Help me troubleshoot odd behavior from my Sheaffer Snorkel?

[BHuij]

I have a Sheaffer Snorkel Admiral that I bought a couple of years ago. It was the first vintage pen I ever got, and the first one I did a restoration on. The restoration went well and the pen was working, but I quickly had a latex ink sac melt on me (red ink). After a bunch of research, I settled on a PVC sac since I really wanted to use Herbin Rouge Grenat in this pen, and for whatever reason it had melted my latex sac. After thoroughly cleaning everything, I got the PVC sac in place and it worked fine. The sac was a bit stiffer and didn't fill as well, but it was good enough.

 

Fast forward a year or so, I decided I no longer wanted to deal with the stiff sac and really small fills, and if that meant I couldn't use red ink anymore, then oh well. So yesterday I once again disassembled everything, deep cleaned everything, and installed a latex sac again. I'm now getting an excellent fill. But... it won't write.

 

To clarify, it's like the ink is not making it from the sac into the feed. If I fill it the correct way without submerging the nib/feed but only the snorkel tube, then I still get an excellent fill, but it won't write at all. If I dip the entire nib and feed into the ink while depressing the plunger (and yes, I know, that rather defeats the purpose of a Snorkel), I still get a great fill, and there's enough ink sitting in the feed that I can write a couple of sentences, but then it runs dry rather abruptly. I've confirmed good fills regardless of the filling method, because I can squirt out a bunch of ink when the pen won't write, or even tap the pen sharply with my finger and see some ink drop out of the tube.

 

I'm quite certain it's not a problem with:

• Poor fill (there's definitely somewhere between 0.5 and 1.0 ml of ink in the sac)
• Clogged snorkel tube (that would prevent a good fill, right?)
• Misalignment of the slits or plastic piece inside the snorkel tube, in relation to the pen body
• Dirty nib or feed (it was deep cleaned immediately before the installation of this new latex sac)

 

Frankly I'm kind of drawing a blank. Anyone have any ideas for how to identify the problem and fix it? If it matters, I'm using Private Reserve Infinity Blue Black.

[FarmBoy]

Change ink

 

 

[pen lady]

Amen to Farm Boy.  Why are you using that ink in a pen that's about 70 years old and only designed to be filled with ink made by a MAJOR pen maker?  Keep your fancy inks for modern pens and then you won't have a problem.

[BHuij]

Curious about this advice. Every bit of research I’ve done on ink compatibility with latex suggests that alkaline and red-pigmented inks are generally the ones considered problematic. Private Reserve Infinity Blue Black is neutral pH, uses dye instead of pigment, and has no red, which are some of the reasons I chose it.

 

Can anyone suggest a mechanism by which this ink choice might be causing  my problem with getting ink into the feed? If I switched to Waterman Serenity Blue, how would that fix my issue?

[inkstainedruth]

I don't know the answer to that question.  But you might also look at trying modern Sheaffer ink.

I have a finicky Snorkel -- there were some issues with it when I had a pro repair it, and when the guy was sending it back to me he told me to NOT use the pen until I talked to him in person (he'd had major health issues and I think the rehab had been done by his apprentice).  And when I did talk to him, he warned me to be carefully about what ink I use in it (which, so far, has ONLY been modern Skrip Black, which I just flushed out of the pen a few weeks ago).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Lithium466]

2 hours ago, BHuij said:

Curious about this advice. Every bit of research I’ve done on ink compatibility with latex suggests that alkaline and red-pigmented inks are generally the ones considered problematic. Private Reserve Infinity Blue Black is neutral pH and has no red, which are two of the reasons I chose it.

 

Can anyone suggest a mechanism by which this ink choice might be causing  my problem with getting ink into the feed? If I switched to Waterman Serenity Blue, how would that fix my issue?

Blanket advice, fear of the unknown (what is making the "infinity" part?),  formerly bad reputation of PR inks, fear of anything out of the classic inks that would cause any harm to a pen, standard saying that if a pen doesn't work with WsB, then something is wrong with the pen, etc. Pick your preferred option(s)  

If you have some WsB or something similar, try and see what happens. It's a low pH and high surface tension ink, low dissolved solids, and shouldn't do anything bad apart from possibly being boring.

[BHuij]

I suppose it doesn't cost anything to try a Waterman ink just to see if it magically fixes the problem

 

As for the "infinity" part, it's some marketing mumbo-jumbo that Private Reserve claims, that the ink doesn't dry in an uncapped pen as fast, so if you're writing intermittently, you can still leave the pen un-capped and not get hard starts. I've never tested it or bothered to see if it's any better at staying wet in an un-capped pen or not. I bought it because I liked the color when I sampled several blue-black inks side-by-side a couple of years ago. It's been no worse than any of my other inks in modern pens.

[Lithium466]

Now I pulled the popcorn out and I'm curious to see what happens. I will reserve my opinion for now.

[Armo]

There's a small slot in the feed that carries the ink from the snorkel to the nib. I would guess it is blocked with dried ink. Remove the nib part of the section (point, feed and point holder) and give it a good soak. There is a place in the point holder wherein you can insert a small screwdriver to rotate the feed within the nib. That may aid access for cleaning.

[Ron Z]

4 hours ago, Lithium466 said:

Now I pulled the popcorn out and I'm curious to see what happens. I will reserve my opinion for now.

 

I have seen no need to change my advice that one should be using an ink made by a pen manufacturer.   Richard Binder's article on ink still stands.  Red, and inks that contain red, made by any manufacturer, can be a problem. 

 

But what is also often missed is that a latex sac needs a good coating of talc before being inserted in the sac guard.  

 

BTW, current production PVC sacs don't give as good a fill as the ones we used to get from Woodbin.  Word floating around is that the PSC is working on getting PVC sacs made that will work.  It isn't as easy as one would think....  But I'll grab them when they're available.

[Lithium466]

1 hour ago, Ron Z said:

 

I have seen no need to change my advice that one should be using an ink made by a pen manufacturer.   Richard Binder's article on ink still stands.  Red, and inks that contain red, made by any manufacturer, can be a problem. 

 

No intended relation between my post and yours. Sometimes humor doesn't align in writing...

[BHuij]

@Armo thank you for the helpful diagram and advice. I got intimately familiar with this pen as I blundered through the process of my first ever vintage restoration with it, a couple of years or so ago. In my most recent disassembly to swap out the PVC sac for a new latex one, I found that there was a good amount of ink crusted in the sac, the snorkel tube, and the feed. I did indeed have to give everything a thorough soak in warm water to dislodge it. Before I shellac'd on the new latex sac to the section plug, I made sure as best as I could that the snorkel tube was clean and clear (air blew through it easily, that the feed plastic inside the snorkel tube was oriented correctly, etc. Still, I think your theory about an obstruction in there is the most likely explanation for why ink was not making it from the sac to the feed under the nib. Red inks in my experience tend to grow crystals when they dry out, and it's entirely possible that I could force air through the tube and suction ink into the sac, but simple gravity or capillary action wasn't enough to get the ink back down to the nib with a small obstruction in place, at least until our hypothetical crystal of red leftover ink dissolved.

 

In any case, after the pen sat horizontally (capped) overnight, I came back and found it was working perfectly. It now writes and fills exactly as I would expect.

 

Whether the ink I've chosen is problematic or not, I guess we'll find out. It's a risk I'm comfortable with.

 

@Ron Z I have always made sure to get a good coating of talc on the sac before putting it back into the sac protector. Your note about PVC sacs not filling as well matches my experience. It's just a stiffer material, and the same amount of pneumatic pressure exerted by the piston stroke on filling doesn't compress it as much as a latex sac. Makes perfect sense. If someone produces a batch of PVC sacs that behave more like latex in terms of filling, I'd be interested. Until then I'll just keep red inks out of this one

[Ron Z]

Good, I'm glad that you're coating the sacs with talc.  Evidence suggests that a lot, of not most, don't.

 

Woodbin's worked great.  I did a fill test, measuring the actual amount of ink taken in first with a standard latex sac, and then the PVC sacs.  They were identical.   After Martin passed I checked around and bought all of the #14 PVC sacs that I could get my hands on. 

 

I don't like latex sacs in a snorkel - the pen is too vulnerable.  If the sac fails and leaks you can end up with liquid in the barrel which rusts the spring.  That can create a difficult to repair  and expensive mess.  I've had springs that have rusted to the barrel, eventually coming out in pieces.  But for now we have no alternative. (I don't consider silicone to be an alternative.)

[BHuij]

I also passed up on silicone due to the air permeability and subsequent leakage. The PVC worked okay when I was dead set on using this pen with J. Herbin Rouge Grenat, but I was probably only getting something like 0.2ml of ink per fill. Since this nib is a fairly wet medium, that wasn't going very far, which made this into a "stays in my desk" pen.

 

After my initial restoration, I put that ink in it not knowing better. After a week or so of normal use, I came back to write and found I couldn't get it to fill. When I disassembled it, I found that the latex sac had been reduced to a sticky, tarry black substance, and ink was everywhere. Luckily I caught it before it had sat long enough to cause any real harm. It took a long time to clean up the mess, but the components were undamaged beyond the sac. That's when I went to PVC.

 

I'm not terribly concerned with this Private Reserve stuff melting the latex, but if it happens, I expect I'll catch it quickly and be able to clean things up again. I have a pretty good collection of pens, but with the exception of modern resin vac and piston fillers, I don't tend to leave them sitting in the drawer inked for a long period of time. I will usually write one dry, then clean and flush it before putting it at the back of the rotation. The dried up red inside the PVC sac I swapped back out for latex was a bit of an anomaly.

 

If you still have any #14 PVCs from Woodbin that you're willing to part with, I'd be interested in buying one. Best of both worlds and all that.

[Ron Z]

I ran out of the #14 and #16 PVC sacs some years ago.   Actually, ran out of all of the PVC sacs except the 51 sacs from David Nishimura, and #20 and #21.  I'm hording those.

[Chris1]

I had trouble with a Sheaffer Touchdown model which, rightly or wrongly, I blamed on the ink I had been using. Since abandoning Noodlers Walnut in that pen and adopting Pelikan Brilliant Black, the (replacement) sac has behaved properly.

 

As a general rule now, I only use 'old school' inks in pens with sacs and anything else I want to try out in the ink line goes into a pen with a converter.

 

Of course, I may be barking up the wrong tree and it was a dodgy sac after all, but it came from a reliable source and nothing else from that supplier has ever given trouble, including the sac I used as the replacement.

[inkstainedruth]

I'd be very wary of putting modern inks in some vintage pens just in general.  When I had a Snorkel repaired a couple of years ago, I got warned to be very careful about what went in that pen just in general (so far, since getting it back, it's only seen modern Skrip Black in it).  I'm also very cautious about what inks to put in the Parker 61s I have -- all of which have the capillary filler system (basically a teflon sponge) -- those tend to get inks from the J Herbin standard line (like Eclat de Saphir).

OTOH, I didn't think twice about putting some purple Noodler's ink in the Plum Demi 51, because those pli-glass sacs were designed to use with Quink Superchrome (which I gather was pretty noxious).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

[BHuij]

I ran through a full fill of the Private Reserve Infinity Blue Black without issue. Gave the pen a normal flush and put it in the drawer to work its way down the rotation of inked pens again. I guess in a few more months when I get it back out, I'll know whether the ink had any negative effect on the sac. I'm guessing no problems though. Perhaps this specific ink isn't on the whitelist of "known, proven, safe" inks with these Snorkels, but it shares what I suspect are all the major qualities with those inks, in terms of safety.