does this patent from 1983 look like it’s for those early (kind of cheap) automatics - similar to this Zebra?
I had a spare of these (missing cap, cracked barrel, etc) so I took it apart to compare to the diagrams—I can’t understand the text of the patent.
Unfortunately one tiny piece sprang out and when I went to pick it up in bad lighting, I accidentally crushed it in four pieces . It was much more fragile than I would have guessed.
I’d say there are a lot of differences but it’s hard to tell if it’s a related but later generation. For example although a couple of the parts have depressions which might be there for ball bearings, there weren’t any. Instead, I think the part I fat-fingered served a similar role. (It’s too small and fiddly to have any chance of gluing back together. Not by me, anyway.)
Oh well, this is why I keep junk spares for education/practice.
Thanks for looking
Sorry your pencil broke though