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What to do with a 1950s Pilot that has celluloid shrinkage?!?


awa54

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Well, I finally had a thought as to the fix and it seems to have worked!

 

The pen in question is a (late?) 50's Pilot ED, with shutoff valve and shiro nib. It has black celluloid for the cap, barrel and shutoff valve knob, with a black hard rubber section and feed.  It looks like a NOS piece and there were no traces of ink in it when I received it, however time, heat, or both had shrunk the barrel material to the point where the barrel to section joint was impossible to open without the use of rubber sheet as a grip enhancer and then only with extreme effort (worryingly high amounts of force really).

 

Initially, I put a little silicone grease on the threads, hoping they would break in, but it barely improved the situation, then I decided to try putting Novus #2 plastic polish on the threads and repeatedly removing and re-threading the section into the barrel.  One "treatment" has changed the tension on the screw joint from "near impossible", to just "too tight", so I'll probably do a second application to get them loosened up just a bit more. I don't want to go too far though, since there's no way back from removing too much material!

 

The cleanup was actually the most arduous part, since it required flushing all the abrasive out of the ink reservoir and feed, as well as off both sets of threads.

David-

 

So many restoration projects...

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