Skyline Breather Tube Confusion

[jde]

The recent thread about Skyline transparent windows

"made me look" at my two demi size Skylines with windows.

 

I once thought I saw a sac through one of the windows. Now I see

that it's merely decades of ink use that has made them hard to see

through.

 

Then I noticed that only one of them has a breather tube. I'm

guessing that's why the one without a breather tube seems to run out of ink

much faster than the other. I took this one apart to confirm the missing

breather tube.

 

I've been reading, reading, reading through the forums and it looks as

though I should have a breather tube in my Skyline. It also looks as though

the only source for "new" tubes is vintagepens.

 

How long should my new breather tube be for the Demi? I cannot find this

info anywhere.

 

Or... does it need a breather tube, or a wick? or...

 

Updated: I found this post where Syd describes the tube as being almost the length of the sac.

Edited March 12, 2010 by jde

[ZeissIkon]

I've been reading, reading, reading through the forums and it looks as though I should have a breather tube in my Skyline. It also looks as though

the only source for "new" tubes is vintagepens.

 

How long should my new breather tube be for the Demi? I cannot find this

info anywhere.

 

Or... does it need a breather tube, or a wick? or...

 

Breather tubes vs. wicks. I finally found an answer on this, buried in Richard Binder's huge article collection. The "Miracle Feed" was sold, over time, with flat wicks, wicks that looked like a tube that was split down one side for most of its length, and with breather tubes; the feed never changed, so IMO any Skyline can (and, for best filling, should) be fitted with a tube. I have a hypothesis that they all had tubes when made, and the "wicks" we find in unserviced vintage pens are the result of deterioration of the original rubber tubes (they are, after all, as old as the fractured and ossified sacks we have to pull out of the barrel with a hook); otherwise, the pens with wicks would never have filled even as well as most lever fillers because of the space in the visual section that isn't subject to compression by the pressure bar.

 

In any case, I can confirm from very recent experience that a WD-40 tube will fit if you skeeve the end at about 30º and insert the tapered end into the feed (put the open side toward the nib, to ensure the passage connects). The tube appears to work very well if it runs to about 80% of the sac; my blue Skyline filled completely (showed only one tiny bubble in the window when nib up after filling). The WD-40 tube is stiff enough to make it difficult to fully open the lever (allaying fears of tube collapse from lever pressure, I think), but with a breather tube, you don't really need to do that, just lift it to the point of resistance, quickly, so the pen expels bubbles in the ink, then release and wait a few seconds (five is plenty) before repeating until no more bubbles are expelled. The large diameter tube works better than any of my Chinese aerometrics or my Parker 51 Vacumatic in terms of preferentially expelling air vs. ink, making the pen fill very efficiently and easily.

[jde]

Interesting hypothesis about the wicks. Dunno.

 

But I'm gonna put a tube in and see what happens.

 

Just to be precise, Richard refers to the "Magic Feed" as the feeder design.

 

Thanks for taking the time to help me out!

[ZeissIkon]

Interesting hypothesis about the wicks. Dunno.

 

But I'm gonna put a tube in and see what happens.

 

Just to be precise, Richard refers to the "Magic Feed" as the feeder design.

 

Thanks for taking the time to help me out!

 

Thanks, "Magic" feed it is. For additional confirmation, I got the correct sac in my second Skyline, and it fills just as well as the first one did with the WD-40 breather tube. I also used the blue Skyline today to take several (comp book) pages of narrative notes, and despite being a very wet writer, used less than about 1/3 of the ink (meaning I have a similar capacity, in terms of words -- about 8000-10,000 -- as my Esterbrook, despite laying down what looks like twice as much ink). The green Skyline ought to last around twice as long on a fill (say about 15,000-20,000 words), since it's a significantly drier writer.

[gregkoos]

 Aside from heisting a WD40 tube from your can, is their any other source for this particular tube? Checking out Lowes when no one is looking is not an option!

 

 

 

Interesting hypothesis about the wicks. Dunno.

 

But I'm gonna put a tube in and see what happens.

 

Just to be precise, Richard refers to the "Magic Feed" as the feeder design.

 

Thanks for taking the time to help me out!

 

Thanks, "Magic" feed it is.  For additional confirmation, I got the correct sac in my second Skyline, and it fills just as well as the first one did with the WD-40 breather tube.  I also used the blue Skyline today to take several (comp book) pages of narrative notes, and despite being a very wet writer, used less than about 1/3 of the ink (meaning I have a similar capacity, in terms of words -- about 8000-10,000 -- as my Esterbrook, despite laying down what looks like twice as much ink).  The green Skyline ought to last around twice as long on a fill (say about 15,000-20,000 words), since it's a significantly drier writer.

[ZeissIkon]

 Aside from heisting a WD40 tube from your can, is their any other source for this particular tube? Checking out Lowes when no one is looking is not an option!

 

The original tube was .069" diameter (though probably shrunk a little), the WD-40 I used was .084" -- virtually any somewhat flexible plastic tube in this size range ought to work. Hobby shops used to sell short lengths of Teflon tube as an applicator for super glues; you might also be able to find polystyrene tube under the Plastruct brand (1/16" is roughly .063", too small; 5/64" is about .078", or 2.00 mm is closer to .079"), though I'm not sure the wall is thin enough. Drop by almost any car repair shop and they'll probably be happy to give you a suitable tube off a can of WD-40 (or equivalent product), brake cleaner, contact cleaner -- heck, even a computer shop might have a tube that will fit on a can of "Dust Off" equivalent, though the one I found seems bigger than the WD-40 tube and probably wouldn't work.

 

WD-40 brand used to sell the tubes separately, a pack of five or six for under a dollar (probably a couple dollars now, if you can find it) -- might be worth Googling them to see if they still do.

 

Worst case, Dave Nishimura (vintagepens.com) sells Teflon breather tubing sized for Parker 51, which is supposed to be the same size; big deal there is his $25 minimum order -- you might have to buy some sacs, pencil leads, etc. to make up an order...

[freehand]

I've got Skylines with breather tubes and others with weird little twisty plastic wicks (not shriveled breather tubes by any means). So there is some variety.

 

For replacement breather tubes, would the tubes on the solvent bulbs from Vintage Pens be a good option? They're skinnier than the red WD-40 adjuncts.

[ZeissIkon]

I've got Skylines with breather tubes and others with weird little twisty plastic wicks (not shriveled breather tubes by any means). So there is some variety.

 

For replacement breather tubes, would the tubes on the solvent bulbs from Vintage Pens be a good option? They're skinnier than the red WD-40 adjuncts.

 

Without the opportunity to measure one of those tubes, I can't say for certain, but if it's between about .070" and .084" diameter it ought to work. You'd still have to make a minimum from Vintage Pens (in which case you may as well buy five feet of the .074" "standard" breather tube, which is an exact replacement, and be done), but you might be able to buy those bulbs from other sources; they look like a pretty generic applicator.

 

I haven't seen a working Skyline with a wick; both of mine came to me with ossified sacs and the sections already out, but one certainly seemed to have a flat strip of something in there instead of a tube. I'm told they write just fine with nothing in that hole in the feed; I just don't see how the pen can fill decently without a breather tube; it looks to me as if you'd get, at most, about half the ink I get with my breather tubes and five or six pumps.

[jde]

I ended up ordering the tubing from David's site. I had to play with the length a bit... first time length was nearly the length of the sac. The pen would fill with a lot of ink but then it would not write very well. My uneducated guess is that the tube which had a very strong curve to it and in resting/pressing against the side of the sac the top hole was not freely exposed. I cut the tube down and now all is well. Fills great. Writes great.

[ZeissIkon]

I ended up ordering the tubing from David's site. I had to play with the length a bit... first time length was nearly the length of the sac. The pen would fill with a lot of ink but then it would not write very well. My uneducated guess is that the tube which had a very strong curve to it and in resting/pressing against the side of the sac the top hole was not freely exposed. I cut the tube down and now all is well. Fills great. Writes great.

 

I left both of mine at around 3/8" short of the end of the sac, and my pens both fill 100%, barely a bubble to be seen in the window. I wouldn't think having the tube end against the sac would affect the writing, though; the tube doesn't participate in the capillary flow for writing, there are perfectly fine passages that run to the back end of the Magic Feed, separate from the hole that meets up with the breather tube hole. The tube should only affect filling, and both of my Skylines write beautifully, one on the dry side, the other very, very wet.

[jde]

Thank you for correcting my "magical thinking" about the tube pressing against the side of the sac!

 

Perhaps I somehow did an accidental adjustment of the feed to nib when I re-sized the tube.

 

May I ask: how can you tell you are getting a 100% fill? I will say that once I installed the tube in the pen and filled -- I could feel the sac filling up (feeling meaning through the barrel...) and that alone was a new sensation with this particular pen. And when I express the ink I can see that more ink was sucked up, but I can't say how much of the sac is filling up.

Edited March 23, 2010 by jde

[ZeissIkon]

May I ask: how can you tell you are getting a 100% fill? I will say that once I installed the tube in the pen and filled -- I could feel the sac filling up (feeling meaning through the barrel...) and that alone was a new sensation with this particular pen. And when I express the ink I can see that more ink was sucked up, but I can't say how much of the sac is filling up.

 

When I was reconditioning each of my Skylines, I took care to clean out the old ink from the inside of the clear portion of the section, so I can see the ink inside. After a fresh fill, I can turn the pen nib up and still see nothing but ink in the window, at most one tiny bubble the size of a pinhead. By comparison, my Dollar 717i, with a piston filler, never has a smaller bubble than about the size of a pencil eraser, and I have several Chinese pens with aerometric fillers (including breather tubes of similar length) that, viewing through the clear sac, don't quite get there either.

 

The usual rule is that a breather tube will allow filling to or just above the top of the tube (how far above determined by how completely the sac can be compressed). What I find novel with the Skyline is using a lever to operate what amounts to an aerometric filler -- it's so much easier to operate the lever like a jack handle than it is to repeatedly push my thumbnail into the squeeze bar in common aerometrics, it's like graduating from a simple lever type can opener to one with a geared wheel and a nice, big key.

[jde]

Ah, got it. I did clean the ink window but there is some ambering going on which makes visibility difficult once filled with ink. But I've got the hang of it now. Also, put back in the longer breathing tube. All seems to be well.

 

And ZeissIkon: thank you for taking the time to walk me through some of this!

Edited March 23, 2010 by jde

[ZeissIkon]

Ah, got it. I did clean the ink window but there is some ambering going on which makes visibility difficult once filled with ink. But I've got the hang of it now. Also, put back in the longer breathing tube. All seems to be well.

 

And ZeissIkon: thank you for taking the time to walk me through some of this!

 

You're just following my (pretty fresh) tracks. I've only had my Skylines back in writing condition for a couple weeks!

 

And yes, my visual sections are pretty ambered, too -- I like the look, and just hold 'em up to a light when I want to check the ink.

[penwash]

I have the original breather tube in my Skyline that I'm restoring.

The problem is, the tube is loose when inserted into the feed.

What kept it in there in the first place? Is it shrinking from its original size?

[Greenie]

Late reply....

 

It just pushes in to the feed. Friction holds it in.

 

If it is loose, try putting the other end in! The end in the feed tends to get squished and is therefore a bit tapered after years and years. The other end should be more original in diameter.