Reddit reviews Silver Cup Billiard/Pool Premium Talc Powder, 13 Ounce Shaker Bottle

No worries! Here's a starting point!

This too. Any lot on Ebay is a good place to start.

So I'm gonna just list a bunch of things off the top of my head that I can think of.

Some more supplies you'll need:

Silicone Grease: Use this any time you have to seal something or lubricate it. Eyedroppers get sealed with silicone grease, pistons lubricated, stuff like that. I use it to seal the hoods on hooded pens (Parker 51) rather than shellac (a kind of adhesive - it's next on the list) because to remove a shellacced hood, you need heat. Heat is dangerous. Plenty of Parker 51 hoods have been destroyed by people going crazy with heat trying to melt the shellac.

Now, any good repairman will use heat before trying to unscrew a hood - but with silicone grease, there's nothing to melt. So they'll just heat it a bit, then try to remove the hood, and not have to heat it any further like they would with shellac. Limits possibilities for damage.

Get a jar of Trident silicone grease off Amazon, or go to a local dive shop and say you need to grease an oxygen tank's valve. Shouldn't cost more than $10 for a crapton of it.

Shellac. This is essentially glue that melts with heat. You want orange shellac. Not sure what's wrong with any other shellac, but I don't care enough to ruin a pen finding out.

You'll use this mainly to attach sacs to pens. Possibly to seal threaded barrels (use silicone grease if the barrel needs to be sealed or nothing if it doesn't. Screwing it in should be enough on its own. No need to use shellac or even silicone grease. The exception is piston fillers and stuff that'll spill ink if you unscrew it. Then you use shellac. A lever filler or a button filler doesn't need silicone grease or shellac except if it's a loose fit), possibly to seal hoods (silicone grease is my tool of choice, but some disagree), and who knows what else. If you think "Oh, super glue would be great here!", stop and use shellac.

Anderson sells this, as do tons of other places. Hardware stores. It's not a pen-specific thing, you can find it locally cheaper than any pen repair place will sell it to you, but you only need a little bit. If you have need for removable glue in other places, get a big can of it from a hardware store.

Talc/graphite powder. Talc is better, but graphite is fine too - just messy.

They're used to keep the sac from sticking to the barrel walls. You'll learn more about it on Richard Binder's page.

Speaking of Binder, you'll see that he says "talcum powder" instead of talc. They're different. Talcum powder has additives in it that can damage a latex sac. Don't mess with talcum powder. This is the stuff you want. Not something like this. Look at the ingredients list, and look at all the stuff that isn't talc.

Sacs. If you're in the US, Woodbin probably has the best price out there. They're in Canada, but the shipping is fast and cheap (like $4). You'll want latex sacs for the most part, but some pens with really pretty celluloid (especially jade celluloid, which discolors when latex sacs degrade and offgas. Other colors do too, but jade is famous for it and very common) will warrant a silicone sac. I haven't bought any silicone sacs yet, so I'm not actually sure that Woodbin sells them. They probably do though, and you should pick some up.

Get a few of every size. Esterbrooks take size 16. Middle sizes like that are most common, but when you get into nicer pens (and some not-so-fancy ones. I've got this awesome Wearever combo with a nice stub nib on it that I restored with a size 19. Big sac, big pen. Cheap pen, low quality though. Not exactly a Sheaffer Balance combo) you'll see bigger sacs coming into play.

A hemostat. Basically medical clamps that are good for pulling j-bars, retainers, stuff like that out of pens. Alligator clamps are precision, they're good for sticking levers and snap rings and retainers back in, but sometimes you need more force than alligator clamps allow (they've got pretty weak grip). For that, use a hemostat. For both hemostats and alligator clamps, get something fairly cheap, and long enough to fit down barrels. 5.5" alligator clamps are doing fine for me, even on OS pens. Get a hemostat of similar size.

Now, snap rings. These are a pain in the ass sometimes. Read Richard Binder's guide on removing/replacing/inserting levers in pens if you don't know about snap rings.

Snap rings are basically just little bits of springy wire that hold levers in place on some pens. Usually lower end pens I think, but not always. I've yet to encounter a lever fill Wearever that doesn't use one, but there's a first time for everything. Vintage pens are notoriously inconsistent. Companies would make a change to a model, but use up old stock, so you've got some pens that look like they might be frankenpens. A non-snap ring Wearever could be something like that.

Disregard what he says about pushing down at a 45 degree angle to free the snap ring from its notch in the barrel. Push it straight down, then push it to one side once you've moved it down a bit (out of its notch in the barrel, but you probably won't be able to tell immediately). If you push at an angle, you risk cracking/chipping/damaging the plastic/ebonite. If you do it my way, you could maybe damage the snap ring, but snap rings are easy to remake, and there's nothing special about any of them. They're little bits of wire, nothing more.

I can't tell you how to make a new one, cuz I haven't had to yet. Look it up if you need to know at any point.

This is advice on fixing lever fillers, but also relates to snap rings specifically. This is why I don't like them much.

They're disposable. I hate that word, I think it's wasteful. Pens, razors, phones, appliances, cups, plates, just about everything we buy nowadays is disposable, and it's a disaster for our planet. (rant over) But really - if you need to damage a snap ring to possibly repair a pen, do it. Better to waste a snap ring than a pen. Bending them out of shape does nothing, they revert to the original shape when you put them in the barrel (by compression) but cutting them shorter does reduce how much pressure they exert on the lever.

Read this post about a lever filler I recently restored. I posted the same thing on FPN and here, but this thread was more active. Same title I believe, search for it if you want the other ones. Or look at my submissions.

So aside from my snap ring advice, my lever filler advice is that when you're having trouble making everything fit nice, diagram it. Draw it out. Be detailed. What's having force exerted on it? In what direction? What might be impeding something's motion or keeping it from going where it needs to? Plastic shrinks over time (really, it does. It's a pain in the ass), how could shrinkage have contributed to this problem? How could any of this be changed, either by me or by someone with greater skill/equipment to fix the problem?

For example, go look at my diagrams from that post. The diagram of the lever, specifically. I thought for a while that the plastic had shrunk, so now the back of the lever was just barely pressing up against the inside of the barrel, keeping it from laying flat without me pressing on it. I was wrong - but it wasn't a stupid guess. Well, maybe it was, there probably woulda been more resistance if that were the problem.

But the point is, look for all possibilities, and try whichever one will cause less damage to fix first, not the one you think will succeed. I bent that lever a bit when I didn't have to, and had to bend it back. That's permanent damage to the metal now. Shoulda noticed the snap ring that I could've cut short and done that first.

One last thing for now - when you ask for help online, be detailed. Draw your diagrams and post them. Give all the detail you can. Give your theories. Give pen models and dates and everything you can.

:)

Here ya go.

http://www.amazon.com/Silver-Cup-Premium-Powder-Shaker/dp/B005U4A9KW/ref=lp_3042527011_1_3?srs=3042527011&ie=UTF8&qid=1459381479&sr=8-3

I also have some pure talc in storage, coincidentally for fountain pen restoration as well. If you're looking for just a tiny bit, let me know and I can probably just send you some.