Disassembling A Sailor Trident

[ek-hornbeck]

I gave my wife, a lefty, a Sailor Trident for a gift, years ago. She loves it. She's a hook writer, and the Trident's ability to work at a high angle is perfect for her.

 

Except that now she has seen the nano-pigment inks I've been using and wants to use them, for the permanence and because they are so saturated in color. I loaded her Trident up with Montblanc Permanent Blue, which was great for 2-3 weeks, then clogged up in her pen. So I'm going to try De Atramentis Dokument ink -- but I am also now motivated to find a way to take a Trident apart for deep & thorough cleaning. By "deep and thorough," I mean being able to remove the feed and nib from the section -- then you can really get the thing clean.

 

I can unscrew the connector ring from the section -- that is straightforward. But I cannot figure out how to get the exotic Trident nib and feed out of the section. Pushing back on the nib or the surround into which the nib fits doesn't shift anything backwards. The gold collar just behind that, at the front of the section, doesn't seem to unscrew. However, I haven't really pushed or torqued the thing hard, as I don't know what the structure is and don't want to break it.

 

Does anyone have any advice on how to disassemble a Trident? SBRE Brown doesn't have this thing on his disassembly-line set of videos -- you'd think he'd enjoy the sheer challenge of this weird beast. Not even Russ Stutler was able to enlighten me!

 

(To forestall an entire class of responses: I don't need helpful suggestions that I simply avoid using nano-pigment ink in the pen. I am competent to do that on my own -- if I can't work out a way to disassemble and clean it. I'm also currently able to flush the pen with a bulb syringe, and I can always drop the entire nib/feed/section assembly in an ultrasonic cleaner.)

 

E. K.

[Tweel]

From a Pentrace article by Russ Stutler, http://newpentrace.net/east/trident/index.html :

 

"Sailor's Nib designer Mr. Kawaguchi (a.k.a. 'The Pen Doctor') adds that the Trident pen must be used often because if ink is allowed to dry inside the nib, it is very difficult to clean. The nib cannot be taken apart for a thorough cleaning."

Edited February 9, 2017 by Tweel

[ek-hornbeck]

I found a photo of a disassembled Trident on the net, which I will include with this post. It showed me enough structure that I was able to work out how to disassemble the Trident. Here are the steps.

1. Before starting, if the pen is really gummed up with old, dried ink, you may want to soak the front of the pen in water or Koh-i-noor pen cleaner, possibly overnight, to loosen things up. Flush it with a bulb syringe to ensure your solvent of choice gets where it needs to go and to clear out junk as it comes loose.
2. Unscrew and remove the barrel; remove the cartridge or converter.
3. Unscrew and remove the connector ring from the section; this may require some heat if it's stubborn. Alternately, leave the connector ring in place; see below. Be careful with heat — I don't know what plastic was used for the section, but it looks softer than lucite and it might be polystyrene, in which case it would deform & melt at a lower temperature than lucite. I didn't need heat, but if I had, I would have chosen a hot-water bath, so I could be sure the temperature did not exceed some safe limit. This part is the silvery cylindrical component on the right side of the photo.

4. At the front of the pen, at the interface between the nib/feed unit and the section, there is a small metal collar. Unscrew and remove the collar. Again, this might require some heat — see above for warning. This part is the small, gold-colored cylindrical / truncated-conical component at the center of the photo.

   When you pull the metal collar off the section, the nib/feed/collector unit may come forward with it. That's fine.

5. If the nib/feed/collector unit stayed in the section, pull (or possibly push) it out through the front of the section. If it came out with the metal collar, pull the metal collar forward off the nib/feed/collector unit. Inside the collar — or perhaps stuck onto the feed/collector — is a little black, soft, rubbery o-ring collar. Do not lose! This part is the small, circular black component at the bottom of the photo.
6. It appears from the photo that the nib can be pulled forward out of the feed/collector unit, but I could not extract it. It's hard to get a fingertip purchase on the nib without pulling on the iridium tip, which I did not want to stress. Perhaps soft nib pliers would do the trick, here. My do-no-harm  rule of thumb here was to apply force with my fingernails, limiting me to the maximum amount of force that would not cause my fingernails to fold back.

To reassemble, I insert the feed/collector into the section, then seat the o-ring collar on it, then screw on the metal retaining collar. Screw in the connector, insert the cartridge or cartridge converter, screw on the barrel, snap on the cap, and you are done.

Note that you can extract the nib/feed/collector from the pen without removing the connector ring, as you access all these parts from the front of the pen.

Once you have the nib/feed/collector unit out of the pen, it is simple to give it a thorough cleaning, in particular removing any deposits made by inks with high dye loads or nano-pigments that could clog the ink flow in the pen.

The Trident is known for being difficult to maintain, but now that I know how to disassemble it — which is actually very easy — it's no problem at all.

E. K.