I recently acquired a nice tuckaway brown striated set that looked really good at first glance. Now that I've got it home, I realize that someone tried to remove the triumph nib and broke off with it a small section of the inner threaded insert, which almost seems glued to the nib now. As a consequence, the nib sits ever so slightly above the barrel.

In this state I obviously can't tell if the vacuum works, but I suppose that if someone tried to disassemble it, that means that it wasn't working in the first place. When I tried to draw in water initially, I did get a lot of bubbles from that area, however.

I'm happy using it as a dip pen for now (actually I'm writing with the reconstituted ink residue), but wonder if there is a way to seal this gap from the outside? I stopped trying to pull the nib out because the feed started moving too, and I don't want to risk damaging it further myself.

Thanks for any advice!