Pelikan 100N Piston Repair

[Le Vieux]

Need is an excellent professor.

 

[Bo Bo Olson]

Too bad, cork is so, so very much smoother, when boiled in paraffin and beeswax and then smeared with silicon grease.

O rings are the cheap way out.....how long do you expect them to last?...before yanking the pen apart again? How many times do you expect the pen to withstand being yanked apart before being ruined?

 

....with fresh boiled/waxed cork, you should have been good for another seventy years. More if you used the pen every day.

 

Richard Binder sells plastic gasket 2.0 and a proper sized cutter.....which would be better I imagine than more delicate O rings. Plastic Gasket 1.0 was from @ 1940 when importing of Portuguese cork was no longer allowed because of giving out German export money in the war. I think 2.0 came in @ 1955.

[Xof72000]

It looks like were is something broken / missing on your piston end.

 

It should be like the 3rd from the left (1946 resin).

 

http://www.penboard.de/penpoint/images/pelipistonmechs.jpg

 

Can you unscrew the end of the rod ?

Edited July 18, 2017 by Xof72000

[grainweevil]

Having gone down both the cork and o-ring path in different pens, I'm not getting into that, but I am curious as to what's going to keep the o-rings from being pulled off the piston when it's drawn up. As Xof72000 says, something would appear to be missing (although I'd have guessed it was the 2nd from the left, but I know next to zero about 100Ns)

[mana]

It most definitely looks unusual and like it is missing the stopper plug (depicted in the picture above with the second unit from the left). Also weird that there is cork in the center of the piston shaft (where the spindle is supposed to be), what's up with that?

 

I would not recommend using modern elastomer O-rings as a substitute to cork in pens made for cork piston seals. There have been problems with the O-rings sticking to the barrel walls and in some cases (if there is a large enough a difference in the outer diameter between the installed O-rings and the original cork seals) cracks have appeared due to added stress to the barrel. This is especially true for pens with celluloid barrels, they are very much more prone to cracking under stress compared to the later Pelikan barrels which were made of acrylics and were intended to be used with proper size elastomer/plastic seals.

 

I would most definitely get the kit to do proper sized cork seals (would have already if my collection focused on earlier pens instead of post-WWII ones). It is not that difficult with the right tools and like Bo Bo said, it will provide you with decades of trouble free service without risking your pens health or integrity.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Mana....thanks for the other info of why O rings are not the way to go.

[Le Vieux]

Guys, the pen is working again, and this is what I intended in the first place. Cork or not, the pen draws ink and I can write with it.

 

Of course, cork is so much better than what I have used;if and when I'll get the proper tools and materials to fashion a cork in a suitable manner for a pen, I will without no doubt do that. Until such times, I use what I have.

 

Just so to make things clear, the stopper at the end of the shaft is 1.3mm larger in diameter than the diameter of the oring. I know that it's pretty hard to see the difference, but it's there, trust me. I have made sure that the oring stack cannot and will not fall from the shaft and get stuck into the barrel.

 

The brown-ish thingy showing up inside the stopper is actually the remains of the original top stopper, the one which screws on the top. That is all it was left from it, a disc of 1/2mm thickness, and I have used to plug the hole in the plastic stopper.

 

It works, and this is good. May crack the pen? Probably. Will I change it with a proper one? Most certainly. Considering that the pen was condemned by its owner, and salvaged albeit temporarily, I guess it's not bad.

 

Anyways, thank you all for the valuable input, really much appreciated!

 

Regards,

JT

[Bo Bo Olson]

Paraffin is what the English call a thicker mineral oil....and the cork after sizing should be boiled in that and 50% bees wax. I'm sure regular mineral oil would do if Paraffin is too hard to obtain.

 

Sand paper and patience is a wonder, I have heard works for sizing corks......I have pens to re-cork....come the day when my desk is clean. I have everything but a bottle of will power. I'll use my dremil.

 

There are cork cutters, but one needs to know which size a pen takes so buying a set of cork cutters is not what I'm going to do.

[Chrissy]

I must admit I wondered what there was to stop the O-rings from coming off the end of the piston rod, but OP says there is a stopper and he must know. I hope it continues to work OK.

[grainweevil]

Just so to make things clear, the stopper at the end of the shaft is 1.3mm larger in diameter than the diameter of the oring. I know that it's pretty hard to see the difference, but it's there, trust me. I have made sure that the oring stack cannot and will not fall from the shaft and get stuck into the barrel.

 

Well I thought there must be something, because having had first hand experience of trying without, it's safe to say it doesn't work!

 

I heartily recommend having a shot at cork seals - making one is just about the most fun I've had with a fountain pen repair.

[Chrissy]

 

Well I thought there must be something, because having had first hand experience of trying without, it's safe to say it doesn't work!

 

I heartily recommend having a shot at cork seals - making one is just about the most fun I've had with a fountain pen repair.

 

I have never tried it. On the other hand I don't have any Pelikan pens with a cork seal.....at the moment. I suppose that could change at any time.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Cork can be used instead of plastic gasket from my understanding with most of the '50 era pens.