maybe not done it before, but given it a bit of thought, nice one, you have just saved a few of my brain cells from the thought process, should I require this type of fix, in the future.

et

Thank you, Merry Christmas, and if you need to do something like that and it works, then god bless us, every one!

I wasn't kidding -- it was more reflex than thought, and I hope it wasn't a bad idea.

-- Brian

The only possible downside I can see is the ball of epoxy being the wrong size for the hole-- too big, and it can either interfere with the point or squish into the clip's spring space, too small and it might slip through. I'd suggest some kind of Silly Putty/Play Doh rider on the dowel at first, very gently applied, to get an impression of the hole.

Also, some kind of release paper around the placement tool would probably be in order for ease of operation.

...and I'm suggesting all these refinements in hopes that some of the glory of the brilliant initial suggestion will stick to me.

Yes, in fact a little disc would probably be better -- no need for extra junk in the trunk.

Seems reasonable.

That's what I had in mind when I suggested plastic -- something not too stick-able, unlike a wood dowel. A little water or vegetable oil on the tool would probably do it, too.

Would you like to pull up a little limelight, sir? Plenty of room! ( Although I don't think I displayed much more brilliance than a plumber replacing a washer. It's too bad the inner cap isn't easy to remove -- it'd be a lot nicer to clean up the hole and silver solder a stainless steel disc on the back side, with enough solder to fill the hole so it could be ground flat on the front side. That's the problem though. If you don't want to hunt for a replacement cap or get into inner cap removal, whudda ya do?)

-- Brian

Another follow-up, bullied into it by Fox in the Stars. (Well, not really, but she reminded me that I should post it.)

I didn't have any epoxy putty convenient, and was worried about botching the repair with it, so I modified the advice from this thread on plugging holes in a Park Sonnet cap and used wax. Since both inner and outer cap are metal, I didn't see where wax could do any harm, and it'd be easier to get back out if the repair failed.

What I did was light a candle, coat the end of a small rod (I think I used a bamboo shishkabob skewer) with melted wax, and then tamped it over the hole. The wax coated over the hole without spreading too far, and once it cooled securely, I tried blowing into the cap again and this time it was air tight. There was still plenty of clearance between wax and nib.

Since then, the pen has started just fine every time I've used it. I'm not sure if I've let it sit more than a day since then, but there hasn't even been the darkening of ink on the first few letters that usually shows when a nib has started to dry out, so I'm pretty confident the problem is fixed for now, and it's been a very good writer since then.

Cool! I'm glad I was able to help you find the problem, and a direction toward a satisfactory fix. Hope you enjoy your Snorkel -- I really like mine.

-- Brian