Gadget To Adapt A "51" For A Cartridge Converter

[pajaro]

Unless I have totally misunderstood the way this thing is installed into a 51, the process should be reversible. You should be able to reinstall the squeeze filler and sac, unless you just cut it up in haste to get the thing in.

 

I wouldn't be prone to install one of these things, because C/C piston fillers seem to me to be trouble. I have had flow issues on Parker C/C fillers, Watermans, Sheaffers, Japanese brands with piston C/C fillers and others. Seemed like I always had to refill a full converter to get ink moving. 51 aerometric filler has been charming, and my first one had a black sac from day one when it was brand new from the Air Force Exchange store.

[rizo]

Very interesting. Someone used?

[sirgilbert357]

I'll just give my 2 cents, but it's probably worth much less...

 

I guess I get it that you want to use a more permanent ink. I get it that you want the pen to be easier to flush. I do not get why anyone should be "offended" that you're asking about modifying a 51 with this adapter. It's JUST a pen after all. However I DO get why plenty of people would think it better to leave the pen stock and look for other solutions first and I don't think it's right to fault them for that line of thinking.

 

Having said all that, allow me to pose a few different thoughts:

 

A Parker 45 is a great alternative and the entire nib and feed assembly simply screw out for super easy deep cleaning. You could use a bulb to flush it without modifying it and the entire section could be soaked (fully submerged) or probably placed in an ultrasonic cleaner if you want. It isn't a 51, but it's a darn good choice for what you are trying to do. A Lamy 2000 would be another good choice if you like piston pens better. I'm sure there are others if you aren't dead set on using only a 51.

 

Liabilities with the 51 setup you have in mind: because of the breather tube, flushing will be a bit more difficult than you might care for. You'll have to feed the tube into the bulb each time. If you have a metal tube, you could bend it or worse. You also won't be able to fully work the converter piston to draw ink from a bottle, so you will never be able to easily fill the feed via suction as Parker designed the pen to do. If you syringe fill the converter, your whole first fill off the converter after each cleaning will probably go straight to the dry collector, leaving the actual converter empty and in need of an immediate refill, lol. That collector holds a significant amount of ink after all...something to consider.

 

I don't know. Seems like a lot of work. You are placing the highest priority on ease of flushing. It would seem easier to find a permanent ink that is considered very low maintenance and just flush a bit more often. I highly doubt you will have any clogging issues if you pick the right ink. Again, I am only offering thoughts here, they are worth what you paid for them.

 

And I might have missed your reasons, but why not get a Conid and make it the dedicated "permanent ink" pen. You spoke very highly of them and they seem suited to the task. I want one eventually myself...

Edited June 8, 2017 by sirgilbert357

[mitto]

The main attraction for me to use an aero 51 is the aerometric filling system. If you take that system out of the aero 51, the pen no more remains a 51. How can a 51 be a 51 with neither vac filling system nor aero. Yes. I know there were C/C version 51s. But don't we all know the fate of the earlier C/C version 51 as well of the later SE 51?

[pajaro]

Well, I have one of these adapters, and I have been thinking about it for months. I have identified one Midnight Blue fine pen, "51" no dots, that I might use. My 51 collection has dwindled to about eighteen pens, though, and I don't want to ruin one doing this. I am getting ready to do it, removing the breather tube. Has anyone else tried it?

[mitto]

Please don't do that to an 'aerometric' 51.

[Glenn-SC]

The main attraction for me to use an aero 51 is the aerometric filling system. If you take that system out of the aero 51, the pen no more remains a 51. How can a 51 be a 51 with neither vac filling system nor aero. Yes. I know there were C/C version 51s. But don't we all know the fate of the earlier C/C version 51 as well of the later SE 51?

.. and the Red Band filler. And the experimental capillary filler.

The "issue" with the SE was a poor choice of plastic, not the C/C filler.

 

You define a pen by it's filler system? It's essence?

[hari317]

Well, I have one of these adapters, and I have been thinking about it for months. I have identified one Midnight Blue fine pen, "51" no dots, that I might use. My 51 collection has dwindled to about eighteen pens, though, and I don't want to ruin one doing this. I am getting ready to do it, removing the breather tube. Has anyone else tried it?

I haven't done it. I think you just have to unscrew the hood, transplant the collector to the supplied aftermarket connector and you are done. Rather than removing the breather tube from this feeder, why not find a feeder without one from your parts box? just an idea.

best

Hari

[mitto]

.. and the Red Band filler. And the experimental capillary filler.

The "issue" with the SE was a poor choice of plastic, not the C/C filler.

 

You define a pen by it's filler system? It's essence?

So where are the red band fillers? And where are the original late 50s-early 60s' C/C 51s? Why were these discontinued within a very short span of time? The 51s as writing instruments are either the vacs or the aeros. The others may be pieces of history but not pens to write with.

[Glenn-SC]

So where are the red band fillers? And where are the original late 50s-early 60s' C/C 51s? Why were these discontinued within a very short span of time? The 51s as writing instruments are either the vacs or the aeros. The others may be pieces of history but not pens to write with.

You seem to endow the filler system with some magical essence to the "51" pen design. That somehow the aerometric filling system is more "51er" than any other. I don't believe that that is the case.

The vacumatic system was used in the original "51" design because that was the most "modern" filler that Parker had at the time, being used in the Vacumatics.

Then the search was on (as always) for a design that was less complicated, cheaper and more reliable (robust).

The Red Band was the first try but had it's faults.

The aerometric system is basically step backward, it's a sack. This sack is squeezed between the wall surrounding it (now a separate metal tube instead of barrel wall) and a pressure bar that you move with your finger (instead of a pressure bar actuated by a lever, button, coin, ring, match, paddle, etc). The breakthrough with the aero is the "pli-glass" material used to make the sack.

But as ballpoint pens became more common and people moved away to the easier to use cartridge system, the search was on to make the fountain pen filler even simpler; hence the capillary filler the was tested on a "51" and used in the 61.

But even the cartridge/converter couldn't keep the vast majority of "pen" users from going to the ballpoint.

 

The aerometric system is "better" than the cartridge/converter? How many pens being manufactured today use it? There are probably more eye-dropper pens made now than aeros.

The C/C "51" didn't last because the entire line was over.

I would guess it is too expensive and time consuming to make at a competitive price today (and there are too many vintage "51"s available to satisfy the "unique" people like us who prefer to use vac and aero fountain pens.

 

[ek-hornbeck]

Well, I have one of these adapters, and I have been thinking about it for months. I have identified one Midnight Blue fine pen, "51" no dots, that I might use. My 51 collection has dwindled to about eighteen pens, though, and I don't want to ruin one doing this. I am getting ready to do it, removing the breather tube. Has anyone else tried it?

 

Hey, Pajaro. I never followed up on my original post; thanks for poking me.

 

The answer is that I bought, but never used, one of that guy's c/c adapters. Here's why I never used it. My real interest in shifting a Parker 51 over to c/c was to make it easier to flush the collector, feed & nib with a squeeze bulb -- that allows me to force a much greater volume of water, under much greater pressure, through the nib & feed than I could get simply by squeezing the aerometric filler. This is of real importance to me, because I use nanopigment ink, mainly Montblanc's Permanent Blue and De Atramentis's and Rohrer & Kligner's blue-black. I think these are spectacularly good inks; far superior, for my purposes, than standard aniline-dye based inks. They are highly saturated in color. And they aren't susceptible to chemical bleaching. Or water. Or organic solvents. Or UV bleaching. Or age. Or impure thoughts. They look great and are *permanent*. Which, for me, is the whole point of using *ink*. If permanence wasn't important, I'd use a mechanical pencil.

 

In fact, these three companies (MB, DA and R&K) actually went to the trouble to get a DIN ISO 1257-2 rating for these inks, which basically means they are archival inks, having the properties I just listed. So, great. But they have a downside: they require, in my experience, routine cleaning at least once every 6m-1y. Those little nanopigment particles clump up a bit over time in the pen. When you flush your pen in a white cup full of water, you can *see* pigment particles in the bottom of the cup: not so nano after all. So, a c/c pen has the advantage that you can fit a squeeze bulb over the back of the pen and really flush it out. Hence my interest in the c/c converter.

 

But I discovered that aerometric 51's are really easy to completely disassemble. Thus I don't need to do the cartridge-converter converter hack. I use my P51 stock, and then break it down to its constituent parts to clean it every so often. Problem solved. My P51 writes like a dream; it is a complete pleasure to use. And the aerometric sac & breather tube assembly holds a *lot* more ink than a cartridge converter -- those things are tiny.

 

My remaining project is to figure out how to disassemble a vacumatic P51. I don't need to mess with the "pump" ball&diaphragm assembly at the end of the barrel, but if I'm going to use nanopigment ink in a vacumatic P51, I need to break it down to the point where I can get at the nib, feed and collector.

 

If anyone can advise me on good tutorials, youtube videos, etc. showing how to do this, I'd be very grateful. I have a sterling silver P51 set and a gold heirloom set, both vacumatic, that I'd like to make my standard pens, in my home office and work office, respectively. But I can't do that until I can clean them properly.

 

As a final word about my ink choices, I also use red ink, which I need to grade exams (I'm a professor) and to mark up draft doctoral dissertations and research papers. I keep a TWSBI 580 and a clear Platinum 3776 Century loaded up with Sailor's red nanopigment ink and Noodler's Fox red. The Fox red ink is whatever mysterious thing Noodler's ink is, which means I have no real model for how permanent it is -- Nathan Tardif is very coy about the makeup of his inks, which is kind of annoying. But I like the dark red color better than the loud, characterless, simple red of the Sailor ink, it passed my very limited water-based tests for permanence, I think my undergraduates aren't very likely to figure out a way to beat it, and my edits to my grad student's papers don't have to be good for the ages, so I use it.

 

EKH

[AL01]

Eh...

 

Some people have too much time on their hands.

[ek-hornbeck]

Eh...

 

Some people have too much time on their hands.

 

Well, Pajaro politely asked me how the whole thing had worked out for me, and he has had useful and insightful things to say on FPN in the past, so I felt an obligation to answer his question.

 

Or did you mean with respect to all this trouble I took to figure out how to get a fountain pen that I like (a Parker 51) to write with an ink that I like (nanopigment blue and blue/black)? It's essentially an up-front, one-time investment in integrating a technology into my life. And it's a tech that I use *all the time*, across the entirety of my life as a student and my ensuing professional career. Amortised over decades of use, it's not very much work for the return on the investment.

 

Because I am a technologist, I am pretty picky about incorporating tech into my life. Technology should be bent to serve me and my values, not the other way around. People who let horrible stuff like Facebook and cable TV packages warp their life, steal their privacy, and invade the tranquility of their home, aren't making their lives better. They're just surrendering their choices and making the details of their existence kind of tawdry. So I am willing to invest some effort in making technologies conform to my preferences and wishes and needs. If I can't do that.. I'll just do without, thank you.

 

Pens are just one such example. I don't romanticise fountain pens. I just like using them better than crappy things like ballpoints. I think the Parker 51 is a marvel of design, a lovely thing to use in your day-to-day life. But it has to fit *my* life. So that's worth a little up-front trouble.

 

As I pointed out in a previous post, some of the things I write are things I hope to contribute to a multi-generational written record within my family that goes back over 100 years. I spent an afternoon a long, long time ago figuring out that I wanted to order a large box of Tops Docket Diamond ruled pads for writing. More recently I invested some time working out how to use P51's with nanopigment ink. And now I don't really think about either one very much at all. What I *think about* are the words and the math that I'm writing.

 

I don't really haunt FPN following up on these things. I got an email today saying Pajaro had posted to an old thread of mine, so I took the 20 min to write a reply. Done.

 

(By the way, I apologise for repeating my original why-I-use-nanopigment-ink screed in tonight's reply to Pajaro. I had forgotten that I'd dealt with all this at length back when I first kicked off this thread, and was too lazy to go back and reread the whole thing, which I should have done.)

 

EKH

[AL01]

Sorry 'bout that.

 

I completely got what you were trying to say.

 

Your point has been made clear!

 

[pajaro]

 

Hey, Pajaro. I never followed up on my original post; thanks for poking me.

 

The answer is that I bought, but never used, one of that guy's c/c adapters. Here's why I never used it. My real interest in shifting a Parker 51 over to c/c was to make it easier to flush the collector, feed & nib with a squeeze bulb -- that allows me to force a much greater volume of water, under much greater pressure, through the nib & feed than I could get simply by squeezing the aerometric filler. This is of real importance to me, because I use nanopigment ink, mainly Montblanc's Permanent Blue and De Atramentis's and Rohrer & Kligner's blue-black. I think these are spectacularly good inks; far superior, for my purposes, than standard aniline-dye based inks. They are highly saturated in color. And they aren't susceptible to chemical bleaching. Or water. Or organic solvents. Or UV bleaching. Or age. Or impure thoughts. They look great and are *permanent*. Which, for me, is the whole point of using *ink*. If permanence wasn't important, I'd use a mechanical pencil.

 

In fact, these three companies (MB, DA and R&K) actually went to the trouble to get a DIN ISO 1257-2 rating for these inks, which basically means they are archival inks, having the properties I just listed. So, great. But they have a downside: they require, in my experience, routine cleaning at least once every 6m-1y. Those little nanopigment particles clump up a bit over time in the pen. When you flush your pen in a white cup full of water, you can *see* pigment particles in the bottom of the cup: not so nano after all. So, a c/c pen has the advantage that you can fit a squeeze bulb over the back of the pen and really flush it out. Hence my interest in the c/c converter.

 

But I discovered that aerometric 51's are really easy to completely disassemble. Thus I don't need to do the cartridge-converter converter hack. I use my P51 stock, and then break it down to its constituent parts to clean it every so often. Problem solved. My P51 writes like a dream; it is a complete pleasure to use. And the aerometric sac & breather tube assembly holds a *lot* more ink than a cartridge converter -- those things are tiny.

 

My remaining project is to figure out how to disassemble a vacumatic P51. I don't need to mess with the "pump" ball&diaphragm assembly at the end of the barrel, but if I'm going to use nanopigment ink in a vacumatic P51, I need to break it down to the point where I can get at the nib, feed and collector.

 

If anyone can advise me on good tutorials, youtube videos, etc. showing how to do this, I'd be very grateful. I have a sterling silver P51 set and a gold heirloom set, both vacumatic, that I'd like to make my standard pens, in my home office and work office, respectively. But I can't do that until I can clean them properly.

 

As a final word about my ink choices, I also use red ink, which I need to grade exams (I'm a professor) and to mark up draft doctoral dissertations and research papers. I keep a TWSBI 580 and a clear Platinum 3776 Century loaded up with Sailor's red nanopigment ink and Noodler's Fox red. The Fox red ink is whatever mysterious thing Noodler's ink is, which means I have no real model for how permanent it is -- Nathan Tardif is very coy about the makeup of his inks, which is kind of annoying. But I like the dark red color better than the loud, characterless, simple red of the Sailor ink, it passed my very limited water-based tests for permanence, I think my undergraduates aren't very likely to figure out a way to beat it, and my edits to my grad student's papers don't have to be good for the ages, so I use it.

 

EKH

 

Thank you for this detailed reply. It is a very good point about needing to clean nanopigment inks from the pen. I normally do not think it's a good idea to disassemble a 51, but for this purpose I think it is essential to clean the ink out. I wasn't aware these inks were nanopigment, and I have been using them, particularly in a 51 I just put together with a purple Kullock shell and barrel. Well, at least I can disassemble it again, as I used no shellac on the hood.

 

The Vacumatic 51 can be disassembled from the front end. Heat the shell (hood) to remove it. The guts, nib, feed and collector can be pulled out, and I usually twist while pulling gently. Careful of the short breather tube. You can then clean it all. If you use thread sealant on the hood, like the stuff available from Main Street Pens, for example, instead of shellac, the disassembly process is simpler, and you don't risk heat damage when removing a shellacked hood.

 

 

I am havering over making a C/C 51. I had one of the originals. Lost somewhere. I might want to test the 51 with varying lengths of breather tube, but the factory probably did that ages ago. Lot of time on my hands in retirement. I miss Info Tech.

 

The info in your post shows how we often help each other by sharing some info that we didn't know the other member didn't know. You have to like that.

Edited June 22, 2018 by pajaro

[Ron Z]

Looking at it 2 years after the original post, I must say I'm leery of the materials. Brass corrodes, and we're hearing of and seeing cases where the ink has changed color when in contact with brass. If made out of acrylic, maybe. Brass, not so interested.

[pajaro]

Looking at it 2 years after the original post, I must say I'm leery of the materials. Brass corrodes, and we're hearing of and seeing cases where the ink has changed color when in contact with brass. If made out of acrylic, maybe. Brass, not so interested.

 

Thanks for this. If the gadget were plugged into the collector it would contact ink. I supposes this clinches it. Another good reason to do nothing.

 

Before I made the pic above I hadn't realized how it easy it would be to clean a 51 Vacumatic. Seal the hood with hood sealant in lieu of shellac, then you can take out the collector assembly for cleaning whenever. This almost makes the Vac look like a more advanced design.

[pajaro]

Complainers about how hard it is to flush a 51, note the above and think about it.

[ek-hornbeck]

Thank you for this detailed reply. It is a very good point about needing to clean nanopigment inks from the pen. I normally do not think it's a good idea to disassemble a 51, but for this purpose I think it is essential to clean the ink out. I wasn't aware these inks were nanopigment, and I have been using them, particularly in a 51 I just put together with a purple Kullock shell and barrel. Well, at least I can disassemble it again, as I used no shellac on the hood.

I also have a Kullock shell 51. They are quite easy to maintain -- the acrylic bodies are very durable. Once I have a 51 disassembled, I don't use shellac when I reassemble it. Some even have hood shells with an inset for an o-ring. This makes it straightforward to break it down every few months for a cleaning.

The Vacumatic 51 can be disassembled from the front end. Heat the shell (hood) to remove it.The guts, nib, feed and collector can be pulled out, and I usually twist while pulling gently.Careful of the short breather tube. You can then clean it all.

Thanks for the photo and the description. When I get a little time, I'll take a shot at this.

I am havering over making a C/C 51. I had one of the originals. Lost somewhere. I might want to test the 51 with varying lengths of breather tube, but the factory probably did that ages ago. Lot of time on my hands in retirement. I miss Info Tech.

I now think you are better off not doing the conversion, given how easy it is to clean an aerometric. I know I'm the guy that kicked off this whole thread, but the truth is that I am not really a fan of cartridge converters: you give up ink capacity and good flow with them. Their one positive characteristic is that, by being removable, they make it easier to clean the ink path. The aerometric 51, stock, simply works better, if one is willing to take the minimal trouble to learn how to give it a deep cleaning.

I think the only reason to mess with the conversion is just for variety. A seasoned 51 person like yourself might find it diverting to try. If you do try it out, I'd be interested to hear of it goes!

[ek-hornbeck]

The info in your post shows how we often help each other by sharing some info that we didn't know the other member didn't know. You have to like that.

 

Definitely. I've gotten fantastic amounts of thoughtful advice and expert suggestions from people here.

 

EKH