Hi pen-gurus,

Background: I've restored about 10 snorkels lately and really enjoy playing with these pens. A friend gave me some old cheap pens to play with and I knocked out the nibs and saw how to adjust these regular nibs. However, the triumph nibs on the Sheaffers seem more intimidating for a newbie like me to adjust (i.e., ruin!).

Recently, I found an inexpensive Lady Sheaffer Skripsert cartridge pen on Ebay for a birthday present for my daughter. However it has two problems that have puzzled me:

1. The feed is off center--i.e., twisted to the right a mm or two just enough to not sit back on the nib as it should. The nib screws off, but I can't seem to move the feed. Does anyone know if it's attached inside the section somehow??

2. The tines of the nib are not right. Instead of being wider at the air vent (the "heart") and narrowing down to the points, the gap is equidistant, so the tip has too big of a gap.

I've searched this forum for adjusting tines and the advice was to carefully lift one over the other and the other over the one, but these triumph nibs are really stiff which seems to be part of their design. Is this still what your would suggest trying? Or does one fiddle with the nib shoulder somehow?

Thanks in advance,

Steve

Hi All,

Here's an update in case you fool with these nibs.

The Lady Sheaffer must be a broad nib. I found 2 others, one marked "F8" and can compare now. Getting the feed adjusted is not that hard after all, though the construction is different than other pens I've dealt with.

The section is threaded onto the long feed and nib holder and screws out with some gentle heat and care not to strip the threads that hold the barrel. The feed is held firmly in place by a rubber gasket and pressure from the section. When the section and gasket are removed, the feed pushes out through the holder (toward the section) rather than pulls out from the nib side as I had expected. Pretty interesting design. The feed has lots of fins inside--is this a collector?

I have ajusted both this Lady nib and a snorkel triumph nib. The main thing I found was to [carefully!] push the high tine down below and across the low tine rather than above. That's because of the normal triumph bend upward on the tip. So far so good!

Thought I'd let you all know the progress....

Steve

thanx for the tip on the nib/feed removal, steve. i have not had to practice on triumph nibs as yet - just lucky i guess that my few were all in good shape.

I think that, by definition, "collector" refers to the mechanism of the Parker "51" and, if I understand properly (big if), the defining thing is that the ink supply surrounds the nib. Sheaffer, OTOH, took the logic of the finned feed and took it about as far as it could go. Both work superbly well: insert your favourite engineering conclusions <HERE>.

Best

Michael

Hi Michael,
Thanks for the tip. I have read about the 51 collector but never seen one. I'm stuck on Sheaffers. Even their cheaper pens seem to be better quality than the other cheaper pens I've seen (e.g., Arnold, Cavalier, etc.). The feeds on the scripsert are interesting because the bulk of it is inside the pen and has lots of very fine fins. Seems cafefully designed and made.

Thanks,
Steve