So, I had couple pencils with bad internal mechanisms. While it might be possible to fix some elements of broken mechanisms, generally for Snorks, I've found it quite easy to just swap a donor mechanism from another pencil. A plain black Snork pencil is not expensive to find, and using it to get a Periwinkle working is well worth it. Snork pencils easily disassemble and seemingly are interchangeable. The ferrule unscrews, the rest of the externals slip away then from the mechanism.
But, I found recently that the metal-barrel Snorks (only Triumph in all gold-filled, and Masterpiece solid gold) don't quite follow that "rule"
First Image: "Donor" worn blue Snork Pencil and Triumph pencil needing work.
I disassembled readily the blue pencil to do the "usual" guts swap to the Triumph.
Then I opened the Triumph Snork pencil. In fact I had done the complete swap only to find the Triumph (gold-filled) barrel- unlike with every other swap I'd done- was fatally loose. Re-opening the pencil showed the problem, which I guess makes sense. The metal snorkel barrel is thinner than the plastic barrel found on most pens. A plastic spacer (see the red arrow) is present on the Triumph's guts to keep the barrel in place. It covers the knurled metal shown above.
Shown below are the two mechanism variants. This is the only pencil-swap incompatibility I've found so far amongst Snorkel pencils. Below see the two mechanism. The more common plastic-barrel pens lack the spacer.
I have not yet played with the spacer. Perhaps it can simply slide from the metal mechanism to be placed on more typical no-spacer assemblies found with the overwhelmingly more common plastic-barrel mechanism. Perhaps a spacer can be made for those pencils needing one. I don't do repairs. But, I have not seen this parts issue addressed before, so figured it might provoke some useful commentary.
=david