I actually like working on Touchdowns. There's a little bit
of fiddly work, but it's almost always less of a bother than trying to
remove a seriously cemented sac from elderly pressure bars. For a
start, the section of the Touchdown screws in place, so it's generally
pretty easy to get off. Sometimes there's been a sealant applied,
but it usually isn't solidly set and will give to the strength of your
fingers.
Inside, you will find the sac protector,
which looks like it's
crimped onto the base of the section. It's not! Just a
little bit of a tug is usually all it takes to get it free. In
most of the Touchdown pens I've worked on with a hard sac, it usually
drops out of the protector in a single piece, and is fairly easy to
chip free of the nipple. Rarely, some of it will stick to the
inside of the protector, but freeing it is fairly easy after a brief
soak in soapy water. For really stuck-in sacs, you can soak the
protector in rubbing alcohol for several hours-- this is the only time
you every want alcohol near a pen, and you still don't want it near the
pen, as it's the dismounted protector that gets the soak and no other part of the pen. To
avoid scratching up the inside of the
protector, I usually apply bamboo skewers to the problem.
The main issue in resacking a TD is getting the sac cut to the right
length. This can be tricky because of the way the protector fits
over the section. The ideal is to have the sac just barely long
enough to touch the end of the protector, and a little short is far
better than a little long. The three Sheaffer pneumatic-fillers
are the only pens I prefer rubber sacs for; this is because the sac
needs to be extra-flimsy to collapse properly when filling, which is
not a feature in silicon. Sac suppliers make them in special
sizes specific to the these types of pen.
The sac is applied to the nipple at the back
of the section in the same manner as described for
lever-fillers,
being very careful that it is straight and doesn't come down too far.
The former is to keep it from kinking inside the protector, and
the latter is to keep it from interfering with re-attaching the
protector.
One the sac is secure, make sure to powder it fully as described in the
basic
instructions--
it's very important that the sac can come away from the walls of the
protector. Snap the protector back in place, replace the section,
and you're done. If the pen doesn't fill now, it's time to look
to the seals.
