Just finished my first difficult repair. Well, it was difficult for me

I found a Parker 51 at a flea market and thought, why not.

I've already resac'ed a handful of Esterbrooks, a Parker button filler and resurrected a Sheaffer Snorkel.

Fixing this old thing should be a piece of cake.

Nope.

It was shellac hell!!

Everything that could be sealed with shellac was triple sealed with the stuff

I've boiled my hands completely to pieces trying to use hot water to loosen the thing up.

At first nothing would budge and frustration was setting in

After a couple of days of soaking and using hot water to try to open the pen I simply got tired of it all and dumped the whole thing into boiling water

Half an hour later I had completely disassembled it.

A new diaphragm, a few dabs of silicone sealant and some black Quink later

It lives!!




And how does it write?


There's just one last thing I'm unsure of.

It has a 7 and three dots.

Does that mean it's from the first quarter of 1947?

Congrats on finishing up a diaphragm job! Just a word of warning on boiling water: it's not the way to go, dry heat is essential. Boiling water would pretty much destroy a celluloid Vac.
You got lucky.


Yup, first quarter of 1947.

Holy mama!

It seems like I was really lucky

That's the last time I'll use boiling water

Thanks for the warning

Great job. Yes you did get lucky that it was a 51 made out of lucite. Nemo is correct. Dry heat only !!