Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone has seen this sort of filler before. I pulled it out of a 1946 "51" vacumatic. It seems well made with steel piston and o-ring on the ink end. Just wondering....

Steve

Click to view attachment

There is a member here (Mr. Prather) who makes some beautiful pens, many modeled off of or by modifying Parker vacs and 51s.

He makes a metal filler...

Did you make that Mr. Prather? If he's watching, we may get an answer... and if we're REALLY lucky, he'll post a picture or two of some of his pens with his filler in it. Of course be prepared to heavily...

Steve,
I looks like someone modified a vac fill mechanism to make a piston fill.... how far down into the barrel did the white part and piston go....
From the looks of it, it does not look like it would suck up much ink...

But as the pen has a breather tube, it would allow multi-stroke filling.

--Daniel

DUH!!!!!! Not thinking yet today... thanks Daniel

The white plastic part is joined to the threaded nut (collar?). I was wondering if this unit would even work, but with the filler tube, it might suck ink up the tube OK (I haven't re-installed this unit). I bought one of Ralph P.'s filler units a couple years back but the one I saw was simply a metal version of the standard post '41 plastic stem fillers....

Steve

Well Steve, you are just gonna have to reinstall it and see if it works and let us know...
Might start a new revolution in vac repairs when original filler units are gone... at least for good user grade pens...
Did is seem to have a good seal on the barrel when you took it out...
The concept is good....

I am just speculating but it seems to me that the piston would have to be in the down position for the blind cap to fit. In the down position the end of the piston extends from the cylindar a little. This makes me wonder if this pen creates a vacuum like a Sheaffer vacuum filler but above the ink supply. this device would create the vacuum to suck up the ink with out using a rubber diaphram.

Is the white plastic tube pliable? There seems to be a bulge at the o-ring position in the second pic where the piston is pulled out.

NOPE, the piston is in the up position when the blind cap is installed..
The vac filler system is spring loaded with the plunger up when the spring is relaxed...

Griz, take another look at the images. I think that ANM is right, the plunger or piston would have to be fully depressed to get the blind cap of a 51 to go on all the way. If that is the case, then the length of the white cylinder would have to allow for the vacuum created behind the plunger on the downstroke to be released. This would, in effect make it into a Plunger fill 51. A piston fill would have threads on the plunger rod to activate it.

If the ink was filled by pulling the plunger out, then when you depressed it to put the blind cap on, it would puke out it's ink load. There has to be a break in the vacuum when the plunger is pushed down. My question though would be whether you would be able to clear the collector with the final stroke of the filler in midair and not immersed with ink? If not, then you would have some ink gushing out of the collector and out of the hood.

The blind cap might fit over the filler if the plunger was the same length as a vac filler, but to my eyes this one looks a little long for that. Could just be perspective though.

It does appear that the O ring is displacing the white material a bit when the plunger is pulled up. Whatever this thing is someone spent some time on it to make it work. Would have had me doing the Whisky Tango Foxtrot?!?!? when I took it out though.

Cheers,
Sean

Not so. In a pen with a breather tube, air is expelled when the voume-reducing member is activated (squeeze bar, diaphragm, etc.), and then ink is drawn up; with each stroke, this cycle repeats until the ink level reaches the end of the breather tube, at which point equilibrium is reached. The final expelling stroke may then eject a bit of ink, but only the amount that was drawn in over the end of the breather tube. This is precisely what happens in a lockdown Vacumatic, for example.

--Daniel

Daniel, sorry for not being clearer, the last stroke of ink (what I called the ink load) would be at least partially expelled. Which would probably remove some of the ink from the collector so as to not flood it.

What is your opinion on the position of the plunger when filling is complete then?? Would you see it as a plunger raised or plunger depressed orientation before reattaching the blind cap?

Either way, that filler might need to be reviewed a little further, as it could be a viable replacement with the correct engineering. I think to the many different filler units that I have sitting here with bad plungers or busted pellet cups and this filler looks like it could be a nice alternative.

Cheers,
Sean

I will get you all more info on this unit after work.

Best,

Steve

it is entirely possible that it could draw ink on both the upstroke (like a syringe) AND on the downstroke (like a vacuum fill) and it wouldn't make any difference where it ended up when the blind cap was attatched.

Wonder if he had to sand down the barrel collar that the diaphram normally gets pinched by.

I think that highly unlikely, for to draw ink on the upstroke the head of the piston would have to seal with the chamber and the shaft bearing would have to allow the passage of fluid, whereas to operate like a vacuum filler, the reverse would have to be true.

--Daniel

Hi All,

Thanks for the stimulating ideas here. I can clarify a little bit and tell you some more about the unit.

1. This unit was VERY tight and VERY difficult to remove. Obviously, I had no idea what it was when I started pulling/pushing it out. It took a lot of work and I was relieved that the barrel didn't crack.

2. The ink end of the plunger has a machined groove where an o-ring sits. You can see the black o-ring in the top pic. There is some grease on the o-ring to make a seal with the white plastic tube.

3. The white plastic tube is one inch long from the bottom of the threaded collar. It is a stiff plastic. There is about 1/4" at the threaded collar end that is smaller diameter to fit under the threaded collar.

4. As a test, I started to load this unit back into the original "51" barrel, but it was so very tight that I stopped, fearing that I'd crack the barrel. So I took a barrel that is already cracked (don't ask ) and loaded this fill unit in it and put in a collector, feed, hood etc.

5. The piston fills on the up stroke as you pull it up. When you push down, some big bubbles came out. I pushed it up and down about 4 times and the barrel was filled to the top of the fill tube attached to the feed. It actually works quite well that way. So Daniel's ideas above were verified. It works by suction of fluid through the fill tube. When you depress, the fluid has spilled over the fill tube into the barrel and air in the top of the barrel is now pushed out the fill tube.

6. Pulling this piston up is very difficult and stiff because of the tight fit of the o-ring in the white tube. Frankly I would not want to fill a pen this way. It takes so much effort to pull the plunger up that you might knock the ink bottle over. Maybe I exaggerate, but I would far prefer the stock fill unit.

7. The piston must be pushed down to fit the blind cap on--as Daniel K. said, like a lock down filler, but that's no problem.

As I tried to remove this unit from even the cracked barrel, it was again quite difficult because it's very tight. In my opinion, these barrels are just too precious to fool with this thing anymore. The one advantage it may have is the lack of diaphram, but the o-ring would have to be replaced eventually and removing this unit from a barrel that has shrunk and dried in 10-20 more years would probably ruin the barrel.

For now, I take it that Parker probably didn't make this fill unit way back when. If they had, the o-ring would probably be dried out.

Thanks for the thoughtful chat,

Steve