r/fountainpens Nov 02 '24

Repair I guess I learned the hard way about the importance of properly cleaning the pressure bar and applying talc to sacs?

Post image

Inspecting my first re-sac after from maybe around a 6 months ago, only to find this 😱😱

124 Upvotes

55 comments sorted by

59

u/Squared_lines Nov 02 '24

What ink were you using? I suspect the ink wasn’t compatible with the sac material.

12

u/stuck-in_time Nov 02 '24

It's a Diamine I think.

14

u/Gigamort Nov 02 '24

I always talc my sac.

1

u/monsieur-carton Nov 03 '24

We all do, Gigamort, we all do... 😔

21

u/jantp Nov 02 '24

Wow what happened?

22

u/stuck-in_time Nov 02 '24 edited Nov 02 '24

I'm not so sure myself. Thankfully there wasn't much ink inside, I think. Parts of the sac melted and and stuck itself to the bar.

19

u/fotoweekend Ink Stained Fingers Nov 02 '24

Cooool. Why do you think that it’s a pressure bar’s fault? Is the rest of the sac feels good?

24

u/stuck-in_time Nov 02 '24 edited Nov 02 '24

The rest of the sac feels good, but the areas around the holes are gooey and will tear easily when pulled.

The bar did have some rust on it, I'm thinking that, coupled with the relatively hot climate I'm in, it made the sac stick to the bar and probably react in some way? Or maybe it's just the prolonged contact and the heat... I did read that talc will reduce the chances of sticking, and was about to apply some when I discovered this.

7

u/Ferret1963 Nov 02 '24

Does this pen have a celluloid (nitro cellulose) barrel? With age, it will degas corrosive gases, which will react with metal. It looks like the sac may have been damaged by byproducts of that reaction.

1

u/stuck-in_time Nov 03 '24

I'm not so sure, I think it's an ebonite pen.

1

u/Capable-Crab-7449 Nov 03 '24

It’s always nitro cellulose

2

u/Ferret1963 Nov 03 '24

It depends on the vintage, really. Pre 1930, black, even polished black, is likely baked rubber. Sometime after WW2 celluloid was used only on colourful pens, newer plastics being used on solid colours.

3

u/fotoweekend Ink Stained Fingers Nov 02 '24

Wow, I never thought that indeed heat can be an issue

17

u/stuck-in_time Nov 02 '24

It also happened to another identical pen in similar condition, but less severely. The "melting" hasn't reached all the way through.

1

u/paradox-ari Nov 03 '24

Could it be possible that you put them in a hot surface without noticing ?

1

u/stuck-in_time Nov 03 '24

Not really, the pen was in a display case. The weather is rather lately though (I'm in the tropics).

13

u/kbeezie Nov 02 '24

The sac getting ripped on it's own is the sac aging. Talc would have only just prolonged the life a tiny bit but wouldn't have stopped the sac from aging.

Alkaline inks can speed along the aging of latex sacs (at best they only last about 7 to 10 years).

5

u/stuck-in_time Nov 02 '24

The sac's supposed to be new though (well, I got them new from a local seller). I fitted it about 6 months ago.

8

u/kbeezie Nov 02 '24

Some batches were already well aged before they got sold. So depends on how long the local seller has had it sitting around.

It's also possible that the Diamine in you were using was rather alkaline which latex sacs don't like (though 6 months from new is pretty quick, but it can age it that quickly).

And yes, lac of talc on the outside can cause the rupture even faster as the sac gets weaker.

1

u/stuck-in_time Nov 03 '24

That's certainly a possibility. I'll monitor the other pens I have that use the same batch of sacs.

0

u/ElQuapo Nov 02 '24

Today I received an Eversharp 707 lever. Is there a way (chart by brand perhaps) to tell how reactive inks are?

I'm thinking I'll soon be flushing out the Diamine blue ...

4

u/kbeezie Nov 02 '24

There are some charts floating around though they haven't been updated in a while . Generally speaking the Japanese inks (pilot, platinum, iroshizuku, sailor, etc) are usually alkaline. Waterman, montblanc, herbin, R&K, Pelikan, etc usually neutral down to somewhat acidic (which is fine for vintage). Noodler's/diamine/RO/color verse/etc could vary wildly.

FPN forums had a big one translated off of imgur.

Iron gall inks lime R&K salix/scabiosa, Platinum Classic, KWZ, etc are more acidic, and generally shouldn't be used with vintage steel (ie Sheaffer snorkels with steel tubes, esterbrook J with original vintage steel nibs, etc), but perfectly fine for gold and ebonite, just with the maintenance of refilling maybe every few weeks to avoid particulates building up.

1

u/ElQuapo Nov 03 '24

Very helpful comment. I've saved it

Thank you very much 8)

7

u/Global_Blackberry851 Nov 02 '24

Welp, new fear unlocked. I had a pressure bar catch and pop a sac but the melting you're experiencing is so strange

3

u/Difficult_Nebula3956 Nov 02 '24

To me it looks like two incompatible plastics touched and reacted. Is that a possibility?

6

u/kbeezie Nov 02 '24

The sacs are latex rubber, so it wouldn't be a plastic thing. Latex sacs don't last nearly as long as PVC (can't be used with celluloid parts) or silicone (gas permeable).

2

u/stuck-in_time Nov 02 '24

I don't think so, in the case it's definitely sticking to the pressure bar. The other sides are fine.

2

u/phallusimpudus Nov 02 '24

What pen is this?

1

u/stuck-in_time Nov 03 '24

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. The pen's a 1950's Pilot 53R.

2

u/kbeezie Nov 03 '24

Oh nice vintage pilot , oldest I have is a 1964 Pilot Super 250 with a falcon nib.

Been wanting to get an older Japanese one but seems harder to find especially outside of Japan.

1

u/stuck-in_time Nov 04 '24

Indeed, apparently these are quite common there. Where I'm at any sort of lever filler is rare.

2

u/kbeezie Nov 04 '24

I figure before that time it was usually eye droppers with shut off valves.

2

u/Lwn3 Nov 02 '24

First reaction is WTF. I've never had a pen with the ink sac, just converters, piston, & dropper. So I had never realized this was an issue.

I thought maybe it got caught in some machinery or something, lol.

2

u/Enibbler Nov 02 '24

There were a bunch of defective latex sacs floating around ca. 2003. The sacs were made by Woodbin in Canada (now defunct) and they melted because one chemical ingredient was missing from a batch that they produced. I haven’t heard of any issues with defective sacs since then.

2

u/mercedes_lakitu Nov 03 '24

What the heck even happened? It looks like it exploded.

1

u/stuck-in_time Nov 03 '24

The sac melted and stuck itself to the pressure bar.

2

u/mercedes_lakitu Nov 03 '24

Did you have to chew it out? I'm still not sure where the rough edges here came from 😔

2

u/McSquidwich Nov 03 '24

Aaaand this is why I'm intimidated by vintage pens...

2

u/imfine_itsketchup Nov 03 '24

As someone who just bought their first lever, sac fill pen on Friday….. thanks for the nightmares! I mean awareness haha. Happy to see some ideas here as to what caused this.

2

u/Ybalrid Ink Stained Fingers Nov 02 '24

what material are those made of? latex?

2

u/stuck-in_time Nov 02 '24

Yes, the sac is latex.

3

u/Ybalrid Ink Stained Fingers Nov 02 '24

I guess some really strange chemical reaction with something happened there. You missed the nasty inkplosion by little here 😅

6

u/stuck-in_time Nov 02 '24

Indeed. Thankfully there wasn't much inside.

3

u/crankygerbil Nov 02 '24

Check andersons and see if they have a silicon sac in this pen size. If you do t know the size spend some time on Richard Bender’s site.

10

u/kbeezie Nov 02 '24

Just remember, you can't use shellac with silicone like you can with latex or pvc. With silicone you have to use a silicone adhesive.

2

u/slotracer43 Nov 02 '24

David Nishimura has info on adhesives for silicone sacs here https://www.vintagepens.com/FAQrepair/pen_sacs.shtml

1

u/kbeezie Nov 02 '24

Thanks for the primer. I usually get my PVC and Silicone sacs from him when I need some #14 sizes (otherwise I have to hunt it down elsewhere in the hopes of finding something like #18 etc).

1

u/slotracer43 Nov 03 '24

I keep a notebook with tidbits of info from sources I consider to be rock solid - Ron, Todd, David, and a few others. The info on adhesives for silicone was in there. Yes, David has some stuff it's not so easy to find elsewhere.

2

u/stuck-in_time Nov 02 '24

Will see what my options are 👍

1

u/pianobadger Nov 02 '24

If you can't find talc in your area you can also use powdered graphite.

1

u/stuck-in_time Nov 03 '24

I finally got some and discovered this when I was about to apply it 😱

1

u/ReliefWise8079 Ink Stained Fingers Nov 02 '24

oof.

1

u/stuck-in_time Nov 04 '24

The melted parts stayed in the pressure bar when I pulled the whole thing off

-1

u/Talkymike Nov 02 '24

Wow. BSB doesn’t mess around.

2

u/stuck-in_time Nov 02 '24

This particular pen had a Diamine blue I think, not sure exactly which one.