J-bar replacement: bar pressing against opposite wall from lever

[badpenuser]

I saw rust on the j-bar of an Esterbrook J that I acquired restored recently, looking through the lever hole. I decided it would be a good educational session removing it, removing the rust with some soaking in vinegar, and inserting it back. I’m trying to learn to restore my own vintage pens one day

 

However I seem to have botched the insertion. I believe when properly inserted, the bar should press against the barrel wall on the side of the lever, so that the lever can push it down. However the tip of the bar is pressing against the opposite side of the barrel.

 

I was able to remove it the first time with a pair of tweezers, but this time round it’s very tightly stuck and won’t move. While I try and get my hands on a sufficiently thin and long pair of long nose pliers, or hemostats, is there anything else I can do to try and remove the j-bar?

 

Which part of the insertion did I do wrongly?

[badpenuser]

Going through more posts here has given me a few things to try!

1. Remove the sac tray. First get rid of any dried ink. Then lift up the front of the tray to unlatch it. And pull it out.
2. Fashion a hook out of a thick paper clip, go behind the J at the end of the barrel, and pull it out.

[joss]

Possibly, pulling at the long 'leg' of the J-bar causes a blockade of the short 'leg' of the J-bar against the barrel wall. This happens frequently with older J-bars that do not have an additional curvature at the end of the short leg of the bar and it prevents the pressure bar from sliding out easily.

If this is the problem, a long-nose hemostat may allow you to pull at the short leg. In many cases there is however not enough space to properly grab the short leg o the pressure bar in the deep end of the barrel.

As an alternative, you can try wiggling a long strip of some sturdy material between the short leg of the J-bar and the barrel wall. The strip must function as a glider for the short leg while you pull the at the long leg with your tweezers. A long slender micro spatula (such as this one) comes in as a very handy tool for this operation and for various other pen repairs such as removing remnants of old rubber sacs from barrels.

[badpenuser]

Thank you for the tips! I managed to grab a barely sufficiently long and narrow long-nosed pliers from a hardware store, to get a firmer grip on the long leg, and just yank the J-bar out. The next attempt at inserting it ended up with the same problem: bar against the wrong side of the barrel!

 

After several more attempts I figure out that it's one or both of these possibilities:

1. The J shape of this J-bar isn't quite shaped correctly. It's too, how do I put it, broad? It fits way too snuggly, and the pressure required to push the J bar back in easily shifts it out of alignment.
2. While pushing the J-bar back in, keep the long leg pressed against the lever side of the barrel, and check regularly. If it starts sagging down, the alignment of the J shape end isn't right. Redo it.

 

Something about the short leg shouldn't go in too "early", otherwise it'll tilt the whole assembly down and you get the bar pressing on the opposite side of the barrel. An overly tight J end seems to make this much likelier to happen. So I made the J end just a slight bit narrower, and inserted it carefully back in, checking that the bar remained on the lever wall.

 

All good now! But I'm definitely going to build up the tools for making future work less nail biting.

Edited January 8, 2022 by badpenuser

[badpenuser]

3 hours ago, joss said:

A long slender micro spatula (such as this one) comes in as a very handy tool for this operation and for various other pen repairs such as removing remnants of old rubber sacs from barrels.

 

This looks extremely useful for scrapping dried sac and ink off Vacumatic barrels to regain some transparency!

[Estycollector]

I'm late to the thread, but I use long nose tweezers to remove the j bar. I've done several. It always surprises me how simple and effective the design of the Esterbrook lever system. Just pull out and install and new one.