Found a Snorkel in the wild a couple of weeks ago. It was in good shape and the price was right. I replaced the sac and seals. I soaked and flushed the section with a mild ammonia solution. Assembled, it sucks up water and squirts it back out. I gave it a swig of NOS Skrip Peacock Blue. There is no SITB and the ink works well in other pens.

I had to open the tines a bit to get the pen to write properly. It now writes a fine line, although it is a bit on the dry side. After writing a page and a half, it dries up completely (letter size paper, college ruled). If I shake the pen or hold it nib-down and snap it a few times with a fingernail, it will write another page and a half and dry up again.

I flushed the pen with plain water and replaced the ink with new blue black Quink. Now the pen dries up after writing five lines!

When the pen dries up, the feed and the Snorkel tube are both bone dry.

I think the Snorkel tube is installed correctly. When viewed end-on with the nib at the top, the feed inside the tube looks like an inverted T. The stem of the T lines up with the axial slit in the tube and the slit in the nib. The cross on the T is at the bottom and corresponds to the transverse slit in the tube. The tube retracts fully into the collector; extending it up to a millimeter has no effect. Rotating the tube up to approx. 10 degrees left or right of the nib's slit has no effect.

This is the fourth Snorkel I have reconditioned. All the others write well and have no problems.

Any ideas would be welcome.

Paddler

The secondary feed inside the snorkel tube is partially plugged and is not allowing air back into the sac.

I would fill the pen with ammoniated water and then soak it in a glass with only the nib immersed overnight, then flush again. If that doesn't cure it, you need to take the snorkel tube out and GENTLY push out the secondary feed, clean it, and put it back in. A trip to the sonicator works wonders too, on things like this. Tube and nib only, probably.

Verify that there is a bit of the secondary feed sticking out the back of the snorkel tube, too -- they work badly if it's broken off.

Peter

Thanks, Peter,

The secondary feed does stick out the back of the tube a little.

I can push a thin piece of music wire down the larger, curved channel with no problem, but that doesn't improve the ink flow. It's just my luck the clog is in the skinny vertical slot and I don't know if I have a wire thin enough for that. .009" is as thin as my guitar strings get.

Paddler

I cringe to suggest it, but one could draw the feed from the tube to let it soak free of any possible gunk. I wouldn't suggest any physical effort to remove gunk once it's out as it's so thin and flimsy("Scrub"? Swoon!), but one could certainly rattle a guitar string around the inside of the tube while the soak is underway.

I've pushed a secondary feed out, but I don't recommend it, they are quite thin and likely quite fragile.

It may clear on it's own if it's a result of dried ink in the feed -- I had one that I blithely restored by didn't sonicate, and discovered after re-assembly that the snorkel was completely clogged. Had to take it apart again and sonicate the snorkel tube to get all the old ink out.

I would try technical pen cleaner before I pushed the feed out, on the off-chance that it will work better than a water soak.

Peter

I took the pen apart again on Saturday. The primary feed had something sticking up out of the slot that connects the secondary feed to the nib slit. I removed that by scraping it out with a thin piece of music wire. I can now see light come from the nib breather, through the slot, and down into the snorkel tube channel.

I found a piece of wire thin enough to rod out the small channel in the secondary feed. It is clear. No gunk came out. The secondary feed fits tight inside the snorkel tube. It would break for sure if I tried to remove it. But hey, I can see light through it.

The axial slit in the snorkel tube had burrs on the outside. My three other snorkel pens are smooth. I ground off the burrs and cleaned out the slit.

The snorkel tube is long enough to extend all the way through the rubber plug, but not beyond the sac nipple.

None of this cured the problem. When the pen dries up, I can hold the pen nib-down and look through the empty nib slit. In a few seconds, I can watch the ink move down the slit to the tip. When the ink reaches the tip, the pen will write a line or two. If I store the pen nib-down for 24 hours, the pen will write perhaps half a page.

Paddler

Triumph or open nib? Time to take it apart and clean the feed, I'm betting there is similar crud in all the slots in the "comb", the air bleed channel, and the ink slits.

Peter

It is an open nib. Do you use a regular knock-out block on these, or is there a trick to it? I have never had to pull depot maintenance on a Snorkel before.

Physics question: In a fountain pen's feed/sac system, where does an air bubble have to be in order to equalize pressure and let ink flow? I would think it could be anywhere as long as it's not stuck, but that would also apply to the air outside the feed channel. Hmmmm.

The fins and fissures look clean. If I flush the ink out, I can look through them and out the nib's breather hole. I can also see the shiny surface of the underside of the nib. There still could be a piece of crud in there in just the right place to suds up the works, though.

Paddler

Just to touch base one last time:

I fixed the pen. I replaced the Snorkel tube and secondary feed with one taken from a pen with a Triumph nib. This was a much longer tube. It extends into the section farther than the original one. The pen will probably run out of ink faster this way, but it works well.

Thanks for all the help!

Paddler

Just an update to this thread, I found it and Peter's advice very useful and thought I would share my personal experiences in dealing with a perplexing ink flow problem – perplexing because Sheaffer Snorkels are usually very reliable.

I have a Saratoga that has been having a lot of trouble with. When I got it, it was clogged solid with dried ink. I did my best to clean it out, but only got two or three words before it stopped working (once the initial prime had been used up).

Rather than take everything apart I decided to test it, extending the snorkel and checking the end and then the slit on a piece of paper. The ink flow here was fine, and it was aligned properly with the nib. I took the nib off and tried the same test – almost no ink. Narrowing the problem down helped a lot in solving it.

I soaked the feed for 4 hours in the dish soap and ammonia mix I found somewhere on FPN, then ran it through an ultrasonic bath until nothing more came out of it (half an hour to get it clean!).

Without the nib on, chunks of dried ink as well as dissolved ink came out of the feed. I have no idea what kind of ink it was, but it wouldn’t even dissolve in my ultrasonic cleaner. The nib was holding it in.

From what I understand ink flow Issues (no ink, some ink, or ink fading/ dying with writing) are caused by the following:

Secondary feed is broken off in sac causing ink flow problems Replace secondary feed
Secondary feed is not aligned to the slit in the snorkel causing ink flow problems Align with snorkel
Secondary feed is clogged causing ink flow problems (dried ink or silicone grease can cause clogs) Take out secondary feed and carefully clean ink channel by soaking in an ammonia mix
Snorkel is not aligned with the feed causing ink flow problems Align snorkel with feed (slits in snorkel pointing to feed)
Snorkel is clogged causing airflow, thus ink flow, problems Run a fine wire through the snorkel
Feed is clogged causing ink flow problems Take feed out and clean by soaking in an ammonia mix

Are there any other ink flow issues or solutions that I am missing?