Dismantling A Waterman L'etalon Section...

[Ernst Bitterman]

I wonder if anyone has done so. I've been staring at Force's excellent picture of what I suspect is an anatomically similar Carene section, but "similar" is not the same at "identical", and if anyone has advice on what needs unscrewing first, and what should under no circumstances get tugged on, I'd welcome tips. The one I'm working on has play in the actual gripping area almost sufficient to let the cap-stud half-ring wander out of its slots, but it only moves fore-aft at the moment; no rotation at all, and I think rotation is the key to taking it to bits (the reversible way).

 

[Left FPN]

Ernst, I too have tried to disassemble a L'Etalon section but failed.

 

LIke the Carene, I applied gentle (low) heat to soften any adhesive but nothing would move.

 

I was asked recently the very same question by PM from another member but could not assist.

 

The only thing I have managed to do is pull the nib and feed from within the grip.

 

I think a regular Waterman member has done it but for the life of me cannot recall who...I will do a search.

 

In the mean time I have just tried again after soaking in hot water and while it clicks a few microns to and fro it aint moving.

 

While looking over the assembly with magnification I have found a crack in the outer 'brass' ring. Look at the 'N' of FRANCE and move to the right. In the middle of the pic you can just see the crack on the edge radius.

 

 

[Ernst Bitterman]

Well, that's a troubling bit of intelligence. I'll start poking at it on the weekend and see if it will reveal anything to me.

 

The good news is, I can't make it any more useless; the carrier for the point and feed has broken, and the dismantling is to try and come at the bit that's still inside.

[Left FPN]

I have PM's you Ernst but so that others can see, this post shows the parts.

[Ernst Bitterman]

It also shows the pen in very nearly the state the one I'm dealing with is in. I don't recall any quantity of howls about L'Etalons coming apart when people uncapped them, but there does appear to be a failure mode in common. I've got my decks cleared at last, so I'll have SOMETHING to report next week; whether helpful or not remains to be seen, but there will be pictures.

[Ernst Bitterman]

As promised, a report of something. With pictures! Pictures which, alas, reveal a slowly failing autofocus on the camera, but which are not so blurry as to be useless. First, here's the patient on first inspection:

 

Doesn't look SO bad, until the point and feed are pulled from their housing:

 

"Jagged" is never welcome, is it? The bottom of that housing has the nipple on it, and it is lodged at the bottom of the section. I'll get back to it in a moment. Here's the last of the pictures, showing the remainder of the problem:

 

That's about 2mm of play in the outer shell, and it's purely fore-aft movement; no rotation whatever. This is almost as far as I got in plumbing the mysteries of the thing. Looking down the section, the chunk of housing which remains down there appears to be fixed in place with some kind of deep blue adhesive; it looks somewhat like ink residue, but doesn't shift after a couple of two-minute cycles in the ultrasonic tub. I'll freely admit to being baffled as to the interior anatomy of this thing. Why, after all, does the outer shell stop moving at the end of that travel? What is holding it together to that degree now that the inner housing, which appears to be the main holder-together of the whole affair, is itself broken? As a bonus mystery, it appears that there are a least three metal components in the section-- the half-ring with the studs on it, the decorative ring with the maker's name on it, and the threaded connector. One can see, under sufficient magnification, that this last is a separate object that passes up through the decorative ring. There could be more inside, but I really hope not.

 

Since I wasn't able to dismantle things any further, I started looking at... less smart... approaches to getting the pen back in working order. You may all prepare to throw shoes at me over this, but rest assured I've flagellated myself for it quite a lot. The answer, alas, was a slow-setting epoxy, very carefully applied in the thinnest possible coating to the jagged end of the mounting to provide a seal and a more complete dollop on the outer surface to bond to the inner face of the section AND to what I take to be the upper end of the threaded brass cylinder which is also visible within. It's not more broken, it's definitely more useable; I salve my conscience with those to facts.

 

As a final note-- if it's not the up-thrust of uncapping that did for this section, then it may well have been an attempt to draw the point and feed (although to what end I can't say- they were in perfect shape and clean as whistles). If you mean to take those parts out, make sure to support the very front of the section, ahead of the bit of slender gold trim. There's not much there, but figuring out how to get some purchase on it may save you from having to pursue a less-smart repair.

Edited April 25, 2016 by Ernst Bitterman

[Ron Z]

...all of which tells me that like the Sheaffer Legacy sections, these really aren't meant to be taken apart, are they?

[Ernst Bitterman]

It surely do look that way. Unlike the Legacy, the point and feed aren't inextricably bound up with the material of the section...

 

...but I think (having never had an intact one to break for myself) that you have to be REALLY REALLY careful about that extraction-- I would not suggest it unless there's a serious clog or some fixing of tines that absolutely can't be done with the point lodged against the feed. I quiver at the thought that there are people who think that pulling the feed is a part of regular maintenance.

[Left FPN]

Thank you Ernst. My L'Etalon section sits on my desk and there it will remain for the time being.

 

Just one point if I may, I no longer pull (manually while wiggling) nibs and feeds. I grip nib and feed in a special tool (otherwise called a vice) and double lever, very slowly, the grip off. This works very efficiently with L'Etalon, Executive and Exclusive sections and would with other Waterman sections of similar construction.

 

 

 

Can I also add the rotational position of the nib and feed are not only governed by the shape of the inside of the block, there is also a keyway in the end of the feed which locates on a key in the block. The key being on the centre line of the nib. Added to this the nib, feed and keyway are in relationship to the cap spring, which is 90 degress opposed to them. It also appears that the 2 slots in the aft brass screwed ring have a relationship to these parts.

 

Being BOLD I therefore suggest the front block is not screwed into the grip parts but that there is an internal nut, of sorts, that pulls the parts together. Looking down into the rear I see a 4 rib black plastic part...could this be the nut.

 

 

[Ernst Bitterman]

I was pondering that object (nice job on the picture, too!), but the Mysterious Blue Probable Adhesive put me off from messing around with trying to develop a tool to interface with it. I'd certainly support you in your suspicion, given the lack of rotation possible in just about everything else, but the one I've got is now beyond that sort of experimentation, and I'm disinclined to spent money on NOS sections to pursue the thought (on account of poverty, the only thing there's never a shortage of). A contrarian would also point out that there's a similar structure down the inside of Sheaffer school pens that definitely isn't a nut, but it seems unlikely that Waterman would just slide everthing together and rely on MBPA to hold it all in place.

 

I neglected to mention yesterday that MBPA was not at all phased by an application of naphtha.

[Left FPN]

Had it relied on MBPA alone it would have been called L'gelding

[Ernst Bitterman]

Back on the horse, as it were. I had a DAMN THE TORPEDOES moment and just started yanking on things. I learn this:

 

• The collar that holds the cap-grabbing half-washer is just a friction-fit onto the threaded brass shaft. It can be tapped off by resting a drift on the slot for the o-ring (and the half-washer will try to shoot off and vanish while you do so).
• Replacing the collar seems best achieved by pushing it up as far as possible with fingers, then screwing the section into the barrel-- this drives the collar up to flush with the plastic of the grippy bit.
• If there's any threads holding plastic to brass, they're right under base of the cup that the feed fits into, which fits against the jagged part. That may indeed be the reason for the slots mentioned above, but I'm giving up on tools...

Rather than try to extract the small pierced disc of plastic that remains attached to the brass, I'm going to apply some long-set epoxy to the broken end of the cup AND to the sides of the brass collar that extends into the space between inner and outer plastic. The AND is because I want to provide resistance to the upward force on the half-washer during un-capping which is what appears to be the initial source of the problem. Is this not the same solution I had before? Yep, except I hadn't pulled the thing apart enough and there wasn't sufficient contact area (in part because I was afraid of gluing the half-washer into uselessness; no fear of that now!).

 

...because there is a slot cut into the plastic of the outer section for the half-washer to rest in, and all the tug of uncapping then presses against the plastic until the washer compresses. If I have any luck at all, I'll check back in, and maybe remember to take some pictures.

 

Also-- I still don't know why the outer shell wasn't able to come free until the friction-collar was pulled away. I suspect what was happening was the outward pressure of the half-washer against the collar kept it in place, and it was keeping the shell from sliding beyond the amount of play provided by the slot. I had really better provide some pictures, because that just barely made sense to me and I was looking at the thing.

Edited February 5, 2019 by Ernst Bitterman

[Ernst Bitterman]

OK, let's finish up my findings. First, here's a nearly-good drawing of the exploded section:

 

 

I show threads which may not exist on Bit 1; it may be held in place only by the aforementioned Mysterious Blue Probable Adhesive, but whatever has that part stuck to brass Bit 3, it really does the job. In the one I'm wrestling with, of course, the bottom of bit one has come away from the rest, and on my first attempt to reunite things, I only put my glue on the jagged end. I used J&B Weld on that previous attempt, because I know it has good holding capacities on smooth surfaces (I got a drip on a piece of glass and it's there years later). I used the same this time, but with a somewhat more liberal budget:

 

 

The grey areas show where the glue went. I decided to apply some to the outer face of Bit 3 to provide a direct bond between it and Bit 2, in hopes of preventing future separations. I left that the cure for about three days, which has hopefully resulted in a monolithic unity of Bits 1, 2, and 3. Here they are, awaiting re-unification with Bit 4 and the vexing half-washer:

 

 

If you look into that slot, you'll see a little of glue, scraped down from where I'd put it on Bit 3. Be sure to wipe it out before it sets (a long window you're using the right stuff). That blue thing is not MBPA but a bit of stick-tack that I use to keep things from rolling around during photography.

 

It is a little tricky to get Bit 4 high enough to keep the half-washer in place; it doesn't really grab until that gap is about half-closed. The good news is that the half-washer is actually not under any tension against the inside of Bit 4, so the process didn't call for more limbs than people usually come with. The auto-focus started playing up again-- I was not willing to pull the thing apart when I discovered this, as I'm sure you'll understand:

 

 

As I mentioned above, shoving Bit 4 home is easily (if perhaps not best) done by screwing up the barrel under it. I left the o-ring off for this, just for convenience. Also good news for me is that the glue held up against the rotational stresses I put upon it.

 

 

I got Bit 4 up as far as it was willing, to the point that I had to use my section pliers to get things apart again for final re-assembly. Some will be thinking at this point, "Aren't you lucky you didn't strip the threads on the plastic barrel insert when you were doing that?" I know I am, now; at the time, I was not thinking of that side of the mechanism at all, so it was lucky indeed. How else, though? Tapping it down with a drift of some sort? Perhaps, but then there's a lot of repeated lateral stresses on that glue, plus the need to find something that will cushion the plastic front of the section. I admit my cleverness has limits, and here's one of them. In the end, though, we have a sort of success:

 

 

As a celebration, the autofocus mostly pulled itself together. A note to others who attempt this; you might want to be careful about the rotation of Bit 2 when gluing everything back together. I wasn't and the result is the lugs are about 5^o out of alignment with the shoulders of the point (point and feed are keyed, remember, so this pen has a specific 'up'). Get the slot for the half-washer in line with the up-side of the point, and the lugs should arrange correctly. Also, the WATERMAN impression on Bit 4 should cover the half-washer for full aesthetic points... which I discover after I'm past the "don't want to take it apart again" point. It all works, which is what I was after, and I'm going to live with it thus, at least for a while.

 

Those who expand that last picture might note a tiny space still between Bit 2 and 4; I suspect this is down to the thickness of glue from the previous attempt, which I couldn't quite pick away, holding things apart. Another thing I'm willing to live with, but an encouragement to those who follow-- get it right the first time to avoid scars.

 

Edit to add-- I held off posting until the ink I'd put in the pen had been given a couple of days to find illicit ways out of the cartridge. Despite lying on its side the whole time and thus giving ink every opportunity, the only place it's appearing it at the end of the tipping. Huzzah for no missed fractures within!

Edited February 11, 2019 by Ernst Bitterman

[Dr.X]

Brilliant work Ernst! I have my original L'Etalon in pieces that I've been staring at for... decades actually. I may now try to repair it.

 

I wonder what type of adhesive Waterman used for it's 1980-90s series of high end pens. I am the original owner of several and they have all fallen apart. Without exception. L'Etalon, Carene (both FP and ballpoints). Very disappointing.

 

Nick

[Dr.X]

Ernst, just to be sure I understand, when you are referring the "glue" in your last post, you are talking about JB Weld?

[lestrade]

Like Dr. X, I want to thank you, Ernst, for the encouragement to fix my Etalon that I bought in 1991 in Toulouse. It has been sitting unused for many many years due to a leak in the nib barrel. I hope to have the same success that you have had since this is (was) the nicest writing pen I ever owned. L