I originally wrote this in answer to a question that sprung up on the Adjustable nib post here in the Wahl Eversharp Forum. It was just an off-shoot of that original topic, so to reach more people who might not know it was buried in the Adjustable Nib post, I am posting ita gain as a new topic.

The questions were:

1) My pen is missing the shut-off valve. Should it be there? Does its being missing affect ink flow that would cause blobbing?

2) Generally what else could cause blobs of ink when I use this pen

3) Someone suggested air leaks might be the cause. What kind of air leaks can cause blobbing (new word I gueess)


These comments are tailored to the Vacuum Fill pen you describe. There are other causes for sac pens with Personal Point/Shut-Off sections. I will try to id which pen I am talking about below.

1) Shut-off valve pens will write without the Shut-off slide in place BUT, just why the shut-off valve is not there may begin to tell the rest of the story. You see, Wahl-Eversharp shut off valve pens are all Personal Point pens. Personal Point pens have a nib and feed mounted in a black hard rubber collar that screws into the section. The collar is threaded either at the rear or forward end to match where the treads are on the section involved. The shut-off valve pens also had the spring loaded shut-off slide inside the collar. The shut off mechanism is so constructed that it has a cut out that allows a raised area inside the collar to fit within and the slide glides in and out with the raised BHR area fitting inside the slide slot.

Some "restorers" fail to understand this construction and attempt to knock out the feed and nib when doing their restoration. BIG MISTAKE. They will unvaryingly break the collar and find out the hard way that this construction exists by ending up with a broken collar when they try to knock out the feed and nib. Now, If you are following all this, what is the restorer to do when he/she just knocked out that stubborn feed and nib only to find that they broke off the raised area that the shut-off slide fits onto? Or worse, they end up with a broken or cracked collar. They either replace it with another collar that is not a good fit, or they repair the broken collar or if it is just cracked, they may do nothing and reassemble the pen regardless. That is my first suspicion about where your pen is allowing extra ink to flow around/bypass the nib and feed, If your blob or drip forms where the nib and feed exit the section, I bet this is the cause.

2) If number 1 does not answer the question, then move on to a generally, why bens blob in the first place. Too much ink coming out of the pen. (Duh, you think?) In a properly working pen the only place where the ink CAN flow is into the section following the little channel on the feed and then ito the slit of the nib and onto the paper. The gap between the nib and feed needs to be set just right or at least within a range from dry to wet that suits the user. Too far outside the range and you get either no ink reaching the slit (this is when the nib and feed are either too far apart (usually) or too close together (rarely). There is a point however, where if the nib and feed are almost too far apart a lot of ink will be allowed to flow outside the breather channel and all along the underside of the nib and upper surfaces of the feed and flooding happens.

3) Air leaks can allow too much ink to flow. The ink supply system in this type pen is almost a closed system. The ink chamber in the barrel (or the sac in sac pens) is air/ink tight, the section is air/ink tight and the packing unit at the rear of the plunger system is almost air tight. So the only place for ink and air to flow is down the narrow breather channel on top of the feed, right? Right. The design of the ink channel on the feed (shape and size and number of fins perhaps), is designed to supply the nib with just the right amount of ink. There is a rhythm to the flow of ink out and air coming into the pen through this narrow channel that keeps the flow somewhat self regulating. If this delicate balance is altered by air getting in somewhere else more ink will flow as there is no limit placed on ink flow through the nib air-ink exchange. So the comment about an air leak may be valid. The air leak will be somewhere in or around the packing unit (or the sac/section connection in sac pens). You could know if this were the case, because your pen would never fill fully, and in the worst cases, ink would leak out of the plunger area at the rerar of the barrel.

4) You did not ask this one, but sometimes "thermal expansion" of the air inside the ink reservoir (or in or around the sac in sac pens) due to heat from the users hand or elsewhere in the immediate environment, will increase the air pressure inside the ink reservoir (or around the sac in some sac pens) and push extra ink out the business end of the pen. I know one person who actually double sacked his pen to create an extra area of air insulation around the ink containing inner-most sac!

I always end up writing a lot of detail in an attempt to EXPLAIN why thinks work the way they do. Maybe it would be better if I just answered: "Because".

Hope this helps. I would check out number 1 first. To do this remove the Personal Point collar assembly (these are right hand threads so you unscrew them counter clockwise), and inspect the collar.

HINT: When I repair these type pens I put some special wax in the threads of the collar to provide both a good seal at that area and to make the collar easier to take out later on.

If you want the shut of replaced that can be done too. These were much (and to my way of thinking) wrongly maligned as never performing as advertised. There is a gasket that rides inside the section that makes contact with the cone of the shut-off slide that makes the shut-off shut off. Flushing the pen every month or so will keep this gasket from developing solids on it that might affect its reliability and these gaskets wear out about once every 2 years and must be replaced. Most repair folks either don't know it is there, or missing and do not replace it. Thus the pen will not shut off as advertised if that is not corrected.

Bonus:
Wahlnuts law #5:A pen will probably write even if not all proper inside. But it must be correct inside for all systems "go".

Syd the Wahlnut