Pilot E-300 Disassembly

[nissenk]

Hi,

 

I purchased this pen on an online auction site for a few dollars - having heard good things about the Pilots and their nibs this seemed like an interesting pen in the style of the Lamy 2000 with the hooded nib.

 

First problem I had when I received it was to work out how the filler worked. With the barrel removed I was presented with a chrome inner barrel with a small grey lever at the top. Pressing and rotating this did nothing and a little amount of time playing with the pen indicated that the filler was not working.

 

The odd thing about this pen is that it seems to have been available in the 1960's so I was expecting the ink bladder (in what ever form it took) to be more durable than the standard latex bladders fitted during the 1950's. What I extracted was a very perished latex sac I think.

 

After some more fiddling I was able to disassemble the pen fully. It is a well engineered pen with a brass centre to which the nib assembly (comprising the nib, nib housing and nib feed) screw and the barrel at the other end. This gives the pen a nice solid centre of mass just where the pen rests on the index finger.

 

 

 

In the photo above the sac fits on the clear plastic tube at the bottom of the photo and looks to be a narrow 12 or 14.

 

What intrigued me about this pen was the filling mechanism - the gray lever just visible at the top of the chrome filler has a cam action, turning 90 degrees and the question I had was how does this translate into force to fill the sac given the cam would create no more than 2-3 mm of linear motion inside the filler.

 

The secret is the filler bar shown below - in normal use it is flat but the plastic cam applies a force to one end while the other end is fixed at the bottom of the filler so the bar (being sprung metal) bends and the pressure part of the bar presses onto the side of the sac. Given the area of the pressure bar I would say that this would take up a good amount of ink. Given that this is a narrow sac this would be a Good Thing.

 

 

 

The sac has me puzzled as it doesn't seem to be a standard latex sac (apart from the deterioration over time).

 

 

 

1. Can anyone identify the material that the sac may have been made from? I'm thinking latex, but with some kind of coating to prevent the latex sticking to the metal of the filler?

 

2. What would you recommend as a replacement? The sac is in contact with the chrome metal filler housing so I'm not sure how durable latex would be. Would a silicone sac be a better option here?

 

3. Does anyone know anything about this pen, particularly when these were made. There isn't much information in the public domain about this model of Pilot.

 

Many thanks,

 

Karl