All rather long winded but just passing time in the hope this ramble may be of help to old style grease gun users. My old ex WD gun used the same principals of operation
I have used my Wanner over quite a few decades. I bought it in my teens and it is still going strong. The operating principals are pretty simple.
Within the grease reservoir there is a "piston" sitting atop a strong spring,
The top of the spring is attached to a chain.
The other end of the chain is attached to the aforementioned black handle which is held on the bottom end of the grease reservoir...
A half turn on the handle can release the handle from it`s location and allows the chain to be pulled against the spring pressure using the handle...
There is slot on the bottom of the reservoir which forms part of the handle locating mechanism, but more importantly allows the chain to be locked holding the piston in position against the spring pressure when the handle is pulled exposing whatever length of the chain has been pulled out of the reservoir base and locked off as an alternative method of loading the reservoir, though this method is bound to trap copious amounts of air...
You may remember grease contained in metal cans which had a metal cover over the grease with a central hole in it, the idea of this set-up was to play a part in filling the grease reservoir in the Wanner type of grease gun... The design being to push the open end of the reservoir down on to the cover in the tin of grease while simultaneously pulling against the reservoirs handle and chain, thus filling the reservoir with grease from the tin..
With the reservoir charged with grease, the pump section of the gun can then be screwed back on to the reservoir..... Though it seems likely that some air will have been trapped during the filling process. With the pump screwed back onto the reservoir if the chain is then released from it`s holding position in the slot and the residue of the chain allowed to fall back into the reservoir, the black handle can be engaged in it`s normal holding position. in this situation the spring and piston now have the grease in the reservoir under pressure.
The aforementioned trapped air tends to render the pump action of the gun as ineffective, in this situation the bleed nipple on the back of the pump head can be used to allow the air to escape... a bit like bleeding brakes though there can be no real need to use the pump action to affect bleeding the air as the spring pressure on the grease can cause a mix of air and grease to spurt out until the air is released and only grease exits the hole at which stage the bleed screw can be tightened... All of which should then allow the pump action to build pressure in the nozzle of the gun. IF the pump action fails at some later stage during greasing it is likely that more air has been trapped during the refill process, thus repeat the bleeding process to restore pump action.
The other bleed screw on the pump head is to release pressure in the connection to the nipple.. From a dull memory it is possible to create up to 2000psi of pressure using the Wanner pump action, which if the item to be greased is in any way chocked and max pressure has been generated the nozzle will have locked on to the nipple tightly and become impossible to pull free.... In this situation the bleed screw on top of the pimp can be unscrewed to release the built up pressure to allow the gun to be disengaged from the nipple..
As suggested during storage it is best to pull the handle/chain out by a small margin, just enough to release the spring pressure on the remainder of grease left in the gun which can help avoid grease leaking during storage..
I took my Wanner with me during my trips down to the med over the years, though kept it in a plastic bag as given the high temps in mid June at least some of the grease was bound to find it`s way out of the gun even with the pressure released within the reservoir..
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