Dismantling vintage Japanese pocket pens

In early 1960s Japan office fashions changed and male workers started to wear the newly designed “Hong Kong shirt”, which combined a formal collar with short sleeves, which were more comfortable in hot & humid Summers. The shirt came with a single breast pocket but it was just too short for most popular pens of the time … and so Sailor stepped in to offer a genuinely innovative solution. 

It was to be a proper fountain pen that could take the recently invented plastic cartridges and when capped it would fit neatly into the pocket of a Hong Kong shirt. But when the cap was posted on the rear of the pen it extended the length so that it was comfortable to write with. This became the pattern for a whole genre of pocket pens for over half a century.

General principles

Most pocket pens that conform to the Sailor Mini / Platinum Pocket / Pilot Elite design concepts are made from 7 or 8 parts: the cap & the body which are joined using a metal connector (with an optional decorative ring); then inside the section the nib is crimped on to the tip and the feed (often with a rubber washer fitted to the back) is held in place using a plastic retainer, which itself incorporates the mount for the cartridge to attach to the back of the feed. The metal connector is usually fairly easy to remove at both ends but might need a bit of soaking to remove any glues. But the feed retainer needs a lot of soaking and a special tool to unscrew it from the section but sadly these are not available to buy from any of the manufacturers so we have to make our own. 

There are videos online showing how to make the tool – you just need some 6mm brass tube and a Dremmel to file down the ends, leaving 2 prongs that engage with 2 slots on the retainer. This is one that Kevin Prime made for me to open up Sailor & Pilot pens (Platinum needs a thinner diameter tube):

You still have to be very careful not to use too much force when using the tool and prepare well by soaking the pen plenty. But this should remove the retainer and allow you to push the feed back into the section. Then you can clean everything and get all the dried ink out using an ultrasonic cleaner.

Sailor Mini (early 1963-2007?)

This is the original pocket pen – it looks a little clumsy as a design, with the folded metal clip and chunky shape, but it is built remarkably well and the push-fit, clutch cap fits very smoothly. 

The early, mark 1 models are true to the basic design but thir components are a bit chunkier and more industrial. Sailor must have worked out that they could cut corners and make the components a bit cheaper later in the decade. The nib is quite flimsy and seems to be just clipped into the section. I chose not to remove it for fear of scratching the nib or deforming it. 

1965 Sailor Mini mk1 disassembled
feed retainer
connector and sheath
feed

Later they removed the plastic sheath/liner and made the cartridge piercer out of plastic meaning the feed retainer could be a single piece of plastic rather than a plastic retainer with a metal piercer. The plastic liner is a bit of an intriguing element because no other pens have this but I can only assume that they felt they needed a guide or support for the cartridge.

Sailor Mini (date: nib 704) disassembled

I managed to unscrew the metal connector on one (marked “I.A”, 1968-Jan) and found the threads full of something that looks like glue or sealant. This suggests that mild heat and lots of soaking should help loosen stuck ones. That said, I’ve found that many thin nib+feed+retainer units can be extracted without removing the steel connector. 

Sailor Mini (date: nib 504) disassembled – note I didn’t have to remove the steel connector to extract the nib, feed and retainer and the screwdriver fitted through the opening

Early date codes can be found on the grip section (<year>.<month> where <year>=1960-1971 & <month>=Jan-Dec). Later codes (YMM) are on the side of the nib and sometimes the body – where they are on the nib the last digit can often be obscured by the section so they usually need to be dismantled to see properly.

I can’t confirm when the Mini was discontinued but I have one in my collection that seems to be dated 2007 on the nib. 

Platinum Pocket (late 1963-????)

Date codes can be found on the underside of the nib (<month><year>, 1953-2015), which makes them the fiddliest pens in this group to age. You’ll need to completely dismantle them to be able to get to the date code. 

Pilot Short (1966-1968)

Pilot’s first pocket-sized pen was the Sporty15 (スポーティ15) but this doesn’t appear to have been popular so they developed the “Short”, which is actually quite an innovative, telescopic solution to the problem of needing a comfortable pen to write with but to also have it pocket-sized.

Pilot Short – dismantled nib, feed & section

Although this is a predecessor to the Elite, it has a similar feed retainer which can be unscrewed using the retainer screwdriver.

Date codes can be found on the short tail section in the format <year><month> <day> and they can be decoded thus:

  • <year> is either G:1966, H:1967 or I:1968
  • <month> is M-Z:Jan-Dec
  • <day> is numeric.

All Pilot Short pens were made at the Tokyo factory.

a Pilot Short marked “HT10” (1967-Aug-10)

Pilot Elite S (1968-present)

This is the architypal pocket pen today but it was actually Pilot were relatively late to jump on the pocket pen phenomenon. 

Pilot Elite S with “grid” pattern steel cap (1979) dismantled (nib is crimped to the section)

These are usually fairly easy to get into with the feed retainer screwdriver but depending on the nib type you can face challenged along the way. Always remember to start by soaking the whole section + nib + feed for 24 hours and/or use an ultrasonic cleaner to speed up the process. If at any time you can’t make something budge then the answer is nearly always MORE SOAKING!!:

  • Modern inlaid nib: These are large nibs laid onto the section with the edges crimped into grooves on the section. They pull forward to remove the nib revealing a window in the section through which you will see the top of the feed. The feed can be pushed back into the section. These often have a little rubbery glue under the back of the nib to keep it in place. 
  • Fingernail nib (pushed in from front): These are possibly the hardest to work on because even after the retainer has been removed the feeds are remarkably stubborn to shift and you have very little to push against because the section fully encloses the feed with no part remaining visible. Here are a few things I’ve discovered:
    • You will be able to push the nib back into the section using padded flat-close pliers but this often doesn’t loosen the feed AND the nib should actually pull out of the front to remove it.
    • You can also reach the back of the feed with needle-nose pliers but it is very delicate and easy to break – take it from someone who knows! [as an aside, actually chipping the back of the plastic bits of the feed isn’t going to ruin the pen at lond as the feed retainer still slots over it – the feed retainer contains the nipple onto which the cartridge will fix]
    • There is also the breather hole and you can apply pressure through that using a blunted syringe needle but that pushes against the core of the feed and is likely to just remove that and leave the plastic parts with the fins behind; though this is then easier to grip with needle-nose pliers.
  • Older nibs with visible feeds: Usually very easy after removing the retainer you can apply pressure to the tip of the feed and push the nib & feed back into the section. 
a Fingernail Elite S where I chipped the back of the feed trying to remove it and eventually had to push out the ebonite(?) feed core before I could get a good enough grip on the feed to pull it free. In hindsight I should have just flushed it and not bothered to remove the feed.
a Myu 25 which has a collared nib but under that the feed is visible and easy to push back, like on most hooded and semi-hooded designs too

Dating:

  • Early date codes can be found on the short tail section:
    • <year><month> <day> and they can be decoded thus:

      • <year> is A-Z : 1960-1985 [actually they were made from 1968)

      • <month> is

        • A-L : Jan-Dec made at the Hiratsuya factory
        • M-Z : Jan-Dec made at the Tokyo factory
      • <day> is numeric

  • Later on the nib (X9999, 1970s & 80s).

Pilot Elite Long

OK, these aren’t strictly pocket pens because they are too long but they are in the same family as the short Elites so they have some similarities in disassembly. The same retainer screwdriver works for these and once removed you just push the nib+feed back into the section using your fingers OR a flat-close pliers lined with felt or a soft cloth, to prevent damage to the tipping. 

Here is a Pilot Elite E95 (long) from 1970 with soft fine nib:

Here is another E95 (long) from 1969 with a cracked section that I hope to reseal with some plastic weld:

The gold nibs are crimped onto the plastic feed quite tightly and I decided not to remove them because these plastic feeds seem to clean up quite nicely in the ultrasonic cleaner anyway, without the hassle of having to recrimp the nib back on! Take it from me, gold might be a soft metal but it seems very hard if you have to bend a 1mm piece of it without scratching or damaging the shape of the rest of the nib! 

You might also be able to make out that the ink-window ring on the metal connector is made up from a ring of black plastic with a metal ring on each side BUT on one of my pens one of the rings is missing. I am guessing that this is a bit of a design flaw, in that when you unscrew the pen to fit a new cartridge, it’s very easy for the outer ring to drop off and get lost! 

Pilot Custom Elite (cartridge)

This one is a work in progress as I’ve just got the pen in-hand but the first this I noticed is that this one has a feed retainer (the back of it is the cartridge piercer, as normal) and it’s quite chunky because the pen’s diameter is so broad but it does still come off with the usual screwdriver.

Then I spotted that the inlaid nib is actually held in place by a tacky, rubbery substance – a bit like the sealant that Montblanc uses for their nib units. This must be a belt & braces approach to prevent the crimped edges taking all the job of holding the nib in place. The sealant doesn’t interfere with the feed because it is further back on the section and the feed just pokes out of a window in the front to make contact with the nib.

Pilot Custom Elite (button filler)

This is an odd hybrid between the Custom series and the Elite series, which comes with it’s own integral button filler, like the CON-70.

Disassembly was remarkably easy in that the metal tube pulls out revealing a long breather tube. Inside the metal tube is a sac and a tiny little ring that clips in to form a seal against the back of the feed – don’t lose this! I soaked the section with the breather poking out the back and then with some gentle pulling on the breather pipe the whole feed came out in one go. There is no feed retainer because the nib is crimped to the section so all writing pressure is taken by the section. 

In this image you can see all of the parts disassembled – note the tiny little plastic ring from inside the mouth of the sac in the metal tube and the little black collar that fits on the back of the feed and provides the mount for the sac to friction fit onto. 

The only issue I came up against was a really nasty one – the breather tube was clogged and that meant that the filler system would only draw in a small amount of ink. I tried weeks of soaking and ultrasonic cleaning but it didn’t touch the blockage at all so I invested in some tiny 0.8mm drill bits from AliExpress (actually it took me buying quite a few drill bits until I got the correct size) and then held the bit between the jaws of my pliers while gently rotating the feed. It took a few minutes to break through but luckily the blockage was only as few millimeters long and fairly close to the end of the tube. I then used a syringe to flush water through the tube and a bit more ultrasonic cleaning and it was ready to reassemble. 

Pilot Elite(?) long with nib guide

I’m really not sure what these pens are called (they don’t have any obvious name on them) but I’m lumping them with early Elite pens as they seem to be successors to the Super series, made around 1966. They all have a metal nib-guide, like the “flighter” pens below, and have metal caps and a band at the blind end of the body. 

The good news is that they are fairly easy to maintain as they use the standard feed retainer and the nib is easy to remove and work on. But they doi use the “double spare” cartridge which makes them a bit fiddly to ink up. I’ve found that quite a lot of mine have been supplied with empty double spare cartridges though which means they can be washed & refilled.

Pilot “Flighter”

These pens are also bending the rules a bit but I include them here as I managed to get them apart and they seem to have a similar mechanism. 

Parker made many steel-bodied variants of their popular pens, which they named “flighter” – the most famous being the “61” & “45”. Pilot seem to have jumped on that bandwagon and created a product range based on the 45 flighter but with different coloured sections & blind ends. These pens, like many between 1964-68, take the “double spare” cartridge and this particular pen came with a double spare AND the connector ring for the second cartridge to attach to. 

Pilot “flighter” in light blue (date: “HE11” – 1967-May-11, Hiratsuka)

They still feature the plastic feed retainer though so they can be disassembled using the retainer screwdriver.

Note: if you use an ultrasonic cleaner, like I did, you risk the little metal nib indicator coming off. It’s just glued on though so I plan to clean it up and stick it back on. 

Early Pilot Capless (1964-1968)

These pens use the now discontinued “double spare” cartridge (ダブルスペア) or the CON-W converter which you can only get through the PILOT repair centre in Japan by sending them your pen and paying a £20-£30 fee, which isn’t really an option for most people. There are also small Capless variants that cannot accept the CON-W because it’s too long. 

Pilot Capless Short (CS-100RW)

Luckily though, many people have made use of the modern Sailor cartridges and they have worked OK. The only problem is that the neck of the cartridge is a tiny fraction too wide which might let ink seap out and the back of the feed on the early Capless lacks a piercer (the piercer was integral to the cartridge) and so if you want to use a new cartridge you’ll need to break the seal in the neck first. 

Pilot Capless knock-type mk1 (1964)

I have found the Sailor converter to be too tight a fit on my Capless but others have managed to make them work. You’ll also have to cut off most of the black screw end because it makes it too long to fit into the body of the pen. 

Pilot Capless knock-type mk1 (1964)

The Capless is a fairly easy pen to open because it just unscrews in the middle and the nib/feed and cartridge container all slide out, as per the modern Capless/Vanishing Point. Capless Short pens are just slightly different in that you’ll notice the black tail end needs to be pushed in slightly and given a quarter turn anticlockwise. There is a small arrow on the steel to show you how to align the nib/feed again when reassembling it. The front section seems also to be able to be pulled off, to access the door mechanism and remove the clip, but I have found it particularly stiff and haven’t been brave enough to pull it apart. 

Morison

This company made their own pens and would probably be considered a second-tier manufacturer.

I haven’t managed to dismantle any yet and I suspect that the feed retainer uses the same type of screwdriver but with a smaller slot/lug.

Teikin / Obunsha Teikin

Teikin was the name of the company but they started making promotion pens for the Obunsha publishing house so many of their pens are marked “Obunsha Teikin”. They seemed to outsource manufacture to Sailor or Platinum. The pens tend to be cheaply made with steel nibs and a plastic connector.

I haven’t managed to dismantle one of these yet.

Master

[from richardspens.com: Tokyo’s Master Pen Company, Ltd, was a major second-tier manufacturer during the 1950s, with models ranging from mediocre to good (but not exceptional) in quality. At least one authority states that Master was acquired by Pilot in the early 1960s.]

The only pen I have is quite an inovative design with a very shory body and incorporating a bulb filling mechanism. 

Mitukan

No information on this brand.

I haven’t managed to dismantle one of these yet.

Swan (late 1970s)

Originally a maker of Mabie Todd clone pens they only got into pocket pens towards the end of the trend and then collapsed at the end of the 1970s. 

I haven’t managed to dismantle one of these yet.

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