Need to re-glue piston on vintage Pelikan Go!

[essayfaire]

While trying to fill a Pelikan Go! the piston just turned off right into my hand!  It is not my pen, but I have permission to re-glue the piston.  Is this safe to do, and if so what type of glue should I use? The pen is plastic.  Thanks.  

[hari317]

pls post a picture of the broken portion of the pen

[essayfaire]

8 hours ago, hari317 said:

pls post a picture of the broken portion of the pen

[PPPR]

  I still enjoy the Go! pens. The Journal of the Writing Equipment Society has a couple articles on adhesives in Nos. 113 and 114 (Winter 2018 and Summer (2019?)). These might have the information you're looking for, and they're still available. The print versions arrived a month ago, and they have digital versions.

 

Do a search for their website and, possibly, their librarian. That's how I found them when rejoining earlier this year.

[dipper]

Before doing any repair work you need to be clear about how the piston mechanism is supposed to work when not "broken", and identify what fault has occurred.

 

For example: Perhaps one piece of plastic has fractured into two pieces? Or two friction-fit parts have come loose? Or two "click-fit" parts have un-clicked themselves?

 

Using the Snapseed photo editing app to look deep into the darkness of the photos posted by @essayfaire I don't see any fracture surfaces.

 

Does not look like anything is fractured? But sadly I don't understand which parts are supposed to slide over each other, and which are supposed to be joined together, in this interesting Pelikan pen.

 

Fortunately, there is a disassembled Pelikan Go on eBay UK today, "for parts".

Item number 164626627685, with 12 good photos. Can you see how the piston mechanism is supposed to work? .... I am still stumped!

 

But the eBay photos do give clues about how to disassemble some of the knob-end parts of the pen.

 

To investigate the "broken" pen I recommend cautious disassembly as a first step. If that reveals something needing gluing then the glue application  can be done with the broken parts separated from the rest of the pen.  (Glue in the wrong places could be a disaster.)

Or it might be found that two parts simply need to be clicked back together, and the piston seals freed by hand and greased, and then all parts reassembled.

[OCArt]

3 hours ago, dipper said:

Fortunately, there is a disassembled Pelikan Go on eBay UK today, "for parts".

Item number 164626627685, with 12 good photos. Can you see how the piston mechanism is supposed to work? .

Wow, what a great tip. 

[essayfaire]

18 minutes ago, OCArt said:

Wow, what a great tip. 

I don't know if I should do this to someone else's pen...

[dipper]

3 hours ago, essayfaire said:

I don't know if I should do this to someone else's pen...

 

Yes, this is a tricky moral question.

 

But also, you should not put glue into someone else's pen unless you are 100% confident that glueing is in fact the correct and best action needed to fix the pen. And you need to know exactly what parts need gluing, and avoid getting glue onto the wrong parts (likely to send the pen to the scrap bin).

 

One cause of woe when restoring vintage pens is finding parts that refuse to disassemble becase someone has glued the parts in some past misguided repair effort. Or someone has put too much shellac on a new sac, and then reassembled parts without letting the shellac dry fully - so shellac seeps into places where it should not be.

 

One further thought: The knob breakage may be related to a long-term lack of maintenance by the pen owner.

 

Piston fillers do require occasional maintenance. Specifically, lubricating the piston seal with Silicon Grease.

 

Also, even when lubricated, if left dry and unused for months or years, the piston seals can stick themselves to the walls of the ink chamber. In that state, the force needed to break the partial bond and get the piston moving again could be beyond the limits that the knob/screw mechanism is capable of providing.

(In that situation I unscrew the nib unit, insert a flat-ended rod through the opening to push on the face of the piston, and use the push-rod and piston screw together to get the piston seals moving. If nothing moves with moderate force then I inject soapy water into the ink chamber, leave to soak, and try again.)

 

 

[I-am-not-really-here]

See @Honeybadgersresponse in this post - Pelikan m75 GO disassembly

[hari317]

On 11/1/2022 at 12:36 AM, essayfaire said:

Are you able to operate the piston when you rotate the end of the pen?

[essayfaire]

Not exactly, it seems to rotate right off into my hand.

[essayfaire]

On 11/2/2022 at 10:00 PM, I-am-not-really-here said:

See @Honeybadgersresponse in this post - Pelikan m75 GO disassembly

Thanks, I just looked at the thread, and wish @Honeybadgershad put up pictures!  I now think that the part that popped off there and was able to be replaced in the proper place might be wedged into the piston cover that screwed off into my hand.  Would that make sense?  I don't normally do the disassembly stuff.