The Joy Of Soennecken Piston Restoration

[penwash]

I've restored many vintage piston fillers from Germany. They are almost always interesting and sometimes frustrating.

But I recently was restoring the piston system of certain Soennecken models, and I find it very enjoyable.

 

This particular one is a 112 model. But I think the same mechanism is also on their 5XX series. Other models have either a button filler or a different piston mechanism.

 

Why is it so enjoyable?

 

The way the piston mechanism was put together makes sense to me and quite ingenious, also it seems that this design makes the piston more restorable and durable than any other systems in the same era that I've worked on (such as Pelikan 100).

 

Here's a photo of a Soennecken 116 along with my restoration notes and sketch:

 

 

And here's another one, a model 112:

 

 

[enchiridion]

nice, thanks for sharing

[amk]

I wonder how many different variants of piston mech actually exist? I once bought a job lot of about 15 German black piston fillers needing restoration - almost every piston needed a different approach!

 

I love the fact that you've given us both the standard disassembly photograph and a really nice hand drawn picture too. Thanks for a great post!

Edited October 17, 2019 by amk

[penwash]

Quite a bit of variation, but usually they use a plastic "screw". A lot of these warped or shrunk over time (especially the ones made for "budget" models). This design from Soennecken uses a metal "screw" that makes it durable.