I recently acquired a pair of Parker Duofolds, a Sr. & Jr. - Big Red & Little Red. According to my research they are from 1928, as they both have double rings at the lower ends of their caps but are not streamlined.

I just finally got the innards out of the barrel of Little Red and they seem intact, though different from Big Red's. The old, hardened sac fell right out of Big Red along with a two-piece, flat metal strip apparatus. I could not figure out how this attached to the button at the top end of the barrel and acted to depress the sac, but it finally made sense when I got it under the microscope to scrape the ink crust off and examine it. One side of these strips is a spring, and when depressed it butts against the top of the section on the other end, causing the spring to bow, and pushing the attached metal strip into the sac.

OK. My problem is that this spring appears to have been soldered to the bottom of the button clear up into the far end of the barrel, and it has broken off. How in blazes does one repair this? I thought the button was spring-loaded in itself, but to the extent that I can see, it's hollow, cylindrical shaft is divided into 4 sections and flared at the bottom, after going through its hole in the end of the barrel. The only thing I can see that might be done is to carefully try to extract it from the end of the barrel and then the spring would have to be resoldered and fed back through the hole, and the "corner" navigated to get the button back in. Can one get an intact assembly anywhere? The spring part of this one looks kind of tired. A spring, like the one in Little Red, which jogs and then butts into the hollow shaft of the button would be, by comparison, a godsend. Would that work?

Little Red is a Lucky Curve model. I can't remember why it is called this, but its different spring apparatus appears to be intact. In fact it looks almost like new, though I think someone put India Ink into the pen as it is all black inside and won't clean out, and the "bag" that came out looked more like a little Tootsie Roll than anything else. And the feed is plugged, but will have to come apart anyway. So I'm just having all kinds of new experiences here!

Also some lunatic cut the points off of both nibs and filed the sides to "reshape" them, so I'll have to find replacement nibs. Other than that they are great!

Ooooh dear...

Well you're correct in your dating, at least. Double-bander flattops were only made in 1928, at least, according to my research.

The button-filling mechanism is pretty easy to figure out. The pressure-bar should be flat at one end and bent and skinny at the other end, with another, shorter flat bar in the middle of the first. The skinny bent end of the bar slots into the underside of the filling-button. The idea is that when the button's pressed, the bar is forced down. The flat end of the pressure-bar presses against the feed at the bottom of the pen and the pressure causes the bar to bend, pushing the attached flat bit out, to depress the sac...

To my knowledge, the pressure-bar does *not* attach to the button itself. It just sits there. Properly assembled, the pressure-bar won't be able to be removed from the underside of the button because the feed and section of the pen would prevent it from going anywhere.

Shangas,

Well I see you made it over here anyway.

Yeah, sounds like we are on the same page on the operation of this, but the pressure bar you speak of looks that way in Little Red, but not in Big Red. That one was different, and I can see what appears to be a glop of solder on the underside of the button. The solder extends from the middle of the button over to the side of the pen barrel, where the pressure bar apparently broke off. Without removing the button from the top, I cannot know this for sure, but that is how it looks to the best of my ability to peer down into it. One thing I do know is that nobody soldered that down inside the pen barrel! So either I am wrong or it had to go in through the button hole.

If I can't take a good enough picture, then maybe I can do a drawing and scan it in. Have to go get supper now, so will work on it later.

Donna

OK. I decided to skip pictures, and go to drawing. This is just of the two different pressure bar configurations, and what I think I see in the far end of the barrels of the underside of the buttons.Click to view attachment